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Hello Martin: The easy response to your question is that we would like to see what people learn from the experiences we create, rather than going in as if we know. I hope you read the rest of my post where I was basically agreeing with what you write.
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On Oct 28, 2011, at 12:05 PM, Storksdieck, Martin wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Eric, I empathize with you, but I don't quite understand why the question of whether an exhibition is making progress towards meeting its learning goals is a straightjacket more so than whether a medical treatment is making the patient better is a straightjacket for a physician. You are free to define your goals in whatever way you want (see footnote), and in a way one certainly hopes that exhibit or exhibition developers have goals to begin with. If so, wouldn't you want to know whether what you do is getting you there? Engineering is design under constraints, and so is exhibit development and design. Both require an iterative process where creativity, intuition and innovation gets checked by analysis and reflexion. Maybe it is after all just a semantic and cultural issue. Creative people will need to define the analytic part of their work as constraining, but I very much hope that they embrace the constraint as a component of their work that provides meaning.
>
> Footnote on goals: of course, defining goals is constraint as well. Not all goals have the same merit, and not all will see support. Part of our job is to make people understand that we are pursuing valuable goals beyond creating conceptual knowledge in audiences, but that is a separate discussion...
>
>
> On Oct 28, 2011, at 11:33 AM, Eric Siegel wrote:
>
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> I have to admit that I feel the whole "learning goals and did you meet them" part of exhibition development to be a bit of a straightjacket. But I hope I have enough humility to realize that there is a lot I have to learn and that I welcome advice from anyone who can help me do that, evaluator, explainer, colleague, member of the public. I like to think that when lightning strikes and I have some awesome creative concept that I will just get it right, but my batting average is only so so. So I am all for any kind of input, paid, unpaid, expert, novice when we are working on a new experience. I am not all that enthralled with defining concrete learning goals, but that is more based on how I have learned in the past, by a kind of serendipitous accretion of experiences, than because of any profound intuition about how people learn. Others have different ways of learning, as I myself have from 30 years in museums and several years of teaching grad students. For some, having concrete learning goals and objectives is a helpful scaffold.
>
> Left to my own devices, I will use my own intuitions. It isn't obvious to me that my intuitions are the best approach for visitors to have a great time and learn. So I try to listen to whomever I can.
>
>
> eric
>
> Eric Siegel
> Director and Chief Content Officer
> New York Hall of Science
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> Martin Storksdieck, Ph.D.
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> The National Academies
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.
Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.
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