Water's Journey through The Everglades

The University Of Central Florida Board Of Trustees, Orlando FL

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Central Florida is conducting a 48-month project with the Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS) in Ft. Lauderdale and with Simiosys, Inc. to develop augmented reality (AR) "scientific virtualizations" for the museum's 27,000 square-foot EcoDiscovery Center expansion. The new wing has a science content focus on the Everglades, with experiences that allow visitors to explore questions about this ecosystem across the major variables of space, time, and scale. A Web portal site is also being developed that includes science-related games and contests. A key audience for the deliverables is adolescents. They are part of the project's advisory committee and are being enlisted to assist with the project's formative evaluation processes and to recruit their peers to the exhibit and Web portal. The project is positioned as a model for other museums on the use of embedded augmented reality simulations, and a component of the evaluation plan is to ascertain the feasibility of diffusing the model to other institutions. The Orlando Science Center is participating as a prototype center in the earlier stages of the project. Evaluation faculty at UCF are overseeing formative evaluation. The Institute for Learning Innovation will carry out the summative evaluation.