Practical Evaluation Guide: Tools for Museums and Other Informal Educational Settings

Front Cover
Rowman Altamira, Sep 16, 2009 - Business & Economics - 160 pages
Administrators of museums and other informal-learning centers often need to demonstrate, in some tangible way, the effectiveness of their institutions as teaching tools. Practical Evaluation Guide discusses specific methods for analyzing audience learning and behavior in museums, zoos, botanic gardens, nature centers, camps, and youth programs. This new edition incorporates the many advances in the burgeoning field of informal learning that have been made over the past decade. Practical Evaluation Guide serves as a basic, easy-to-follow guide for museum professionals and students who want to understand the effects of such public institutions on the people who visit them.
 

Contents

Part I Evaluating Informal Learning
1
Chapter 1 Thinking through an Evaluation Study
3
Chapter 2 Informal Learning
11
Chapter 3 Measuring Learning
19
Chapter 4 Protecting Study Participants
39
Part II Evaluation Tools
45
Chapter 5 Selecting Study Participants
47
Chapter 6 Observational Tools
55
Chapter 8 Presenting and Analyzing Data
93
Part III Evaluation as Practice
109
Chapter 9 Reporting Evaluation Results
111
Chapter 10 Translating Evaluation Findings into Practice
119
References
123
Other Recommended Resources
131
Index
137
About the Authors
143

Chapter 7 Interviews and Questionnaires
69

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About the author (2009)

Judy Diamond is professor and curator at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Jessica J. Luke is director of research and evaluation at the Institute for Learning Innovation. David H. Uttal is director of the Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences in the Department of Psychology and the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

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