Museums and volunteers

Question: If it was important, why did you assign to a volunteer?

Answer: Maybe you assigned it to the volunteer because it was important.

The relationship between non-profits and volunteers

Museums and non-profit organizations often rely on volunteers to advance their missions. Volunteers provide two distinct services. First, they provide labor, such as staffing information desks, cataloging objects, and leading tours, which allows museums to accomplish more tasks. Second, volunteers link institutions to their communities. They serve as ambassadors who promote the museum’s value and mission to audiences and potential visitors. The vast majority of museums and non-profits recognize the value their volunteers provide; however, within the relationship there is still a potential for miscommunication. How often have you heard staff complain that they have trouble “managing” their volunteers? The frustration can be palpable on both sides. The solution may lie in rethinking the institution/volunteer relationship through a paradigm of social vs economic transactions. Understanding the difference can provide new insight into these relationships.

In the last post, we talked about Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, and described the difference between social and economic transactions. Under an economic norm, people perform work in return for economic benefit, and those engaged in social transactions seek emotional satisfaction. Unless a non-profit has no paid staff, volunteerism in many museums is a social transaction occurring in an economic context. Volunteers are not “free”. There is a cost associated with recruiting, training, and managing them, and a volunteer coordinator is usually a paid position. In theory, volunteers return more value to the museum in the services for which the museum would otherwise pay. Implicit in this relationship is a potential for miscommunication and conflict between paid staff members who, though mission-focused, apply economic norms to their work and volunteers who apply social norms. Operating under two different norms enhances potential for misunderstanding and conflict.

Example

“June” volunteered to chair an event at the elementary school. Her goal was to create a fun, social experience for the families. June, who works full time, was already an active PTA volunteer and knew that she would have to make personal sacrifices to plan the event. Imagine June's frustration was when four days before the event, following weeks of planning and meetings, the principal—who to that point had attended no meetings—insisted on a series of changes that had to be incorporated or she would cancel the event. Sacrificing sleep, June accommodated the changes. The day of the event, June arrived at school at 7 a.m. She organized materials, decorated the cafeteria, and set up activity stations. After the event and the parents on the clean up crew had left, the principal insisted that June re-wipe down tables and then returned to her office to wait until June finished. At 10 p.m. June headed for the door, vowing never to chair another PTA event again. June is still fuming six months later. She feels that the principal was treating her like an employee by first telling her to alter her the event and then to re-clean the cafeteria. More importantly, even though the PTA president, numerous parents, and several teachers thanked June for her efforts, the principal never said thank you. This informed June’s belief that the school leadership did not value her contributions and that future volunteer work was not worthwhile.

Why do volunteers do it?

Social norms are tied to individuals’ needs to build and maintain community. People volunteer to feel good about themselves. They look for opportunities to receive positive feedback and emotional nurturing. They resist formal evaluation because it is associated with economic norms. You are evaluated and disciplined at work, not in your personal life. People take offense when social and market norms come into conflict. Once a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm evaporates and does not return for a long time, if ever. Anyone who has worked with or been a volunteer understands that the currency of volunteerism is a hearty thanks. If they perceive that their contributions are not valued at the same level at which they have assigned value, they are likely to end the association. In other words, if volunteers experience a thank you deficit, they will leave. As the preceding example demonstrates, they do not necessarily leave quietly. If they are angry enough, they will share their complaints widely, which may undermine the organization’s relationship with the remaining volunteers as well its community standing.

Think of yourself as Julie the Cruise Director: it is your job to make volunteering fun.

The question remains, if the task is really important do you assign it to a volunteer? The answer depends on the organization’s point of view regarding the role of volunteers and its ability to meet their social needs. Effort correlates to perceived value. Low value tasks receive low effort, and high value tasks receive high effort. Social transactions are high value tasks. According to Ariely’s research, volunteers who feel highly engaged in a social transaction perform at levels equal to or greater than paid employees. Consider the positions of arts organizations that recruit volunteers to chair annual galas to raise large portions of their operating budgets. If your organization can create and sustain an environment that keeps volunteerism firmly in the social realm, then by all means recruit volunteers and give them high value tasks. If your organization views volunteers as strictly replacement labor for eliminated jobs and sets joblike standards of performance or maintains a volunteer corps only because it’s the non-profit norm and assigns make work tasks, then reconsider whether the potential conflict between market and social norms is worth it.

