Abstract:

As museums try out new technologies for education and interpretation, it is necessary to learn audience needs and preferences and respond to them. Visitor research is an important part of this strategy, and the findings can be used to inform the development of exhibitions and interpretation.

This session will describe strategies that museums are trying in order to respond to changing audience preferences and expectations both online and inhouse. The session will look at evaluations of mobile applications and online engagement strategies to bridge the physical and virtual environments.

Session Info

• Type: Full Panel
• Keywords: Evaluation, audience research, mobile,
• Relevance: The session will demonstrate how audience research findings can be incorporated into improving technology projects in order to engage the community on-site or online.

Panelists 

Emily Black, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

 Emily Black is the Assistant Educator for Digital Media at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. There she designs resources that fulfill the digital needs and interpretative strategies for featured exhibitions and permanent collection reinstallations. She led the research and development of the Nelson's mobile interpretive strategy and Mobile Guide web-based application tour. She also piloted the creation of the Nelson-Atkins upcoming multimedia rich platform titled Studio 33. She received her Master's degree in Art History with a graduate certificate in Museum Education from the University of North Texas. While attending University of North Texas, she was awarded the Priddy Fellowship in Arts Leadership. Prior to working at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Emily was a digital media intern at the Whitney Museum of American Art where she generated content for the Whitney's learning website, learning@whitney. Emily has a passion for providing unique online learning experiences that connect diverse audiences to art. She is interested in the questions and connections formed when the intersection of media-rich content and art is presented to an online or onsite visitor.

Sharisse Butler, Dallas Museum of Art

Sharisse Butler has worked in the education department of the Dallas Museum of Art for 7 years and is the Museum’s first Manager of Visitor Studies and Evaluation. She has a background both in ethnographic research and art history, and completed a Certificate of Evaluation Studies from The Evaluators’ Institute of George Washington University in January 2010. Through research and evaluation, she provides staff across departments with information about visitor experiences in order to help reach program and exhibition goals and improve the experiences of a wide range of audiences. Butler is committed to helping her colleagues articulate program goals and theories of change, and know how to best make use of evaluation findings. She is actively involved in evaluation and the development of interpretive materials in the Center for Creative Connections, an experimental learning environment that provides interactive encounters with works of art and artists. Butler has recently been working closely with curators and multimedia producers to increase understanding of the use and impact of smARTphone tours.

Kate Haley Goldman, Institute for Learning Innovation 

Kate Haley Goldman has been a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Learning Innovation since 2000. Her work concentrates on furthering theory and practice of the use of technology in museums and related informal learning environments. She has directed projects both in the US and abroad, involving mobile phones, web sites, gaming, augmented and mixed reality, novel data visualization systems, and online learning. Recent projects include audience research for the Encyclopedia of Life, summative evaluation of the NSF-funded computer game WolfQuest, program-level evaluation of NOAA's Science on a Sphere, and the NSF projects Virtual Human and ARIEL. Currently, she is Co-PI of the NSF-funded open source project Open Exhibits. (OpenExhibits.org) She is particularly interested in developing reliable and valid evaluation methodologies for online environments and new media technologies and deepening the theoretical knowledge base as it applies to these environments.

Moderator:  Sheila Carey