INTRODUCTION

Background on the TEAMS Collaborative

The TEAMS collaborative is composed of five small to mid-size museums: Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Catawba Science Center in Hickory, North Carolina; Discovery Center in Rockford, Illinois; Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont; and Sciencenter in Ithaca, New York. The project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant and builds on models of previous exhibit collaboratives (Exhibit Research Collaborative, Science Museums Exhibit Collaborative). Directors and staff from these five museums have collaborated to build traveling exhibitions that are small and affordable for their institutions and to develop related educational programming. Moreover, an important aspect of the grant is that the work done in developing the exhibits and programs has resulted in increased institutional capacity, thus enhancing the quality of future exhibits and programs built by each institution. In addition, this collaborative made it a defining feature of their work to learn more about how families interact and learn in museums, and how to better design their exhibits and programs to facilitate high quality family experiences.

Description of the Exhibitions

Each of the five collaborative museums developed an exhibition around a different theme which was carefully chosen through a collective process of proposing and examining ideas. The exhibitions average about 1,500 square feet, and average about 14 components each.

• Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum developed an exhibition about the science and technology of clothing. Topics presented in the exhibition include insulation, reflective materials, fasteners, weaves, and static electricity.
• Catawba Science Center developed their exhibition on soil science. Topics addressed in the exhibition include drainage, filtration, erosion, soil layers, compost and worms.
• Discovery Center's exhibition focuses on the physics found at amusement parks, mostly centered on Newton's Laws. Topics addressed include centripetal force, friction, and gravity.
• Montshire's exhibition is about air. Topics addressed include turbulence, air movement, and air pressure.
• Sciencenter's exhibition focuses on math. Exhibit topics include measurement and estimation, scale, and graphing.

Description of Accompanying Materials

Accompanying each exhibition is a set of education and public relations materials. The education materials include a teacher's guide, with background information on the exhibition, literature and web sources for additional information, and activities related to the theme of the exhibition that teachers can use with students in the classroom. Additionally, each museum created a guide for a family science event. These events include self-serve (non-facilitated) activities, demonstrations, and longer, more open-ended inquiry activities to complement the exhibition. These activities are designed for use in the museum and in schools as part of outreach programs. The programming materials also include a tri-fold brochure, a family science guide which can be handed out to visitors. These materials contain background information on the exhibition and some activities parents and children can do at home.

The public relations materials include 30- and 60-second spots for radio advertisements, photographs, video footage that can be used in television spots, and press releases.

The Role of Inverness Research Associates and Tasks Conducted

Inverness Research Associates (IRA) was contracted by the TEAMS collaborative to play several roles. One was to provide overall documentation of the TEAMS collaborative effort. Another was to help individual museums as they worked to incorporate formative evaluation into their exhibit development efforts. A third was to conduct a summative evaluation on the five exhibitions once they were completed. In conducting our evaluation we have:

• attended all gatherings of the TEAMS collaborative members at ASTC meetings;
• attended an initial workshop and meeting of exhibit developers and a gathering of education staff;
• participated in a family learning conference held in February 1997 in Ithaca, NY;
• developed a survey to evaluate the family learning conference;
• conducted two formative site visits to each museum;
• reviewed education materials;
• prepared an interim report;
• conducted a summative site visit to each of the five museums to study the exhibitions and family events; and
• prepared this final report.

This Report

This report presents findings from our summative study, which centered on site visits to the five collaborative museums. During these two- to three-day visits, we studied the exhibitions and programs. Our goal was to gather data for final documentation of the exhibitions and programs, and to provide final feedback and small corrections that could be addressed prior to the exhibits and programs traveling. We conducted trackings of visitors as they moved through the exhibitions; conducted exit interviews with visitors in order to understand visitors' perceptions of the exhibitions as a whole; and observed and interviewed visitors engaged in family science events. In addition, we conducted mediated interviews with visitors around certain components (focusing on issues of graphics and label design; or "problem" components that seemed to need more fine-tuning than others).

A second goal of our summative study was to conduct final interviews with key staff people who participated in the collaborative. We interviewed museum directors, exhibit developers, education staff and public relations staff at each museum. The conversations documented their experience in terms of the benefits of the collaborative, identified the issues that had emerged along the way, and any lessons learned that might be of interest to the rest of the group and to the larger museum field.

We have organized this report in the following sections:

• The Exhibitions: In this section of the report, we examine the overall quality of the five exhibitions. We will look at the exhibitions in terms of their design, of visitor use, and of visitor experience. [For the purposes of this website presentation, information on the evaluation of these exhibits is discussed on a separate page.]
• The Programs: In this section, we discuss the overall quality of the education programs, focusing primarily on the family science events, examining the design and visitor experience. In addition, we discuss some lessons learned about designing and conducting these types of programs.
• The Collaborative: In this section of the report, we examine the collaborative as a whole, looking at the accomplishments, the benefits to institutions and staff from their participation, the potential contributions of the collaborative to the field, and the overall lessons learned. For this section, we draw primarily from our summative interviews with staff, as well as from our overall observations of the collaborative during the past three years.
• Summary and Recommendations for TEAMS 2: In this section, we will briefly summarize our report, and discuss some suggestions and recommendations for a potential second round of funding for the TEAMS collaborative.