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

20

25

30

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.”

0

1

2

3

4

5

Inspiration Index Histogram

More inspired……………………………………………………………………………….…..less inspired

FindingsVisualizations are sticking with people.

Stars

Gravit

y

Search

/Search

er

Black hole

Supern

ova

Galaxy Collis

ion

Galaxies

General S

pace

Nothing

Visual m

odels to su

pport exis

ting knowledge

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

FindingsVisitors are drawing on visualizations over narration.

General Formation/Origin Relation to life0

1

2

3

4

5

Supernovae

Formation Many > MW Motion0

1

2

3

4

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.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

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)