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Science Shows Research
science made simple are serious about the effect we hope to have on the next generation of scientists and engineers. We believe that a great science show is something of an art-form, and should be studied and criticised in order to help push the field forward. We continually thrive to improve our audience experience, and we are interested in trying to measure the impact that our shows can have.
On a day-to-day basis we use ongoing evaluation to assess the quality of our performances and we have also undertaken bigger studies to investigate long-term impact.
A more substantial study was completed in 2004 with the Open University. This looked at the short and long-term impact of our science show; 'Music to your ears'. We compared the short term effect of the show with the long-term impact by contacting students two years later and interviewing them about the experience. We found that without prompting students could recall around 25% of the demonstrations in the show, and with some further visual clues, this rose to 50%. In addition, the students gave examples of how they had used the ideas from the show in other contexts, showing that they could apply the knowledge learnt in other situations.
If you would like more information about this research, please contact us. You can also download a summary and a full report of the study here.
Summary of the study (word doc 171kB)
Full report of the study (word doc 523kB)