The take away:

• Volunteers seek emotional satisfaction and will take offense if they think that they are being taken advantage of.
• High value tasks receive high effort. Low value tasks receive low effort.
• Meaningful and specific recognition is an important component of a social transaction. 

Museums and social transactions

I've been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist who is frequently featured on NPR. Ariely studies purchasing decisions. He repeatedly demonstrates that markets are not impartial and that individuals and businesses do not tend to automatically act in their own self-interest. In fact, he shows that people often make decisions that are not only not in their best economic interests they appear downright illogical. For example, he asks: Why do people buy one to get one free when they did not need the first one?  Why do people drive across town to save $5 on a small dollar purchase but not on a large one? Why do people who own a thing value it more than potential buyers? Ariely asserts that seemingly illogical decisions are actually very logical, or predictably irrational, when you examine the basis of human decision making.


Social vs economic transactions
In his book, Ariely describes and defines transactions as either social or economic. Simply, an economic transaction is one in which there is an exchange of money. People recognize these as business transactions and expect that they will be governed by rules, such as when and in what form payment will occur. They are not offended by demand for payment. A social transaction is one in which one party does a favor for another with no expectation of payment, and, in fact, would take offense if payment were proffered. In Ariely's example, you would not offer to pay your mother-in-law for cooking Thanksgiving dinner unless you wanted her never to speak to you again. You can ask your neighbor, the lawyer, to bring in your mail while you are on vacation but you would not ask him to spend the same amount of time drawing up your will. Did a wise elder ever warn you not to lend money to a relative with an expectation of getting it back? If so, he was cautioning you not to mix a social and economic transaction. The context of the request and the relationship sets the tone of the interaction.


Ariely points out that people have very different expectations from these two kinds of transactions. Upon conducting social science experiments, he found that people will work harder when they are performing a social transaction rather than an economic one. They expect that the social transaction will be personally meaningful to the recipient, whether the activity is holding open a door or donating a kidney, and they derive pleasure from helping. Moreover, they expect that they will be repaid in the future by an equivalent social transaction, whether directly or through karma. If I help you move your sofa today, I do not expect that you will move mine tomorrow but rather that I may ask you for an equivalent favor in the future. Social transactions break down when people are called upon too often for too much and they begin to feel taken advantage of. Newspaper advice columnists frequently arbitrate just these scenarios. Ask Amy responds to one writer who describes a difference of opinion as to the type of transaction she had entered into when she agreed to tend bar for mom's anniversary party. Social transactions have at their heart an expectation of thanks while economic transactions are expected to provide value. 


Under the aegis of an economic transaction, parties can demand more accountability from others without being offensive. Ariely cites the example of a bank charging an overdraft fee. People are not offended by a business enforcing a contractual obligation, though they may feel free to dispute it. But they do become offended if they have been led to believe that their banking relationship has a personal as well as professional basis such as when the bank trades on its status as a community supporter. This can be a danger to companies when they use social mediums to build economic relationships. People react much more vehemently to betrayals of social contracts, even those that are merely perceived social contracts, than economic contracts. If you hire your neighbor's brother-in-law to remodel your kitchen, you may interpret his inability to show up when scheduled as a personal affront because your economic transaction is masquerading as a social contract. People are much more likely to excoriate companies through negative word of mouth that they perceive as having failed them socially rather than economically. Poor customer service is more often the result of a failed social interaction rather than economic transaction.


So what can museums learn from Ariely's book? 
Museums are wonderfully interesting institutions that since the beginning have walked a line between social and economic relationships. We ask our visitors to pay admission (at least most of us do) to listen to our curatorial point of view and be persuaded to support our missions. Yet we also present ourselves as community members or "friends" and seek to create personal relationships with individuals such as volunteers, teachers, web site visitors, and members. Museums are constantly switching between economic and social transactions. Viewing the many types of interactions as either social or economic and understanding what each side expects from the transaction provides very interesting insights into common problems and misunderstandings faced by museums. In subsequent postings, I will talk about three issues and how we can better understand them as predictably irrational.

1. If it's important, why was it assigned to a volunteer?
2. Which is more valuable, the admission-based or the free museum?
3. Are we friend friends or Facebook friends?

