| Roundtable: Controlling Quality Within Museums: Coordinating Internal Evaluation Departments |
| Roundtable Presentation 548 to be held in MISSION A on Friday, Nov 12, 10:55 AM to 11:40 AM |
| Sponsored by the Evaluation Managers and Supervisors TIG |
| Presenter(s): |
| Sarah Cohn, Science Museum of Minnesota, scohn@smm.org |
| Anna Lindgren-Streicher, Museum of Science, Boston, alstreicher@mos.org |
| Abstract: While the basic demand on evaluators is to assess the merit and worth of the products a client produces, an internal evaluation department has the added demand of being appropriately structured and positioned to most effectively fit the community and culture of practice at work in their organization. Internal evaluation departments at museums have the added responsibility of not only answering to the informal learning environment setting in which their projects reside but also to the more widely accepted educational world of formal education. Inherent in this position is the need for evaluations to be of both high quality and flexibility, as the needs of the project team, the museum, the community, and the nature of informal learning shift with time. This discussion focuses on how two museums manage and communicate their evaluations to be most effective in both the smaller and larger communities of practice at work. |