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Program Description

Overview Discovery Youth (DY) is the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose’s (CDM) after school program for youth in San Jose, California. By giving youth the chance to develop multimedia projects that promote healthy behaviors to others, especially younger peers, participants construct identities as health educators and contribute to the health awareness of the museum’s younger visitors. A key goal is to channel youth interest in technology into a program emphasizing health awareness by creating a learning environment and experiences that feel distinctly different from a school health class.
Start Date October 2001
Scope local
Type after school, summer, weekends
Location urban
Setting community-based organization
Participants elementary through high school students (ages 10–14 in grades 5–9)
Number of Sites/Grantees one
Number Served over 130 in 2001–2002; 25–30 core participants on a regular basis
Components DY participants’ multimedia projects are typically video-, Web-, or radio broadcast-based, on such topics as promoting good hygiene, smoking prevention, and demystifying doctor visits. Most activities take place in CDM’s Multimedia Studio, where youth have access to computers with multimedia software. Youth are introduced to the technical and creative aspects of producing educational multimedia. Specifically, they are taught how to shoot footage using digital video cameras, edit video and create special effects using Adobe Photoshop and Apple iMovie, create animations using stop-motion techniques and Macromedia Flash software, and use backgrounds, set design, costume design, and art direction to make compelling finished products.

Youth are guided by two Museum Educators who are supervised by CDM’s Director of Youth Programs. Seventh, eighth, and ninth graders come on Thursdays, while fifth and sixth graders come on Tuesdays; both groups also come on Saturdays. Participants share their work with other youth regularly and have opportunities to showcase and explain their work at the San Jose Children’s Health Fair and at the Museum.

DY offers three separate program sessions during each program year; each session has its own separate goals that are expected to be completed in the course of that session. All youth participants are expected to participate in all three sessions.
Funding Level $86,839 in 2001–2002; $89,258 in 2002–2003
Funding Sources Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health


Evaluation

Overview A formative evaluation assessed DY’s progress toward its goals of promoting healthy development and strengthening opportunities for youth to participate in meaningful after school programs. An impact evaluation studied how DY uses technology skills to provide youth with greater self confidence, better social skills, and an increased sense that youth are important resources to the community.
Evaluator Dan Gilbert

Sepehr Hejazi Moghadam, ASSESS
Evaluations Profiled Looking Back and Looking Ahead: A Formative Evaluation of Discovery Youth at San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum

An Evaluation of the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum After School and Weekend Program
Evaluations Planned unknown
Report Availability Gilbert, D. (2002). Looking back and looking ahead: A formative evaluation of Discovery Youth at San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum. San Jose, CA: San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum.

Moghadam, S. H. (2004). An evaluation of the San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum after school and weekend program. Oakland, CA: ASSESS.

Available at: www.cdm.org/p/viewPage.asp?mlid=159.


Contacts

Evaluation Dan Gilbert
Evaluator
960 Hutchinson Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Tel: 650-326-2080
Email: daniel.gilbert@stanfordalumni.org

Sepehr Hejazi Moghadam
Evaluator
266 Withers St.
Brooklyn, NY 10027
Email: shm2103@columbia.edu
Program Jessica Intrator
Media Studio Educator/Museum Educator for Youth
Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
180 Woz Way
San Jose, CA 95110
Tel: 408-298-5437 ext. 243
Email: jintrator@cdm.org
Profile Updated June 26, 2006

Evaluation 1: Looking Back and Looking Ahead: A Formative Evaluation of Discovery Youth at San Jose Children's Discovery Museum


Evaluation Description

Evaluation Purpose To analyze the successes and challenges that program participants and staff experienced during the 1st program year.
Evaluation Design Non-Experimental: Data were collected through interviews with DY staff and participants.
Data Collection Methods Interviews/Focus Groups: The Director of Youth Programs and the two Museum Educators were interviewed toward the end of the year to get staff perspectives on DY.

In focus groups, 11 youth participants reflected on their experiences in DY. These youth were divided into four groups of 2–3 youth each and were given a series of four sentences to complete as a group with their reflections and recommendations: “I like…,” “I’d change…,” “I learned…,” and “I still want to learn….” They then discussed their responses in the larger group. Next, youth showed some of the videos that they produced during DY and discussed the processes and projects they engaged in as they watched their work. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with two participants: Javier, a 14-year-old Latino eighth grader, and Michelle, a 15-year-old White high school sophomore.
Data Collection Timeframe Data were collected during the 2001–2002 year.


Findings:
Formative/Process Findings

Activity Implementation Participants produced a total of 17 multimedia projects during the course of the year, the vast majority of which were health education videos for audiences of other youth.

Video multimedia projects were used more often than radio or Web projects, which was partially due to youth’s greater interest in video multimedia projects.

One challenge that arose was that youth were more interested in learning to use high-tech equipment than learning about health-related topics, making it difficult for staff to maintain the health-related program focus. One method that seemed to help overcome this challenge was the continuous focus on producing multimedia products to help younger kids learn about health, which seemed to appeal to participants.

Two of the key software products used, Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, sometimes proved to be a poor fit for participants because they are rather complex and tend to require a great deal of time and patience to use effectively. Instead, participants often worked with more user-friendly techniques such as stop-motion animation and software such as iMovie to enhance their projects.
Staffing/Training Staff's technical skills were better geared toward video than radio or the Web, which partially contributed to the de-emphasis on radio and Web usage in DY.

Both participants and staff noted that there was a high degree of respect and trust between youth and staff. One participant said, “[The two Museum Educators] are both really good role models, they treat us like people. They understand us; they don’t look down on us.”

The two Museum Educators felt that they needed more training and support in health issues to provide a richer environment for the health education program focus. Neither had enough of a children’s health background to feel confident answering some of the questions that participants raised. One strategy they used to circumvent this problem was to encourage participants to look at familiar topics in more depth and to consider different ways to present their knowledge to peers and younger kids.


Summative/Outcome Findings

Academic The two interviewed participants expressed that DY helped them prepare for school. For example, Javier expressed confidence that his computer skills will help him as he enters high school. He noted that because he does not have a computer at home, he would not have learned how to use a computer without DY.
Community Development Participants presented their work at the San Jose Children’s Health Fair and the CDM’s Safe Nights (parties for youth held at the museum). At the time of the evaluation, several hundred youth had seen the projects at these events, and evaluators noted that it was likely that hundreds more would view these projects in the coming year.
Youth Development The evaluator found that one program success was helping participants increase their self-confidence and social skills. For instance, Javier commented, “Without this program there’s no way I could just sit here and talk to you… I got better at talking.” Michelle reported that she “learned how to work with other people and to have fun doing it.”

Staff noted that participants learned how to work with a diverse group of other youth and that participants were developing new relationships with other youth because of the program that seemed to be continuing outside of the program.

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Published by Harvard Family Research Project