Hi, Elizabeth and CARE committee members! As director of education at the Autry Museum of the American West, part of my position is to be the on-site evaluator for the museum. We use data in a lot of ways to establish a learning community amongst departments:
- We conduct prototyping as we're developing exhibitions to test for visitor engagement, intuitiveness, functionality, etc.
- We test visitor comprehension of exhibitions.
- We evaluate visitor flow and engagement with physical spaces.
- We use data to understand different demographic and audience segments (e.g., what do families want from family programming, what kinds of food-related programming draws so-called "foodies"?).
- We conduct focus groups and use surveys to understand the educational needs of classroom teachers.
- We employ data to understand our employees (e.g., what do they really think of our health benefits, how can we provide better professional development opportunities?).
- We make use of secret shopper programs to evaluate our customer service.
- We conduct surveys to evaluate docents and docent training.
I have a variety of concrete examples as expressed in the call for information on the forum and am happy to share if there is interest.
Be well,
Sarah
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Sarah Wilson
Director of Education
Autry Museum of the American West
Los Angeles CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-21-2019 01:56 PM
From: Elizabeth Kollmann
Subject: Tell CARE how you've used data to inform your work
Data can be used to help museums make choices about future directions, from exhibits and educational programs to master and strategic planning. CARE is looking for your stories to include in our upcoming blog post and conference session. Take a moment to think about the questions below, and offer a response here or email us at CARE@aam-us.org.
- Has there ever been a time when you wished you had data to make a decision about your museum? What question were you trying to answer, and what data do you wish you had?
- Have you ever used data to help you make a decision about something beyond your exhibits and programs? What data did you use, and what was the issue that you were trying to solve?
Thanks,
Liz Kollmann
Chair of the Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE)
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Elizabeth Kunz Kollmann
Manager, Research and Evaluation
Museum of Science, Boston
(617)589-0467
ekollmann@mos.org
pronouns: she / her / hers
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