• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.46-63
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• 2012

The purpose of this research is to explore factors which influence visitors' attention on exhibition panels by analyzing visitors' attention according to topic types and visitor group types. The subjects of this research are exhibition panels of a Tesla Coil exhibition in the Gwacheon National Science Museum. The exhibition panels' topic are basic concepts, explanations of phenomena, operating principles, applications and historical background. These topics are selected through a survey of visitors' intellectual needs for a Tesla Coil. Five new exhibition panels according to the topics are developed and visitor groups' behaviors in front of the panels are recoded in natural situations. The total participant groups are 586 groups, which includes individual student (30.0%), individual adult (20.6%), student group (28.2%), adult group(2.4%), and family group (18.8%). Visitors' attention to exhibition panels is sub-categorized into attracting power and holding power. Attracting power is defined by the percentile of group numbers who attend to an exhibition panel more than 3 seconds to the total group numbers who attend to an exhibition panel for more than a glance. Holding power is defined by average attention time and decay time. The attracting powers of historical background and application panels are 72.3% and 68.8% respectively, while that of the basic concept panel is 47%. Average attention times of explanation of phenomena and operating principle are 37.0 and 34.2 seconds, while those of historical background and application panels are 25.4 seconds. The decay times of each panel shows the same patterns of average attention times. Attracting powers of panels easy to approach and holding powers of panels with in-depth scientific concepts seems to be high. Attracting powers of the individual adult, family, and student group are 66.9%, 66.4% and 62.4% respectively, while the attracting power of the adult group and individual student are 57.1%, and 55.7%. Average attention times of the student group, family, adult groups are 34.0, 33.0, 31.6 seconds respectively, while that of individual student is 19.5 seconds. The decay times of each group shows the same patterns of average attention times. Both of attracting powers and average attention times of the student group and family group are high, while both of individual student are low. Tentatively, attracting powers of exhibition panels seems to be influenced more by topic types of panels, and holding power seems to be influenced more by group type. But these results are very limited and further studies are needed.