Developing a tool to measure interest in audiences of a virtual planetarium show
Jesica L. Trucks, Gloria I. Lopez, Kathleen A. Hinko, Shannon Schmoll · 2021
Informal learning environments often have a clear ambition to spark interest [1].People also need multiple exposures to content [2,3] to learn.The Dome+ model, with its principles of interest, identity, and agency, was developed to guide the construction of the Big Astronomy Project consisting of a planetarium show plus additional resources, to support audiences in extending engagement beyond the physical space of the planetarium.A main design principle was sparking interest through the immersive environment of the show.The Big Astronomy Project released a show as a virtual YouTube 360 • stream due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Here we test the utility of the four-phase interest model [4] to characterize interest surrounding the virtual show for use in our larger dataset.The four-phase model suggests people progress from earlier phases of situational interest induced by the environment to later phases of individual interest marked by self-driven engagement.We use this model to characterize the role the show plays in audience interest and look for the role of interest in a virtual environment.We used focus groups with audience members on our premiere day of the planetarium show consisting of eight individuals, and included follow-up interviews with five of those individuals to understand how they continued their engagement with the Big Astronomy Project.Everyone indicated that they chose to watch the show because of an established interest in astronomy.Since self-induced engagement is an aspect of individual interest, we placed all participants in phases 3 to 4. Our data lacked people who fell into the situational interest phases.We suggest that virtual shows will attract individuals who have an individual interest.We plan to use this research as a tool for the analysis of the larger dataset that includes a more diverse set of individuals.