Finding Significance: Testing methods for encouraging meaning-making in a science museum

Abstract Many museums incorporate hands-on exhibits to engage visitors in activity and multisensory experiences. However, many visitors use such exhibits without reflecting on the significance of their exhibit experience and how it fits with their previous knowledge or everyday lives. In this poster session, we will present preliminary results of a study that compares two "exhibit enhancements" designed to foster such reflection. Specifically, we have enhanced an exhibit element by attaching a video screen that presented either Narrative Stories about the exhibit or Reflective Inquiries for visitors to try. We compared these with a standard version of the exhibit without video. So far, we have conducted such comparisons on two different exhibit elements that are found in many science museums, Aeolian Landscape, and Touch the Spring. For each version of each exhibit we are assessing the quality of visitors' interaction with the exhibit, the connections they make between the experience and the rest of their lives, and the impact of the experience after a period of several months. To date, we have analyzed the quantitative questions from cued interviews with visitors immediately following their exhibit experience. Results from that subset of our data are mixed: at Aeolian Landscape the Reflective Inquiries seemed to enhance the exhibit more than the other versions in several ways, while no clear pattern has yet emerged at Touch the Spring. We hope to be able to report late-breaking analyses of some of the qualitative data at the poster session, to supplement our quantitative analysis. We also invite conference attendees to contribute suggestions for choosing a third exhibit element to study, and for creating more powerful exhibit-related narratives