Evaluation

We conduct evaluation to explore the outcomes, benefits, and impacts of the North Bay Science Discovery Day for attendees, exhibitors, and our North Bay communities. Please contact Steven Worker, PhD, smworker@ucanr.edu.

What do youth, families, and student volunteers experience and learn?

We want to know about participant experiences and learnings during the Science Discovery Day, in order to demonstrate the value of the event to families, sponsors, and the community.

Method: Attendee, student assistant, and exhibitor exit surveys where we ask people to complete a post-event questionnaire, with structured and open questions around demographics, attitudes, knowledge, and experience.

What are the event's larger impacts in the community?

We wanted to dig deeper into the powerful ‘ripples’ NBSDD creates in the San Francisco North Bay STEM Learning Ecosystem.

Method: Ripple effect mapping; a participatory evaluation method that uses group interviewing, mind mapping, and qualitative data analysis, to collect stories that ripple out from a specific program. We brought a group of 8 people together around the question: What have you seen or heard about NBSDD’s larger impact in the North Bay?

What youth say about their experience

How does an experience like the Discovery Day influence children?

What are thoughts about future choices and occupations?

Here are comments from youth who attended a Discovery Day.

My geophysics major in college was inspired by my third grade teacher

I enjoyed teaching the little kids about science

A 6th grade experience got my into science

I was more competitive with Odyssey of the Mind!

It improved my public speaking skills

"I just thought you might like to hear how helpful everything on your North Bay Science Discovery Day page has been for one of the kids I work with! I'm a tutor and librarian and have been working with a young girl named Alyssa for a few days on a lot of different science subjects. Not that she needs tutoring or anything, she went to a STEM camp over summer and is obsessed with doing something science related as a career. I've been showing her just how many different options are out there and everything you put up on your STEM Links page really helped drive that point home for her! Figured I'd let you know how much she and I appreciate it all. I'll definitely be passing along your page to some of the other students! About the same time we stumbled across your page, Alyssa also found this breakdown of the different types of engineering fields that are out there. She was thinking of pursuing a career in engineering when she grew up so this was incredibly beneficial for her. After all the help she got from you she thought we should pass it along as our way of saying thanks! She figured there's probably some other kids out there who would get some use out of it, too, in case you wanted to add it to your page! If you do, would you mind emailing me back so I can let her know you liked her suggestion?

Thomas