Download Hands-On Minds-On Exhibits for Everyone

Hands-on Minds-on
Exhibits for Everybody
USS Constitution Museum
Anne Grimes Rand, Executive Vice President
Robert Kiihne, Director of Exhibits
USS CONSTITUTION
• Active duty commissioned warship
• Undefeated in War of 1812
• Guided tours provided by USN sailors
• Located on Boston’s Freedom Trail
USS Constitution Museum
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Across the dock from “Old Ironsides”
Free Admission
300,000+ Visitors / Year
Family Audience
Mission = memory & educational voice
What is the “Sailors Speak” Project?
Research
• USS Constitution’s enlisted sailors
Exhibits
• A prototype exhibit to explore
hands-on family learning
• Ultimately, a social history
exhibit for all ages
Programs
• An interpretive springboard
• Building bridges into the community
• Museum theater
• School programs
• Gallery interpretation
• Orchestral Outreach
Research!
1261 men served on Constitution during the War of 1812.
What we want to know:
• Who were these people?
• Where were they from?
• What did they look like?
• What was their experience?
• What about the rest of their lives?
How we know it:
• Traditional genealogical resources
• Pension applications
• Receipts and official correspondence
• Navy personnel records
What we do with the information when we have it:
• Create a comprehensive database that builds on CDR Martin’s
• Research informs exhibit and outreach programs
• Create engaging ways to share this with the public
Sailors Speak: Life Aboard CONSTITUTION in 1812
Experience the life of a sailor on USS CONSTITUTION during
the War of 1812, through people, interactive exhibit components,
historical quotes, artifacts and hands-on reproductions.
A Composite Cruise
• Recruiting a Diverse Crew
• Joining a Seafaring Community
• Forging a Fighting Team
• Testing the Crew in Battle
• Returning Home
Thanks to NEH for funding our exhibit planning!
“A Sailor’s Life for Me”
A Prototype Exhibit to Encourage Family Learning
Goals
• Highlight lives of enlisted sailors
• Emphasize human perspective
• Build links to visitor’s experience
• Engage all of the audience
Thanks to IMLS for funding our prototype exhibit!
The Family Learning Project
at the USS Constitution Museum
• Study successful models
• Prototype exhibit
• Extensive formative evaluation
• Visitor research
• Share results online
“Conversation is the currency
of family learning."
- Minda Borun, Franklin Institute
IMLS National Leadership Grant Goals
• Study how families learn in unfacilitated galleries in history museums
• Encourage family learning through CONVERSATION
• Identify low-cost, low-tech interactive elements that can be replicated
• Disseminate effective techniques through website “tool kit”
What is family learning?
What does it look like?
Characteristics of Family Learning:
• Family learning is playful, fun, and a social experience
• Family learning is influenced by the ages of the children
and adults in the group
• Families all learn in different ways
• Families find value in their own personal observations and
experiences; they learn by working, talking, and solving
problems together
- Courtesy of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Is Family Learning Right for your Museum?
Try this test at home …
10 Steps to Encourage Family Learning at Your Institution
Consider the Benefits of
Embracing a Family Audience
• Expand your audience
• Build future museum visitation
• See people laughing and learning together
• Show visitors that history can be engaging
• Perhaps even see the impact in the bottom line!
Caution: it can be noisy, messy & very rewarding!
The Family Audience
A survey of 5500 museum-going families by Reach Advisors
Bad News
History museums and historic sites
are the least popular
• 31% visit historic sites
• 23% visit history museums
Opportunities
Age of oldest child determines what museum to visit
• When oldest child enters elementary school, history rises
Grandparents are 20% more likely than parents to take children
to a history museum
The Appeal of History
• An authentic, hands-on, active experience for families
• See, touch, feel and experience it vs. book (just read about it)
Exhibit Planning – Thinking Differently
What is the Goal?
• Tell a compelling story?
• Cram as much information in as possible?
• Create an enjoyable, informative, social and educational experience?
Traditional Exhibit
Family Learning Prototype
What content is appropriate for a family audience?
Themes and topics
• Select stories & collections with family appeal
• Look for universal themes
Tell a good story
• Consider emotional
trajectory of exhibit
• Difficult topics are ok – they prompt conversation
Personal connection
• Offer interpretive links to the visitor’s experience
Universal Themes
Sleeping
Eating
Working
Highlight People
& Their Stories
Developing Exhibits to Engage all Ages
How do you compare to the
Average Sailor in 1812?
How tall are you?
How old are you?
What color are your eyes?
What color is your hair?
Are you African American?
Do you have any tattoos?
Personal connection
Offer interpretive links to
the visitor’s experience
Family Learning is NOT “Dumbing Down”
• Try techniques to encourage conversation
• Use effective questioning and layering strategies
• Create an enjoyable, informative, social and educational
experience
Family Learning &
“A Sailor’s Life for Me?”