Museums and interactivity

When I was coming up in the museum profession, the emphasis was on including hands-on activities in museum experiences. A colleague, weary of the demand, would flash a beatific smile and respond that her programs featured minds on activities. Today the new catch phrases are "interactive" and "immersive". Regardless of the terminology, the motivation is the same. Museums want visitors to feel involved, but they are uncertain of how to craft genuine interaction.


What makes a museum interactive?
The most common approach museums take to make interactive experiences is to add activities to programs and exhibitions. Examples of activities might include:

• Making a project
• Answering a question
• Pulling a lever
• Watching a video
• Role playing in a program
• Listening to an audio tour
• Watching theater
• Filling out a scavenger hunt
• Taking a tour
• Touching an object
• Walking through a recreation
• Playing games on a cell phone

While each of these involves visitors doing, they do not automatically create interaction either between the visitor and the museum or between visitors. If the activities, as are often the case, have predetermined outcomes, the activity is not interactive; it is rhetorical. For example, a lift and drop panel that asks "Did you know?" on the top and provides a response underneath is asking a rhetorical question because the exhibit has no mechanism for gathering answers or providing responses. It is a closed loop activity. This is not to imply that the lift and drop panel is a bad thing. A good rhetorical question can frame an argument or be thought provoking, but it is not by itself interactive. Interactive experiences include branching options and the ability to accommodate multiple responses. 


Museums often think of interactivity as a technique rather than an outcome
In order to be interactive, experiences must be open ended and involve multiple possible outcomes. Our lift and drop panel becomes a component of an interactive experience when it is part of an exhibition that asks visitors to form opinions and test hypotheses. Museums may find it challenging to facilitate interactivity in non-staffed experiences because they lack the ability to have face to face encounters with visitors. However, this does not preclude building interactivity into exhibitions; it begs for more creativity. Unfortunately, staffing does not guarantee interactivity. (I visited one historic site where the garden tour was described as a one-hour walking lecture. It hardly promised to be interactive.) Interaction springs from a mindset in which the expert (designer, curator, interpreter, docent) is open to being questioned and maybe even challenged. Their job is to persuade rather than to assert to a point of view. 


An experience is interactive when the visitor feels empowered to form an opinion. He gathers information, tests it against existing knowledge or beliefs, and draws a conclusion. The experience may be designed to further an institutional point of view or argument, e.g. "Organisms undergo evolution." "Picasso was an influential painter.", or "The transcontinental railroad promoted western settlement." Acknowledging contrary arguments or opinions ("Many people do not believe in evolution." "Picasso was controversial."), offering evidence to bolster the museum's assertion, and asking visitors to form an opinion based on the evidence raises the level of interactivity. The mechanisms to present evidence are the illustrations, computer interactives, models, and even those nefarious lift and drop panels. The context breeds interactivity, not the components. 


Interactivity achieved
Engagement occurs when the visitor constructs meaning from the experience and undergoes a change in knowledge, attitude, or experience. Engagement arises from a  two-way interaction. All too often, museums identify interactivity as a vehicle rather than a destination because they are reluctant to yield control. Yet it is a mistake to approach it as a  technique rather than an outcome. A panoply of “interactives” does not make for an engaging experience. Engagement starts with the museum's commitment to eliminating the didactic approach and taking on a conversational tone. 

Museums and interactive gaming

QR tags facilitate location-based gaming

Smart phone applications such as FourSquare and Gowalla—popular among the hip, wired, highly-socially networked crowd—encourage users to check in via their mobile devices by posting their locations and activities to a web site. The more users post, the more points or badges they win. While these web sites are games in the most basic sense, new software is allowing game designers to build on location-based game concepts to create more in-depth and complicated experiences. Location-based gaming is emerging as the latest interactive trend to be powered by mobile technology. Rather than only encouraging users to check in from anywhere, interactive location-based experiences link information, instructions, or an activity to a specific site to create a game. The user receives information instead of or in addition to sending it. QR tags are the current technology that allows users to access the critical information.

What are QR tags?

A QR tag, short for Quick Response, is a matrix or two dimensional bar code. Rather than the traditional collection of vertical, black lines, QRs are composed of small black squares on a white background. The design allows for a much higher amount of data storage than a traditional barcode, and it can be placed in any orientation. A Microsoft tag uses colored triangles to accomplish the same objective. In order to read a QR tag, the user downloads a reader program to his or her web-enabled, mobile phone. When s/he snaps a picture of the tag, the reader automatically links to the web to reveal text, see an image, play an MP3, or open a web page. Designers compare the experience to opening a physical world hyperlink.

