Museum Lab Seed Funding

Through a new activity, the Museum Lab, the MIT Museum will make its unusual range of learning opportunities in the area of communication available to undergraduate students. The proposed project will establish Museum Lab around a core of academic courses, at the heart of which is a fall 2011 remodeled science communication course (STS.034) co-taught by John Durant and a small interdisciplinary team with complementary expertise in science communication, exhibition development and multi-media. IAP pilot courses in 2011 and 2012 will provide testing opportunities for ongoing course development and the development of assessment and evaluation tools and rubrics. Ongoing UROP projects will provide a stream of museum technology projects that will feed the Museum Lab courses with subject matter and tools. The overall objective is to set in place a course model for Museum teaching and learning that will enrich both the MIT undergraduate curriculum and Museum outreach.