• Exhibit techniques to engage families
• Power of prototypes
• Label study – effective questions
• Ask the Audience!
• Evaluation tools – simple & effective
• Programs for all ages
• A new strategy
• Sharing our story
A Sailor’s Life For Me?
What is the purpose of the prototype exhibit?
•To test interactives with a family audience
•To create a research platform
•To experiment with exhibit ideas
A Sailor’s Life For Me?
Designing Exhibits to Engage all Ages
PISEC Criteria
Multi-sided: family can cluster around exhibit
Multi-user: interaction allows for several sets of hands and bodies
Accessible: comfortably used by children and adults
Multi-outcome: observation and interaction are sufficiently
complex to foster group discussion
Multi-modal: appeals to different learning styles and levels of
knowledge
Readable: text is arranged in easily-understood segments
Relevant: provides cognitive links to visitor's existing knowledge
and experience
Learning styles to consider
Howard Gardner’s intelligences:
4MAT System
•Linguistic
•Innovative Learners
•Logical-mathematical
•Analytic Learners
•Musical
•Common Sense Learners
•Bodily-kinesthetic
•Dynamic Learners
•Spatial
•Interpersonal
•Intrapersonal
Low Tech
The Recruiting Interactive
PISEC Qualities
• Multi-sided
• Multi-user
• Accessible
• Multi-outcome
• Multi-modal
• Readable
• Relevant
• Visitors sit down and ask each other a series of questions
• Encourages family conversations & previews exhibit activities
• Acts as an “advanced organizer” for the exhibit
Evaluating prototypes
• Small sample size
• Short form
• Do visitors understand what to do?
• Do visitors learn what you had hoped?
More questions!
More game like!
Let us play a role!
Give us a score card!
Give us more information!
Success!
Labels = primary tool for conveying content
How to make them engaging?
How to encourage family conversations?
Prompting Conversation in Galleries –
Questions vs. Quotes
A Research Study
Get on your knees and scrub!
One of the things I dislike most about being a
sailor is holystoning (scrubbing) the decks
each morning day after day. The worst is
when it’s cold. We take off our shoes, roll up
our pants and get on our hands and knees, add
salt water and sand, then
scrub…scrub…scrub.
(58 words)
Historical Quote
“The most disagreeable duty in the ship was that
of holy-stoning the decks on cold, frosty
mornings.”
Samuel Leech, 1810
Contemporary Question
What is the chore you
dread the most?
How often do you have to
do it?
Historical Question
Can you imagine being a
sailor in 1812 and starting
off your day with a cold
saltwater scrub rather than
a hot shower?
You Vote!
Which label do you prefer?
Historical Quote – “The most
disagreeable duty on the ship
was that of holy-stoning the
decks on cold, frosty mornings.”
Samuel Leech, 1810.
Contemporary Question – What
is the chore you dread the most?
How often do you have to do it?
Historical Question – Can you
imagine being a sailor in 1812
and starting off your day with a
cold saltwater scrub rather than
a hot shower?
What have we learned?
Visitor preferences
• 47% prefer historical quotations
…because they are “real” and “authentic.”
• 34 % prefer historical questions
…they create a bridge between visitor and content
• Most did not like contemporary questions
… they didn’t deliver any new information
• Males prefer historical quotations 63%
• Women prefer historical questions 47%
When we observed visitors in exhibit
* Visitors engaged in conversation 3x more often
with the historic question than with a quotation!
1st or 3rd Person Voice in Labels
Get on your knees and scrub!
One of the things I dislike most about
being a sailor is holystoning
(scrubbing) the decks each morning
day after day. The worst is when it’s
cold. We take off our shoes, roll up
our pants and get on our hands and
knees, add salt water and sand, then
scrub…scrub…scrub.
Every morning sailors holystoned
(scrubbed) the deck. They took off
their shoes, rolled up their pants
and then got on their knees and
scrubbed with water and sand.
Sailors disliked this chore
especially when it was cold.
Reflections on Labels
Visitors said they want:
• Accuracy / authenticity
• Personal engagement
• Connection / relevance
• Simplicity & clarity
• Stories
• Thought provoking questions
Reflections on Labels
Less is More
Label Format we used
• 50 words
• 1st person voice
• Concise & informative
• Focus on themes
• Larger font size
Visitors said
• Easier to follow
• 2 to 1 visitor preference
over traditional labels
Layering Information
Lift Flaps
Multiple Media
st person
rd
1
3 person
“crew ID”
label
Graphic
list
Audio
“Sailors”
Layering Information
War and Peace
3500 square foot main gallery
Great objects
A few interactives
And lots of text
about 4500 words on the main text panels
text
A great quote
On a large
text panel
On a wall of text
Types of Evaluation
•Front End
•Formative
•Timing & Tracking
•Behavioral Coding
•Evaluating Prototypes
•Summative
These can be good projects for volunteers or interns!
