In this article, G. Donald Adams of the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village discusses the influence of positive word-of-mouth on motivating attendance at museums and other visitor attractions. Adams shares an example of a word-of-mouth situation and how assessments made at various stages in the process can help a museum plan public programs that create positive impressions.
In this article, Harris H. Shettel, museum consultant, questions why so few museums evaluate educational program and evaluations. Shettel provides six factors that she that explain why this is the case.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Harris H. ShettelVisitor Studies Association
In this article, Patricia Munro discusses the "Baffling Beauty" project developed by the Anstiftung, a nonprofit research organization in Munich. Munro summarizes the development of this "health forum," traveling exhibition as well as how evaluation techniques were integrated into the exhibit planning and implementation process.
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Patricia MunroVisitor Studies Association
In this article, Kirsten Bohlig, discusses a research project conducted by the Department of Sociology of the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) to study the variety of regional cultural attractions over a two year period. The objective was to determine the current amount of participation and thereby find ways to improve the cultural infrastructure in the area.
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Kirsten BohligVisitor Studies Association
In this article, Michael Spock, of the Informal Learning Program at the University of Chicago, discusses his fundamental and situational concerns that surround the practice of museum exhibit and program evaluation. Spock offers observations on the situational politics from his exhibit evaluation work at the Field Museum and suggests how semantics plays a more fundamental role in the evaluation process.
In this article, Harris Shettel, an evaluation consultant, discusses the politics of evaluation and how the recent use of visitor data to inform decision making at all levels qualifies as a paradigm shift in the approach taken to museum public programming.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Harris ShettelVisitor Studies Association
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, Lynn D. Dierking of Science Learning, inc. (SLi) discusses the summative evaluation of the Pacific Science Center's Science Carnival Consortium Project, a National Science Foundation funded program designed to assist new or developing science centers with opening and operating their institutions. The evaluation was designed to determine the extent to which the Science Carnival Consortium fulfilled its primary mission of facilitating the creation of these new science centers, as well as to assess the relative efficacy of the project as a model for future collaborative endeavors
In this article, Lisa C. Roberts of the Chicago Park District discusses the "From Knowledge to Narrative: Educators and the Changing Museum" book published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1997. Roberts provides a synopsis of the book and its implications for the museum field.
In this article, Ethan Allen (Teachers Academy for Mathematics & Science in Chicago) describes two types of museum collaborations and how they improve visitor experience through different modes. Allen discusses the Chicago Museum Exhibitors Group (CMEG) and the Museum Partners of Chicago's Urban Systemic Initiative as two models of museum collaboration.
The Principal Investigator's Guide: Managing Evaluation in Informal STEM Education Projects (PI Guide) is designed to help principal investigators and other leaders of informal STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education projects integrate evaluation into all phases of project design, development, and implementation. Such projects include exhibits, media projects, websites, community science projects, afterschool programs, festivals, family activities, online games, citizen science projects, and other efforts to help people learn about science in the course of their everyday