QR code was invented by Denso-Wave, a Japanese company, which still sets the standards. Several companies offer QR generators and readers on their web sites. Designers can easily generate tags, and many free readers are available to the public for download. I-Phone, Android, and Nokia's Symbian operating systems offer the best platforms for QR tag readers. QR readers are available for a limited number of Windows enabled phones and Blackberry, and developers are frank in saying that developing for Blackberry is a low priority. 

(Microsoft tag for www.Re-LivingHistory.com)

QR tags and location-based gaming in the real (museum) world today

While Microsoft’s code is gaining in corporate popularity for magazine and on-product placement, SCVNGR is the largest software developer to make QR code-based games work in a real world environment. The company, venture-capital funded by Google, develops games for cities, conferences, universities, museums, and others. SCVNGR developed GoSmithsonian Trek for the Smithsonian Institution. (Active until July 24, 2010.) Googling “SCVNGR museum” will bring up a list of museums currently offering SCVNGR experiences including the MFA Boston, Franklin Institute, and Science Museum of Virginia. SCVNGR markets itself to museum clients with a promise of delivering information about how visitors use the mobile web, how long they spend in one location, and the paths that they travel through an exhibition. These geo-analytics are available to purchasers of  the full software development tool kit. SCVNGR has announced that it will offer its software tools for free, without the analytics components, to small businesses and individuals to develop more real world games. The readers are already free to users, but the drawback to SCVNGR is that it is not available on Blackberry, only I-Phone and Android. Other companies will surely enter the market soon, and museum clients may find themselves with more vendor choices. In the meantime, museums can make their own location-based games by generating QR tags using free software from Zxing, i-nigma, or BeeTagg, and linking them to special sections of their web sites. (FYI: this requires a working knowledge of IT.)

Today’s challenges in QR tag mobile gaming: a case study

On the weekend of July 24-25, 2010, the Boy Scouts of America hosted activities related to the 100th anniversary of Boy Scouting in the United States on the National Mall in Washington, DC. All, even non-scouts, were invited to participate in Adventure Base 100 ScoutQuest. Participants picked up a map from a central location and received web addresses for three QR readers to download to their phones. Twelve primary QR tag posters were hidden in locations on and off the mall. Each tag revealed a secret word. Those who collected all of the words could upload them onto a web site  to enter a contest. The potential audience for the activity numbered in the tens of thousands. Ironically, the most limiting factor of the Scout Quest QR code scavenger hunt was that one did not actually need a QR reader enabled device to participate. The Scouts planned to provide phones at each location, though several stations did not have functioning phones. In those situations the volunteers simply gave participants the secret word. The BSA’s caution was validated by Smithsonian technology experts who spoke at a mobile learning summit only a few weeks before. SI technology experts explained that it is their practice, when a program absolutely requires a piece of technology, to provide the equipment. This ensures that the technology will work consistently for all participants. To emphasize their point, the mobile technology summit participants used Smithsonian-provided mobile phones. The Boy Scouts of America arguably represents the most mainstream audience in the United States, and the event designers seemed acutely aware that many would not have access to the necessary technology. Their solution was to design a technological experience that eliminated the need for technology.

Concluding thoughts
In designing location-specific experiences for museums that link to web content, designers have many factors for which to account. The simplest museum application is to add a real world hot link to a location where additional information may be desirable but is not required. For example, QR codes could be added to a label to give visitors an opportunity to click to learn more. However, the museum must assess the value of the learning experience against the costs of implementation. The IT infrastructure must allow for wifi access. The museum’s web site must be optimized for the content. The program must be communicated to visitors upon arrival, and guest services staff should be knowledgeable in how to download and use the technology. Museums must be prepared for visitors who do not have the equipment to participate. Finally, the experience itself must be worthy of the visitor’s time, attention, and data plan. Like all new technologies, interactive gaming has its challenges; however, it has an awesome potential as an interactive learning tool, and museums should seize the opportunity to lead the way.

