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-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Friedman
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 12:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Invitation to submit your evaluation lessons-learned
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Steve Bitgood, Minda Borun, and I are presenting a session at the 2013 Visitor Studies Association conference session titled, ³What We Have Learned from Our Experiences in Visitor Studies.² We need your input.
Each of us has our own ³lessons² that we will share from our different perspectives. But we would also like to assemble a broader list of the lessons professionals in ISE have learned in their own careers.
Please share with us the two most important lessons have you learned from your own experiences with visitor studies.
Please let us know by e-mailing us your own experiences, including the following information in your response:
1: Identify your perspective--as a museum director, educator, evaluator, exhibit designer, researcher, other (as many as apply)
2: Your lesson #1
Alan,
Don't know if these are important lessons-they were for me. Thought everyone knew them by now.
I am a museum director, so that's my perspective.
1. Test topics and then titles.
Title testing of an exhibit, film or program, is important. Titles make a difference in marketing and what people come to see. A topic might test well and the wrong title would doom it. For example, an Imax film called Survival Island (this is before the reality craze) wouldn't draw attention or visitation, but title testing said if we called it Penguins they were ready to come. Topics and titles that don't require much explanation often do better such as Mummies, Dinosaurs, Butterflies, etc.
Not being a trained evaluator my first 25 years in the business I depended on a book called Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design-For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires. Later ironically I learned much more about program and outcome evaluation as I worked in a school system evaluation, research and grants office for 6 years.
Your lesson #2
Formative evaluation is a key to survival.
Evaluate from the beginning. From my initial internship at the Exploratorium, I knew prototyping and testing exhibits made sense. Furthermore I was a scientist when I worked for a living so I understood experimenting with something to get to the right place. Marketing research was an obvious need. What resonates with our audience? Program evaluation came harder for me. I soon learned that having trained evaluators for programs was not a luxury but part of perfecting our delivery of STEM programs and exhibits. When I started only a few large institutions could afford to have trained evaluators on staff. Grants allowed me to contract for evaluation and from those experiences it was clear that the time to know what needed fixing wasn't after the project but from the start. By the start means when you plan the project (and in the case of grants when you begin to write the grant) include your evaluator. Small institutions still may not have a trained evaluator, but if I can learn to do rudimentary evaluation then you can too. Attend sessions, read books, read evaluations. When doing grants get an outside evaluator who will join in the project with the opportunity for being included if funded. If funded, watch and learn from them.
For each ³lesson² please write a stand-alone sentence to summarize your lesson as concisely as possible. Then you can add a paragraph or two providing qualifiers, back story, examples, or other explanations to support your lesson.
If you provide your e-mail address, we will send you a summary of the content analysis of responses we collect and analyze.
Thank you!
Alan
________________________________________
Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T +1 917 882-6671
E [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>
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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.
The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
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To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
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