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By Elee Wood, Public Scholar of Museums, Families, and Learning
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Sometimes we get a little bit goofy in the research and evaluation department. I mean, really, when you are dealing with report titles like the “Assessment of Learning Families in Exhibits”, it doesn’t sound very fascinating (at least to the rest of the staff). The minute we called it “ALFIE” (and extra points if you can name the song that it comes from) everyone felt relieved. ALFIE is one of our major tools to help us better plan and evaluate the experiences that families have in the museum. It allows us to think about the major kinds of adult and child interactions we hope will happen in exhibits. But, as you know sometimes a person needs a companion, and so our Family Learning in Programs framework became “FLIP”. FLIP helps us plan for the great interpretation programs you get to see on a regular basis.
FLIP and ALFIE were recently joined by FLO, the Family Learning Observation form. Flo helps us look at the special moments that happen in programs. She lets us investigate what families like to do and how they interact when one of our fabulous actor-interpreters or gallery facilitators is taking you on an extraordinary journey. "WES” is more like a cousin, he’s the “Where’s Everybody Study” that we took on a few summers ago to help us figure out, literally, where all our visitors go in the building during a given day. That was a lot of head counting!
Alfie, Flip and Flo (and WES too) work well together, just like a happy family.
