Browsing by Author "Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Defining the Chaperone’s Role as Escort, Educator or Parent
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010) Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    The concept of family learning in museums emphasizes the interaction between related adults and children through the process of free-choice learning. The complexity of family learning in the context of school visits presents new questions for museum staff on the role of chaperones and the extent to which chaperone-led groups might function as family units. Do chaperones operate as escorts, educators, or parents on a museum field trip? This article provides a brief overview of existing field trip and chaperone research findings, raises some critical questions on the role of parents as chaperones, and describes the results from a study on chaperone behavior in the museum. Results from observations of 289 chaperones in a children's museum setting suggest that chaperone behavior is not necessarily influenced by exhibition context, but parents and chaperones do differ in preferred family learning interactions with children in museum exhibitions.
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    Defining the Scope of Your Evaluation
    (Taylor & Francis, 2015) Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    One challenge of conducting evaluations is finding the right questions to guide the work. A clear purpose for a study gives the evaluator a good sense of what information can answer the questions, and helps frame the scope of the project as a whole. Knowing the scope of the evaluation project provides a sense of the resources needed. A common pitfall for those getting started with evaluation is trying to carry out a project before thinking about the overall purpose of the evaluation. This article provides a brief overview of defining clear and concise evaluation questions and thinking about the overall scope of an evaluation project. Examples include questions and strategies used in small, medium, and large-scale studies.
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    Growing FLORES for the Museum
    (2016) Wood, Elizabeth; Zemanek, Alysha; Weiss, Laura; Carron, Christian G.; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, founded in 1925, is one of few children's museums with a substantial collection. The changing needs of family audiences, and the museum's shift in direction toward a family learning mission, began to raise several questions for the collections and curatorial staff regarding the selection of objects that would hold the greatest potential for use with family audiences. The questions led to the development of the Family Learning Object Rating and Evaluation System (FLORES). This case study describes the development of the rating instrument and strategies the team took to fine-tune its use through input from curators and museum visitor preferences. By drawing on inherent object qualities as well as visitor preferences, museums can find ways to better understand the visitor-object relationship and in turn move toward more intentional selection and inclusion of objects in exhibition planning.
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    Integrating Scaffolding Experiences for the Youngest Visitors in Museums
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Wolf, Barbara; Wood, Elizabeth; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    Research demonstrates that children have vast potential to expand their knowledge base with simple supports from adults and older children. Children's museums have a heightened awareness of the value in and the need to reach out to support adults accompanying children, thus bringing about an emphasis on family learning. Iterative exhibition studies conducted at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis illustrate the impact of planning for family learning. But for any museum, intentionally applying the strategy of scaffolding by building on simple concepts and working toward mastery of ideas, can inform adults and simultaneously help children stretch to new levels of understanding and achievement. This strategy requires curators, educators and exhibit developers to work collaboratively to determine various levels of accessibility of content and activity moving from entry level ideas through more complex and abstract ones for older children and adults. Children visiting museums of all types is certainly nothing new, but their experience in those spaces has changed over time. From the earliest iterations of children's museums, to contemporary practices in museums of all types, the attention museum professionals place on the needs of this special audience is changing. The idea of hands-on learning, facilitated and mediated learning experiences, and scaled-down environments have become more prominent (and often expected) in museum settings where young children visit with their families. The increased visitation of family groups, especially those with young children, requires greater attention by museum educators, exhibition developers, and designers to support the learning needs of this audience. Most children's museums place special emphasis on designing environments that support learning for very young children. Lessons learned from the work done in children's museums can provide models for those in other museum settings to meet the needs of early learners.
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    Poisoned past: a team-based interdisciplinary approach to the identification and mitigation of toxic cultural heritage collections
    (Society of American Archaeology, 2023) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
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    The audience experience of science storytelling: impact profiles from a Q methodology study
    (SISSA Medialab, 2022) Sickler, Jessica; Lentzner, Michelle; Museum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts
    The Story Collider applies the principles of narrative transportation to produce events that use first-person, personal stories about science to activate audience emotion, empathy, and identities. This study sought to systematically explore underlying patterns in the subjective experience of these live shows. This study combined a research framework from the performing arts with Q methodology, a method designed to capture and quantify subjectivity of personal meaning. This revealed four profiles, each representing a distinct way that one can internalize the value of science storytelling. Results highlight an opportunity within programs that operate at the nexus of science communication and the arts.