From the Physical to the Virtual

This chapter proposes a series of strategies for recreating science center exhibits online. It argues that while physical and electronic exhibits share certain common features, electronic science interactives based on physical exhibits must be re-conceived in terms of the strengths of the electronic medium. Like a televised magic show, digital media allow any number of special effects that interfere with the immediacy and raw authenticity of an onsite physical demonstration. This interference is inherent in any mediated experience. Rather than trying to overcome it, we suggest alternate approaches that take online users deeper into the scientific concepts underlying the physical phenomena on exhibit in the physical galleries. We outline several strategies that we have successfully used to engage user’s imaginations and emotions in online science activities, to foster motivation, and to provide an initial conceptual framework that supports the learning process.

Contextualized Virtual Science Centers

Today it is not enough just to supply content without the consideration of the recipient, his/her current task and situation. Therefore the time, the location, the particular technical limitations, and the modality and style of reception are important parameters for contextualized interactions and information delivery. Context-sensitive content and information processing are especially assets for the generation of added value in information delivery. This chapter describes how contextualization can be performed in virtual science centers. The demand for context-sensitive functionalities constitutes a crucial challenge for application developers, system integrators and product designers. This chapter furthermore offers a potentially substantive approach for development and maintenance of context-sensitive systems and services by adapting information brokering techniques.

Use of Log Analysis and Text Mining for Simple Knowledge Extraction

Log analysis of server data has been used to study the Web site of the Singapore Science Center, which is the largest Web site among all science centers in the world. This has yielded a wealth of data, which has been useful in assessing the effectiveness of the content hosted on the site. Additionally, the use of text-mining to structure an effective query interface for the Science Net database, which is an online repository of over 6,000 questions and answers on science and technology, is assessed. A commentary on the use of log analysis for virtual science centers is also presented.

Personalization Issues for Science Museum Web Sites and E-learning

E-learning has the potential to be a very personalized experience and can be tailored to the individual involved. So far, science museums have yet to tap into this potential to any great extent, partly due to the relative newness of the technology involved and partly due to the expense. This chapter covers some of the speculative efforts that may improve the situation for the future, including the SAGRES project and the Ingenious Web site, among other examples. It is hoped that this will be helpful to science museums and centers that are considering the addition of personalization features to their own Web site. Currently, Web site personalization should be used with caution, but larger organizations should be considering the potential if they have not already started to do so.

Revolutionizing Information Architectures within Learning-Focused Web Sites

This chapter points to the potential new information architectures hold in the design of virtual science centers. Science centers are treated as education-focused institutions and the argument is made that that extending the power of the science center as an educational platform warrants an answer to the question of how to share knowledge across the community of visitors without physical co-assembly. Two approaches toward information design are discussed: community-driven ontologies and social information filtering agents. These approaches are introduced within the context of two pieces of previous research and hold great potential when applied to the Web environment of the science center.

Interactivity Techniques

This chapter shares our observations, research, and experience with creating interactivity. We explore useful techniques for creating interactive science-oriented online displays, and describe a series of occasions and methods for making exhibits interactive. For each technique, the design issue is described, the methods for addressing the issue are summarized, and there is a discussion of the approach. We explore what kinds of interactivity have proven to work well online, and, perhaps more importantly, what does not work. Generally, technical solutions are prescriptive rather than descriptive, leaving the actual implementation up to the programmers involved in the project.

Starting With What We Know

This chapter examines attributes of learning in informal environments, using a research framework developed by the Center for Informal Learning and Schools. It considers how essential characteristics of learning within science centers can translate and apply to learning in Web-based informal learning environments. It argues that in designing virtual environments, informal science institutions need to build on their particular strengths and pedagogical design principles in order to fill an educational niche in the Web landscape, and not compete with commercial or even K-12 educational agencies similarly engaged in the development of online learning environments.

Real Science

Almost since the inception of the World Wide Web, scientific images in a variety of fields of study have been publicly available. However, in most cases the images lacked support materials making them difficult for the public to understand. Recently science centers and other educational organizations have begun to create Web-based resources that help mediate and explain compelling scientific imagery. This chapter looks at the development of four educational Web sites that utilize actual scientific imagery. Ideum developed these sites over the last four years with the Exploratorium, NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum, and the Tech Museum of Innovation. From a developer’s perspective, the creation process for each site is presented. A critical examination explains why certain decisions concerning design, site structure, technical approach, content, and presentation were made and how lessons learned from one project were applied to the next. Finally, the chapter looks at how sites that utilize “real science” can help science centers fulfill their mission of reaching the public and assisting them in better understanding scientific research and the scientific process.

Open Learning Environments

This chapter describes the changes in the role of informal learning education in science centres. It shows by several cases how the rapid development of modern information and communication technologies after the mid-1990s has influenced the traditional hands-on exhibitions to move towards open learning environments. The reported experiences of the different types of Web-based solutions in science canters provide evidence and practical hints for further development of traditional exhibitions towards open learning environments. Results underscore the role of intrinsic motivation as the key element for learning. The prices and other thresholds for using existing ICT-based learning solutions have decreased considerably, and now the main consideration is whether there are enough social innovations, that is, are there meaningful content and use for the innovative technology? To create an open learning environment from the elements of the exhibition and the Internet is clearly one of the main challenges of science centres.

A Virtual Museum Where Students Can Learn

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where students from four possibly different countries meet together to learn, discuss and play, visiting the virtual Israel Museum with a guide. The educational experience combines online engagement and cooperation to “traditional” off-line learning activities, spread across six weeks. Data from an extensive two-year-long evaluation of the project, involving over 1,400 participants from Europe and Israel, prove the educational effectiveness of this innovative edutainment format.