Visitors spend
7.2 minutes in the
War and Peace
gallery (3500 sq ft)
A Sailor’s
Life For Me?
Pod tracking and interview
Lots of graphic support gives the words meaning
One image makes a difference!
Exit interviews
Developing an exit interview
1. What do you really want to know?
2. Make sure it is short – for both your sake and
the sake of your visitor!
3. Revise at least once before trying it out
4. Test you exit interview with staff and then a
visitor or two
5. Revise
6. Execute – If you just want a feel 25 interviews
is enough, If you want statistics you need 50
or more.
The Evolution of the Question
If you are a local history museum, don’t ask visitors:
What do you want to know about our town’s history?
Focus your parameters first and ask:
Are you more interested in learning why this
town was founded or about some of our
early settlers?
Or
Rank the following topics in order (most to
least) of what is most interesting to you.
The Evolution of the Question
We wanted to know if visitors were being engaged in our gallery
programs. We asked visitors:
Did the interpreter use a variety of experiences, objects, and ideas
to capture your attention? YES
NO
Explain
Did the interpreter provide chances for all ages to participate in
the experiences?
YES NO
Explain
Visitors didn’t understand the questions. We reworked it to make it
easier to understand:
Were you invited to participate in the
program by handling replica objects or
answering a question?
Yes – How so?
No
Visitors spent and average of 22 minutes in
A Sailor’s Life For Me? (2000 sq ft.)
¾ASLFM is smaller than War and Peace –
2000 sq ft vs. 3500 sq ft
¾Significantly more conversations going on
in the galleries
¾Visitors are reading labels and getting
content
¾Visitors are participating in activities,
sampling the daily lives of sailors
Object Theatre
Goals:
• Use primary sources to tell the
story of battle on CONSTITUTION
• Connect visitors with the
emotional experience of sailors in
battle
• Utilize objects, images, narrative
and sound effects to create an
affective experience for visitors
• Create a balanced look at a
difficult subject matter for visitors
today (veterans/protesters)
Formative Evaluation
•What emotions did the presentation evoke in you?
•What emotions were expressed by the sailors in the presentation?
•What age do you think the presentation is appropriate for?
Object Theatre
Visitors told us that they...
• Understood period language
•Discerned there were two
different perspectives –
American and British.
• Keyed into the emotional
experience – their own and that
of the sailors.
• Thought is was appropriate
for any age, but that younger
visitors might not “get it”
Object Theatre
Formative Evaluation – Visitors told us that …
• They wanted it to be more
passionate
• They needed clarification of
which specific sailor was speaking
• It should have more sound effects
• The actors needed to be more
“animated”
• It needed “pace, pitch, and
power”
Object
Theatre
Object
Theatre
Object Theatre
Prototype Summative Evaluation
•Tracking/Timing
•Exit Interviews
•Feedback Board
Object Theatre
Prototype Summative Evaluation – Summer 2006
•“It showed the true brutality and violence of war without
showing too much gore! Thanks.”
•“Accurate view of the trauma of war. Notable that old
sailor said, ‘curse this war.’”
•“I’m glad that I’m an American and also glad that I wasn’t
alive when it happened. God Bless America.”
•“As an active duty sailor, I appreciate what the men before
me did.”
•“War is an unnecessary waste!”
•“This was a wonderful learning experience. Thank you
and may God Bless the Navy.”
•“This was the best show I have ever seen in my life!
Seriously it was way better than Disney.”
Object Theatre
Prototype Summative Evaluation – Summer 2006
•33% watched the entire show
• 20% stayed longer than 8 minutes
• 81% said it would encourage conversation within their family
• 92.5% realized the script was based on actual words
•60% stopped in the theatre but didn’t see entire presentation
24% wrote a message on talkback board
28% read the talkback board
Prototype Summative Evaluation
How did the actual words of the sailors influence the visitor’s
experience?
50 visitors responded that the actual words did impact their
experience as follows:
Authenticity
41%
Better/Good
20%
Learned more about battle 12.9%
Questioned at end
3.7%
Fulfilling experience
1.8%
Prototype Summative Evaluation
How will the theatre presentation encourage conversations
within your family?
• “talk about the differences between British might and Americans
and gave opinions of both sides”
• “how difficult and bloody – will compare to ‘Pirates of the
Caribbean’”
• “will ask them if it was what they expected”
• “didn’t like the phrase ‘only 7 killed …’”
• “learned a lot – good history”
Object Theatre
Follow-up after exit interviews via email:
1. What kinds of feelings did you or those with you have while
“experiencing battle” in our theatre?