Museums and mobile media

Mobile Learning Institute
On Friday, July 16, 2010 the Smithsonian, in conjunction with the Pearson Foundation, Nokia, and the Mobile Learning Institute, sponsored "The Leadership Summit on Digital Media" at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The main topic of conversation was the present and future use of mobile phones in learning. Stephanie Norby, Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, opened the session by asking, "How do we create a sense of purpose to make people feel comfortable in coming back?". Each presenter answered her question with a variation on the same theme. Mobile technology is ubiquitous. Young people especially are connected to the world through their phones, and using mobile technology to learn is a natural extension of the current technology. The phone is not a tool; it is a window into the user's world.

Smithsonian Initiatives
Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy & Initiatives for the Smithsonian, set the stage by discussing the Smithsonian's mobile strategy. Over time the Smithsonian has learned to think outside the audio tour box. The Smithsonian has determined that the phone is not the best device for delivering long form audio tour content; however, the phone's advantage is in it's encouragement of two way conversation. The Smithsonian has developed mobile web sites to work with specific exhibits and museums. The "Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers" exhibit currently on display at the Hirshhorn has an accompanying education program that can be downloaded for $1.99 from I-Tunes. The goal, as explained by Proctor, is to serve both on-site and off-site visitors. The decision to work with the developer Toura was based on the tool being free to developers and its ability to make the applications available on other platforms and sellers. The Smithsonian  has also found mobile technology useful for guiding on-site visitors. The National Air and Space Museum has a mobile web site for on-site visitors. The site, at http://airandspace.mobi/, directs visitors to amenities, bathrooms, and exhibits. The Smithsonian recognizes that visitors carry mobile technology and that programming for it makes the museum more accessible. Proctor ended her discussion with a question presaging the next phase of mobile learning, "How can we best deploy games for learning?"

School Strategies
Christopher Lehmann, Principal, Science Leadership Academy of Philadelphia stated the case for integrating mobile technology into all aspects of learning. He repeatedly pointed out that today's students are attached to their phones and use them to organize and make sense of all aspects of their life . . . except for formal education. He offered several examples of how students utilize mobile technology in his school and encouraged the museum attendees to develop mobile learning platforms that take advantage of students' natural tendencies towards this tool.

New Applications in Mobile
The next phase is mobile gaming, argued by David Gagnon, Games, Learning and Society Mobile Learning Team, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Gagnon's group has developed an open tool for the Mac operating system called ARIS that will be offered as a tool to "educators who want to use place based / inquiry / narrative / gaming activities in their curriculum." ARIS, which is currently in alpha testing, has three interactive capabilities. The platform allows users to meet people via streaming video, read stationary plaques, and carry movable objects from place to place. Gagnon likened the resulting media products to a new kind of interactive documentary, allowing people to become a part of the story by engaging in the real places. Gagnon's application is similar to SCVGNR, which has already debuted a mobile challenge tool.

Conclusions
Each of the speakers offered a personal perspective on the current and future state of mobile technology. Each of them pointed out the unique technological challenges in developing and implementing mobile applications, which will be shared in a future post. All agreed that, in spite of the challenges, mobile technology is both an important and fast growing segment of the digital world and that museums are a natural venue for implementing mobile learning. The summit offered a peek into the future, and it will be up to museum staff to create unique and interesting content for mobile applications to engage visitors in mission-based learning.

Related information: 
See Hamlet's Blackberry: To Surf or Not to Surf, a  new book by William Powers discussing balancing connectedness.

Museums and social networking

Social Media
Social Media Magic, a social media marketing firm, held a free webinar today on establishing and managing a social media presence. It was a fascinating 90 minutes that ably demonstrated the need for organizations to develop strategies for managing and leveraging their on-line presences. Moderator John Souza, co-founder of Social Media Magic, made several good points about creating an on-line presence that, if properly adapted, could easily be applied to a non-profit or museum setting. He noted that a social media strategy was different from an overall media/PR strategy and managing a web site. Social media is a new form of digital connectedness and the old rules do not apply. Souza repeatedly emphasized the importance of managing you and your organization's social media presence and discussed the strategic challenges involved in the same.

On-line Strategies
The webinar laid out a five step process for building and maintaining a social media presence.

