In this article, Alan J. Friedman, Director of the New York Hall of Science, analyzes why museums don't participate in formal evaluation and looks to science and technology centers for answers. Friedman calls for better educating museum scientists and leadership about the values of evaluation, acknowledgment of the consequences of the lack of evaluation, and how to achieve better discipline in the exhibit development process.
In this article, staff at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History discuss the efforts of the Learning in Informal Settings Program, including three international evaluation studies.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John J. Koran, Jr.Mary Lou KoranBetty Dunckel CampAnne E. Donnelly
In this article, Stephen Bitgood, of Jacksonville State University, and Carey Tisdal, of the St. Louis Science Center, discusses the challenges of assessing visitor orientation. The authors provide an overview of a visitor orientation study at the St. Louis Science Center, including methods and key findings.
In this article, Stephen Bitgood, of Jacksonville State University, discusses evaluation efforts to assess people's understanding of evolution and to determine what type of messages might be most effective in communicating evolutionary theory. This article focuses on one aspect of their findings--the relationship between attitudes toward evolution/creation theories and the perception that evolution conflicts with Christian religions.
In this article, Gillian Savage of Environmetrics (Sydney) discusses exhibit planning and research efforts for the development of the Visitor Center at the Australian Institute of Sport.
In this article, Leonie J. Rennie and Terence P. McClafferty, researchers at Curtin University of Technology in Western Austalia, discuss their efforts to study how young children use interactive exhibits designed from 3 to 7 year olds. The authors analyze play and its relationship with learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Leonie J. RennieTerence P. McClafferty
In this article, Lynda Kelly, Evaluation Coordinator at the Australian Museum, discusses the importance of titles in developing exhibitions in museums. Kelly cites evaluation studies at the Australian Museum for five exhibitions and key findings from these efforts.
In this article, Lynda Kelly, Evaluation Coordinator at the Australian Museum, discusses the challenges of exhibit evaluation and visitor research for audiences of and exhibits about indigenous peoples. In particular, Kelly discusses the evaluation work associated with the "Indigenous Australians: Australia's First Peoples" exhibit.
In this article, Ilze Groves of Questacon, Australia's national interactive science and technology centre, discusses the museum's efforts in 1996 to evaluate a group of sixteen prototype hands-on exhibits. This study involved visitor observations and interviews.
In this article, Linda Ferguson, Audience Advocate and Evaluator at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, discusses how the Memorial represents "the enemy" in its galleries in a way that meets the varying needs of their diverse audience. Ferguson shares results from a front-end evaluation study aimed at tackling this issue.
In this paper, Elena Pol and Mikel Asensio of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid discuss their research about how visitors perceive different kinds of artistic representations and which elements they interpret from masterpieces. The authors provide an overview of their work in this area, including three studies about artistic style.
In this paper, researchers from the Smithsonian's Institutional Studies Office discuss a study of the "Ocean Planet" exhibition presented at the National Museum of Natural History (April 1995-April 1996). The purpose of this study was to measure the degree to which the exhibition's message was communicated to visitors and the extent to which the exhibition goals were realized.