• “You felt like you were watching the battle take place … my 11
year old gasped and my 6 year old said ‘gross’ when the narrator
said ‘there were blood, guts, and pieces of brain on the deck …’
they asked to leave the theatre at that point, and we did. We never
saw how the film ended.”
• “The theatre itself added emotional context to the USS
CONSTITUTION, and it obviously made an impact, in that my
children had no difficulty answering your questions several weeks
after the visit.”
Object Theatre
Follow-up after exit interviews via email:
2. Did you discuss anything about your battle theatre experience
after your visit, either among yourselves or with others?
• “We did discuss it after leaving the Museum, and it sparked a very
intense conversation about the nature of war and the sacrifices made
by the people who fight them.”
• “My son asked if that really happened. He still brings up the part
about the blood, guts, and pieces of brain.”
Object Theatre
Follow-up after exit interviews via email:
3. What do you remember most about the Battle Theatre?
• “It was comfortable and, for the most part, the presentation was
well done and educational. Just a little too graphic for our family.”
• “The sound of the cannonballs striking the wood. The British
captain talking about all the wounded.”
Object Theatre
Lessons Learned
• It’s okay to use primary source language, just be sure to test for audience
comprehension first.
• You can take the best primary source quotes (from several different battles) and
utilize them to tell an emotional story in a most compelling and affective way.
• Length is vitally important to your visitor
• Images significantly effect the emotional impact of words.
• Visitors have told us that they want their history “authentic” and “genuine.” They
also wanted a well told story. It’s possible to find a balance between fact and fiction
that curators and educators can agree on.
Engaging All Ages & Learning Styles
Sailors Speak = Strategic Focus
• Research
• Exhibits
• Family Learning
• Programs
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An interpretive springboard
Building bridges into community
Museum theater
School programs
Gallery interpretation
Orchestral Outreach
Museum
Theatre
Goals:
• Share the experiences of a free
Black sailor on Constitution
through “his own words”
• Connect visitors with the live
person of David instead of just a
photograph/text
• Utilize primary sources as
much as possible and fill in the
context with historical research
Formative Evaluation
Visitors told us:
• they could recall specific information
about David’s life after seeing the play
• the play personalized David’s story
• the story of an individual helps visitors
learn more about the ship
• (the actor) “opened up history to us that
we didn’t know”
• the character was easy to relate to
• the play was clear and straight forward
Museum
Theatre
Summer 2006
Lessons Learned
• One primary source is enough
• Gray area where facts end and
historical context fills in the story
• Okay to make-up dialogue for a
theatrical presentation, but be sure to
cite it and base it in historical research
• Stepping out of character is a good
time to tell visitors what we do and do
not know from primary sources
Museum
Theatre
Sailors’ Lives & Sailors’ Wives
Summer 2007
Dorothea Cooper
• Married to William Cooper, an Indian
• Married at Poospatuck by itinerant minister Paul
• William died in JAVA battle; Dorothea left with two young girls
Summer 2007
120 performances reach 5,331 visitors
Thanks to the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
Visitor Response
“This is one of the most creative,
engaging museum displays I‘ve ever seen.
We’re from New York!”
A middle school student commented,
“I paid attention here, but not in school.”
“This may well be the finest military museum in the world.”
“Hearing the voices of CONSTITUTION’s past made
CONSTITUTION’s history come alive”
Said while filling out a Family Membership, “We’re retired
Federal Workers who have crisscrossed the country and never
seen another museum done as well as you have.”
Visitor Response
7 minutes / family = old
22 minutes / family = new
3x longer in new exhibit
54% Increase in Voluntary Donations
2005: 37 cents / visitor
2007: 57 cents / visitor
15% Visitation Increase
2005 = $74,328
2007 = $131,665
A New Strategy at the
USS Constitution Museum
The Museum will provide
a hands-on minds-on
environment where
inter-generational groups
seeking an enjoyable,
educational experience can
have fun and learn as they
explore history together.
David’s Story
A great story!
• Featured in exhibit
(Boy = Rank)
• One man show
(Mystery)
• Presented by High School Interns to
Boston Summer Campers
• School program & outreach program
for younger visitors
• Collaborative project with
Boston Landmarks Orchestra
Boston Landmarks Orchestra
“David & Old Ironsides”
Conductor: Charles Ansbacher
Narrator: Rev. Ray Hammond
Family Learning Project Goals
• Encourage family learning through CONVERSATION
• Identify low-cost, low-tech interactive elements
Steal this Idea!
• Recruiting interactive
• Conclusion game
• Disseminate effective techniques
Tools Shared
• PISEC worksheet
• Evaluation exercises
• Learning styles matrix
• 10 Steps to Encourage Family Learning
www.familylearningforum.org
• Exhibit planning tools
• Engaging label ideas
• Simple hands-on interactives
• Asking your audience for help
+ 10 steps to get started with family learning!
Share Successes!
Where do visitors laugh and learn together
at your museum?