Research
How People Reason and Interact at Museums: Implications for Education & Museum Design
Dr. Kevin Dunbar has been investigating what museum visitors learn at a museum (The Montshire museum of Science in Norwich Vermont) and how different types of exhibits interact with the ways that people understand scientific concepts. This research is part of an NSF funded research project conducted in collaboration with David Goudy and the TEAMS consortium: Traveling Exhibits at Museums of Science. Leslie Atkins, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dunbar lab has been analyzing visitors' social interactions, cognitive strategies and ways that people attempt to understand an exhibit by videotaping families as they visit the museum Based upon this research they have been modifying exhibits such that they focus on the science, have more "scientific conversations" and stay longer at the exhibits. The Dunbar lab is alo collaborating with Karl Karlstroms group on the Trail of Time exhibit at the Grand Canyon in which visitors learn about concepts of deep time.
Research Funded by The National Science Foundation