1. Develop a social media strategy based on selective targeting of your prospective audience. Social media outreach is not designed to help connect you to the world, rather it should identify specific audiences with highly focused messages. 
2. Establish a presence on the main social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Biznik, FastPitch, Plaxo, MerchantCircle, and QAlias. Each site serves a specific purpose and reaches a different segment of your audience. Tailor your message to the unique needs of the sites' users, and be careful to follow the rules of engagement each site lays out.
3. Continually work to expand your reach to find and connect with target audiences. Establishing a profile is not enough. Use the sites' capabilities to make new connections.
4. Nurture relationships. Reach out to the community and be helpful. Enter the conversation in a way that adds value.
5. Maintain an active presence. Communicate consistently every day, and develop a strategy to maintain your consistency. The more successful you are at building a social media presence, the more time that it will take to maintain it. Create a plan for how you will adapt to the exponentially increasing amount of time it will take to maintain and grow your presence. 

Application to Museums
Museums, unlike for-profit businesses, exist to serve mission while encouraging physical visits. As with all museum programming, the social media strategy needs to be measurable. Either the strategy will result in increased on-site visitation or it will support the mission in a meaningful way. Because museums' main focus is not the sale of products or services, it is difficult to interpret social media outreach success via a balance sheet. You are asking that target audience to take action in a way that validates your mission, and the action has to be more meaningful than visiting your web site. The critical components that museums must include in their strategies are micro-targeting audiences and actively soliciting feedback.

Museums identify large problems and develop methods to solve them. They inspire, educate, and call to action. In developing social media audiences, they keep their mission at the forefront. Mission is critical to identifying the micro audiences they want to reach.

Example
A nature center may set a goal to eradicate "nature deficit disorder" (as defined by Richard Louv). Step one would be to identify those with the same concerns. These could be science teachers, other nature centers, parents, hikers, campers, or even sporting goods companies. The more they expand their search, the more people they will find with the same concerns. Step two is to initiate a call to action. Once the affinity group has formed, the nature center has to deliver a measurable challenge. The nature center could ask people to take local actions, such as: visit nature with a child; organize local clean ups; do bird counts; or take part in school programs. The important component is that each person reports back to the nature center his/her actions and their results. The nature center must be able to demonstrate that its actions initiated a positive change in order to prove to its Board and funders that its strategy is successful. Driving web traffic or boasting a large group of "friends" is not enough.

Conclusion
In the overwhelming world of social media, museums face a special challenge to identify audiences and build affinity. However, once social circles are established, they are fortunate that they are not selling products, rather missions. In a social setting people respond to mission as the idea that is greater than themselves. Museums have the ability to inspire. A strong and well-thought-out social media strategy has the potential to advance an institution's mission more widely than would have been possible with only a brick and mortar location and mind set.

Museums and families

I was signing up to attend a childrens' concert at the library when I was brought up short by the age restrictions. The library divides programs into "kids" (6 to 12) and "preschool" (2 to 5). What does one do when she has children that fall into both age groups? According to the library, you find another activity.

That attitude struck me as uninclusive, mostly because I was on the losing end of the policy. While separating ages works well for the program presenters, how well does it serve the audience? There are two arguments:

1. The Library says: "Our performers and presenters prepare programs for specific age groups so that kids don't get bored or confused by material that is too young or old for them. Some programs are "kids only" because if adults attended, fewer children could come (all people in the room count toward room capacity)."
2. The Parent says: "Family learning is important and occurs only when the entire family can participate equally. Schools provide age-separated learning. Informal learning environments should engage the entire family to meet needs not met in other venues. Intergenerational learning is a unique experience and should be encouraged." 

I wondered how museums handle the same situation and asked a group of educators for their opinions. I also posed the same question to a group of parents.  I am compiling their responses. Check back soon.

Writing Goals and Objectives

I was recently asked to describe the difference between goals and objectives. Simply put, the goal is the big idea that the program, exhibit, publication, etc. will accomplish. Objectives are the steps taken to meet the goal.

Goals

Goals are big ideas with capitol Bs. They directly support the institution's mission. We hope that they are something that visitors will care about; therefore, they must be relevant to the intended audience. They are phrased to specify the direction of change in actions, knowledge, or beliefs among the target group. Sometimes the goal describes the vehicle that will drive change. 

Example: "Inspire people to come together as an interconnected community through their participation in our community building programs."

