RMC partners with creative artists and organizations to inform the development and impact of television series and documentaries, large format films, radio programs, museum exhibits, and other informal educational media. RMC’s evaluation and consultation work in this area grows naturally from our understanding of learning—why and how it occurs, how messages and content can be better crafted, and under what circumstances people seek out and accept new ideas through media. 

Informal Educational Media
Blending the fields of informal learning and media literacy, RMC works closely with producers of films, television and radio programs, museum exhibits, and other informal educational media to help their work achieve the intended learning goals for adults and children. RMC’s evaluation and consultation work in this area stems from the principle that informal learning is a personal experience—when people watch a giant-screen film, listen to a two-minute radio program, or interact intellectually with a museum exhibit, they will be informed by the medium in different ways depending on their own interests and experiences. Creating films and other media to communicate specific goals in an informal learning environment requires an understanding of how and why people learn.

Television Documentaries and Limited Series
Television documentaries and limited series. RMC has provided formative and summative evaluations for a number of news, information, and science programs seen on public and commercial television, including the WGBH science series Science Odyssey and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. Currently RMC is evaluating the public television program The Last Speakers, a documentary about the preservation of lost languages around the world and the work of scientists working to preserve endangered languages.

Large Format Science Films
The National Science Foundation has invested substantial resources to support the production of large format science films to take advantage of the medium’s unique visual aspects to convey complex science concepts. Cosmic Voyage, The Human Body, Lost Worlds, and Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France are among the film projects RMC has evaluated, from the earliest creative stages (e.g., script treatments and outlines) to measuring the impact of the final films. Currently RMC is working with the production team behind the film Dinosaurs Alive!, a large format film to be released in 2007.

Children's Media
We have worked with the creative teams behind many of the television programs that have provided American’s children with formative learning experiences, including Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Arthur, Ghostwriter, Backyard Safari, and The Puzzle Place. RMC’s experts in early childhood development have been important team members in evaluating these and other programs designed to contribute to children’s intellectual and emotional development. RMC is collaborating with the producers of DragonflyTV as they experiment with building relationships with small and large museums across the nation.

Science Exhibits
Layouts of floor space in an exhibit room, the written text accompanying an artifact, and the juxtaposition of exhibit elements for optimal meaning are just a few of the factors influencing the design of museum exhibit spaces. Through a series of observational studies, RMC’s insights informed the development of the Mount Washington Observatory Weather Discovery Center. Last year, RMC studied a prototype for a new way of displaying information in museum exhibits—Science on a Sphere—which displays data three dimensionally on a sphere suspended from a museum’s ceiling.