Planetarium Audiences and Cosmology Visualizations
description
Transcript of Planetarium Audiences and Cosmology Visualizations
Zoë Elizabeth BuckOctober 19, 2011
Special thanks to Joel Primack, Doris Ash and Nina McCurdy
Planetarium Audiences and Cosmology Visualizations
Introduction and Context
• Effective teaching, curricula and interventions• Equity• Cosmology is coming of age, but it’s not in K-12 curricula
Why do this kind of research?
Introduction and Context
• State of the art theater• “Road trip of the Universe” (show
director)• Real data visualizations
– large scale dark matter evolution, galaxy merger, type 1a supernova, star passing by a super-massive black hole
The Adler creates a visitor experience.
“[T]he educators think the curators just want to teach all their obscure scientific points, and the curators think the educators just want to dumb everything down, [in a whisper] and they really do want to dumb everything down.”
-Adler Astronomer
Tension: curators and educators
The new show
Introduction and Context
Children Entertainment/Experience Content/Learning Family time Other0
5
10
15
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25
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35
Entrance Survey (Open)Written Survey (MC)Total
Visitors want to “experience space.”
Research Methodology
• Education research uses a variety of methods taken from anthropology, psychology, sociology and political science, among other fields
• My methodology is interpretive – although I enter into the research with broad questions, my hypotheses are formed inductively, after data collection has begun
• My research uses a mixed methods approach - data is both quantitative (surveys), and qualitative (interviews, stimulated recall, and observations)
• I spent a month at Adler Planetarium in Chicago observing, giving surveys, and interviewing staff and visitors
Methodology and Methods.
Research Methodology
• Show is dynamic – it has been shaped by producers, writers, artists and scientists working with the Adler, and each visitor is making sense of it using the resources at their disposal– (MacDonald, 2002)
• Learning is social and situated – (Vygotsky, 1978; Lave & Wenger, 1991)
• Equity as a lens– Valuing informal knowledge (Lemke, 2011)– Viewing learners as inherently intelligent, trying to make sense of
what they experience (diSessa, 1993)– “[E]xploring ways in which…competence can be supported to promote
development of robust understanding of the physical world" (Warren et al., 2005, p 122).
Theoretical framework.
Research Methodology
• How are visitors to the Adler Planetarium interacting with cutting edge cosmology visualizations in a new planetarium show?
Research Question.
Findings
• Inspiration as a worthy outcome• The “inspiration index” – series of Likert scales• n=23
People are being “inspired.”
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Inspiration Index Histogram
More inspired……………………………………………………………………………….…..less inspired
FindingsVisualizations are sticking with people.
Stars
Gravity
Search
/Search
er
Black hole
Supernova
Galaxy Collis
ion
Galaxies
General Space
Nothing
Visual m
odels to su
pport exis
ting knowledge
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FindingsVisitors are drawing on visualizations over narration.
General Formation/Origin Relation to life0
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Supernovae
Formation Many > MW Motion0
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Galaxies
FindingsVisualization details affect interpretation.
F4W: Are those all galaxies there that we are looking at? I'm not sure...
F2M: I'm seeing two or three stellar nurseries right now, this would probably have been at the early stages, the later stages of the big bang, possibly
Z: What do you think the white stuff is made of?F4G: Stars?Z: What makes you think they are stars?F4G: Cuz stars I look at up at the sky from my house and I see stuff like that, it looks like minature Suns, which…are bulbs of light
FindingsVisitors are drawing on multiple resources.
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Conclusion
• The closest thing to really “experiencing space”
• Visualization content is sticking with people
• Artistic decisions matter (color, speed, transitions, etc)
• Using resources and making connections to construct new knowledge
What this means for cosmology visualizations.
Conclusion
• Preliminary results• Now: White, highly educated
demographic• To Do: Recruit diverse families
(n~25)
Limitations and next steps.
Primary2%
Some HS9%
HS11%
Some coll.13%
BA17%
Some grad15%
MA34%
Education Level (n=47)