Transforming Together: Modifying a Museum-Based Youth Development Project Through Interdepartmental Collaboration

• In Event: Informal Learning Is Not Canceled: Research and Program Implementation During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

The informal learning institutions across the country faced a total shutdown due to the COVID19 pandemic in early 2020. As some museums followed schools and classrooms moving to online platforms and contents, many remained struggled in reaching out to their audiences and continuing their work. This is particularly challenging for research projects that have been already implemented before the shutdown.

This paper aims to share practices and strategies used by a research study on a museum-based youth development program. The study investigated ways to support youths’ understanding of engineering through communicating, working, and collaborating with engineers, peers, and museum visitors using the framework of engineering habits of mind (National Research Council, 2009). Two groups of high school-and college-aged museum educators participated (N=16) in a year-long fellowship program. They collaborated with professional engineers to design and facilitate engineering-focused event programs, and activities for museum visitors. The project was in the implementation phase of the second-year program when the pandemic erupted, which disrupted the remaining programming implementation and the upcoming data collection as the museum has been closed in March 2020 and will remain closed for the rest of 2020.

The project team took several approaches in response to these issues. We first focused on ways to continue the fellowship program by creating engineering experiences for the Fellows. Utilizing the diverse expertise of the museum staff, we identified opportunities for the Fellow to collaborate with museum staff on various engineering tasks (e.g., exhibit design). We then collected data from the Fellow, asking them to explicitly reflect on the difference and similarities of their fellowship experiences comparing before and after the pandemic. With an already implemented program, we also had the opportunity to compare in-person and remote programming and learning experiences of the same project. The data include interviews, reflection papers, artifacts, and meeting notes. The preliminary results show that the Fellows were engaged and remained focus on the engineering tasks after the pandemic. The shift to the completely online platform may impact the team’s morale but did not necessarily compromise the quality of learning experiences. Working with internal staff also helped ensure the continuality of the program after the fellowship program ends. The staff will be able to deploy the activities and exhibits the Fellow created and collect data from visitors once the museum reopens. The Fellows also created facilitation tools and resources that can be shared with other youth museum educators at the museum to generate long-term, sustainable impact. Overall, the modification of the program expended the Fellows’ learning experiences and provided new perspectives on the conceptualizing of the study’s outcomes.

This project indicated that it is important to recognize informal learning institutions as an asset and find creative ways to utilize their resources and systems to support research projects. It is also important to take challenges as value-added opportunities to help explore different approaches in informal learning as long as the re-evaluation and alignment of modified program design with the original research questions are in place.

Author

• ChangChia James Liu, New York Hall of Science