In a museum setting, goals can be such big ideas that they are difficult to measure. It is very difficult to define the degree to which the audience has been changed. Goal statements often use words like appreciate, believe, think, feel, know, and understand. They are GLOBAL.

Objectives

Objectives list the actions that the museum or audience will take to meet the goal. Objectives are completely measurable, and--in fact--they should be measured. In theory, if the objectives are accomplished then, by definition, the goal will have been reached.

Example: 

Objectives: As a result of participating in this program, 

visitors will be better able to, 

1.  Identify problems faced by our community.

2.  Describe the community programs that we offer.sponsor.

3.  Discuss ways in which individuals can make a difference in our community.

4.  Register to participate in community programs. 

Notice that each objective is completely measureable. Participants can be asked to identify, describe, discuss, and register. The evaluation demonstrates the degree to which the objectives have been met. The process (e.g. program, exhibition, lesson) that is used to meet the objectives falls in between the objectives and the evaluation.  

What do you think?  To what extent do your goals specify change?  What are the objectives that you will undertake to achieve your goals? 

Share your examples!

Digital outreach

Like all other programs, digital outreach requires a strategy. Having a web presence does not guarantee that anyone will find your sites let alone click through them. An important question to consider when developing a digital outreach strategy is:

What are you trying to accomplish? 

A digital strategy can have several possible goals from mission advancement to audience building. One approach does not fit all. Museums' first web pages were built with a mission advancement agenda in mind. The focus was on making content available whether teacher lesson plans or virtual collections. While these are still important components, museums have learned that they are most effective at satisfying those who are already intrinsically interested in the topic. Those "scholars" among the general population.
The next phase was interactivity. Museums put up simple games, flash programming, and on-line tours with the idea of encouraging people to spend more time on the sites. These tools were effective in increasing time on site; however, time alone does not indicate the quality of the experience. These visitors were like the "strollers" in exhibitions.

The question many asked was to what extent were web site visitors becoming engaged with the museum over the long term. It was very difficult to measure how or if a web experience converted an internet encounter to a physical visit. Many realized that the web alone wasn't effective in building widespread virtual support. Web statistics often showed that the percentage of repeat visitors was a tiny percentage of the total. Museums also learned that building a repeat visitation audience was time consuming. many resources are required to keep encourage repeat visitation to a web site.

Spring Fever - Planning for summer museum visits

Wow! One more week of school and the summer stretches out before us. We need something to do. Museums are going to be part of the mix but in what way?

What are the needs of a family audience in the summer, and how can museums meet them?

History Day, History Day

The national competition for National History was held the week of June 14. I was privileged to be a judge, and I am pleased to say that the future of historical research and interpretation looks outstanding. It was exciting to see hundreds of kids and their parents engaged in historical interpretation and to hear their sophisticated analyses of historical movements and figures.

Even at this age, it was notable that many fell into the same traps that  professionals are subject to.  It was interesting to see how they dug themselves out.

Common Traps

1.  You cannot drop a museum into a kiosk.

• What is the one point that you want to convey? There can only be one main idea, and it has to be of the right size for the interpretive vehicle. If you have limited time and spaces to make your point, then you cannot give the entire history of anything.   

2.  Answer the question, "and then what?". 

• It isn't enough to know that something happened. What happened next? What was the result? Who was affected? Was I affected?   
• The story has to have an ending. It has to draw conclusions, and the conclusions need to be believable.  If the program has a week ending, then it feels unsatisfying. Conversely, if it overstates a conclusion, it feels overblown and not believable.

3.  Beware of being too subtle.

• If an exhibit is too subtle, few people will spend enough time with it to get the point. Whether it is a quote or an interview, someone has to tell us something personal that makes us care. If the subject doesn't have anything to say about herself, then others need to say it for her. 

4.  Flashy does not compensate for lack of content

• How many times have you been wowed by something and later could not describe the content? The vehicle has to support the message not mask it. 

What's the lesson to learn from this? Everything requires very careful planning. Ask yourself:

1.  What is my take away message? 
2.  What impact did this have on people? 
3.  Why should anyone care? 
4.   Is the packaging helping or hurting my content? 

When you answer these questions and apply the answers to the museum product, you give the audience/visitors/viewer something profoundly valuable. You give them an experience that they can take away and think about. Something that they can apply to other situations. And you get them coming back for more.

My first museum