The Montshire Museum is a hands-on science museum in Norwich, Vermont. The museum is partnering with Dartmouth EPICS in order to improve the museum's ability to gather data about visitors and exhibits. The information from these studies is used in guiding exhibit decisions and marketing, and in basic research (in collaboration with Dartmouth Psychological and Brain Sciences) into how people learn science in museum settings.

An EPICS team is developing software to assist in data capture using hand-held devices (PDAs). A high-level interface enables the museum staff to devise custom data collection tools (surveys, timers, occurrence counters, etc.). The tools are loaded onto PDAs for use in the museum. Counterpart software extracts the collected information for subsequent analysis.

You can read about the fall 2005 term in a Dartmouth news article.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous donation by Palm of hardware for use in this project.

Team members

• Fall 2005: Alex Ferguson, Naomi Forman, Erik Hinterbichler, Ben Minkowsky
• Winter 2006: Alex Ferguson, Naomi Forman, Allen Harvey, Erik Hinterbichler, Ben Minkowsky
• Spring 2006: Steve Gomez, Allen Harvey, Tim Lay, Jason Reeves