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TEAMS Collaborative Exhibits Programs Evaluation/ Dissemination Internal Documents
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Inverness Research Associates (IRA) serves as TEAMS' external evaluators. The four goals of IRA services are to:
IRA plays a multi-faceted role, providing support to TEAMS museums as they test exhibit prototypes, conduct summative assessments, and act as a "critical friend" to the Collaborative. In this latter role, IRA helps the Collaborative to resolve issues that may arise during project management, mentoring relationships, and cooperative exhibit and program development.
Formative Evaluation of Exhibits and Programs:Two three-day visits to each of the four TEAMS partnership sites enables IRA staff to work closely with museum staff to develop their skills in evaluation procedures. The first visit takes place when museums have developed initial prototypes to test with visitors, including persons with various physical impairments. IRA analyzes exhibits and conducts naturalistic observations of and guided interviews with visitors who interact with prototypes. Recommendations for refinements and further development indicate the extent to which exhibits satisfy educational goals and guidelines for universal accessibility and safety standards. On-floor testing and interviews with family groups and audiences with special needs are the focus of the second round of formative prototypes conducted by TEAMS and IRA staff at either the mentor or partner museum site (left up to the discretion of individual partnerships). In addition to the standard criteria for assessing exhibits (attracting and holding power, ease of navigation and device operations, cognitive and affective impacts, quality of open-ended experiences, etc.), the evaluation gauges the extent to which individual designs and exhibit floor plans provide clear pathways for wheelchairs, offer appropriate accessibility of controls from seated positions, use audio labeling, and/or large print type, and provide a range of multi-sensory experiences to promote learning among diverse visitors. In addition, each TEAMS exhibit is evaluated for visitor safety, following guidelines developed by the Collaborative during 2000-01.During each site visit, IRA staff meets with education staff to review and comment on outlines of exhibit-related community events, family brochures, and materials for school audiences. They work with museum staff and teachers to field-test educational materials among museum and school visitors, and to refine protocols for evaluating the impact and value of educational programs. IRA will document many aspects of TEAMS and critically analyze more than a thousand pages of e-mail, meeting minutes, staff interviews, and notes from over twenty-five site visits to TEAMS museums.
Summative Evaluations:Following completion of each exhibition and during its initial public display at Collaborative museums, IRA conducts a summative study of the exhibitions and their accompanying educational materials and programs. Their findings have supported remedial work prior to the exhibitions' circulation through ASTC.The final evaluation report of this phase of the TEAMS effort is available for download as a 343k document in .pdf format.
The Collaborative Experience - dissemination of research on the TEAMS process.
Monograph on Collaboratives:Based on the experience of TEAMS and research on other collaboratives, TEAMS directors and IRA are creating a publication to help other small and mid-sized museums develop successful exhibit collaboratives. It will focus on processes of organization and communication, and highlight the strategies and benefits of designing exhibits and programs that accommodate visitors who are physically-challenged. It was published in 2005, and is available for download in .pdf format.
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