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Eric, what you are talking about is qualitative research - you start
with data, then work toward a hypothesis. Conversely, you can start
with a hypothesis, then collect and analyze data to see if your
suppositions are supported. There are also mixed methods designs.
I also think your choice of "knowing how our audiences react" is very
telling - as Charlie mentioned a few threads back, learning is a
complicated, mushy topic that can be approached from multiple
directions, through multiple theoretical models. For instance, even
as an exhibit developer, you might be interested in learning as a
function of emotional response, a behavioral, or a cognitive response
(or something in between). In other words, you might be interested in
knowing how they felt after the experience, what they learned, or what
you taught them (I shudder when I wrote that last one :).
What strikes me as being the common thread throughout this
discussion is that learning is both spectral and dimensional - that
is, we can talk about behavioral learning or social learning - points
on the spectrum - and then we can talk about the finer aspects at each
of those points - the dimensional. So when I see arguments about
different points of view, I don't view them as dichotomous, but rather
as connected. Central to this whole argument is that, by definition,
evaluation is also spectral and dimensional: It can be done for
different reasons, in various ways, and serve multiple purposes.
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