CEO Position Announcement

Full-Time, Remote (can work anywhere in/near a major U.S. metro area)

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), a 501(c)3, non-profit organization, seeks a visionary leader to work with board and staff members to enhance the organization’s current work and brand, while also expanding the scope and visibility of ILI nationally and internationally. The CEO will lead a collaborative, dedicated, and independent virtual team working with cultural institutions and other types of non-profit/governmental organizations in the U.S. and abroad to create individual experiences that enhance personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being, and that collectively help to build and sustain healthy, livable, and satisfying communities.

We seek:

A strategic and creative thinker.
A strong, persuasive leader with a proven track record of collaborative management.
Someone with experience in and a commitment to financial development and oversight.
An effective communicator and organizational promoter.

The Opportunity

Founded in 1986, ILI is looking for a visionary and entrepreneurial leader to build on the organization’s existing reputation and capabilities as well as guide organizational diversification and growth.

For nearly 40 years, ILI has helped a wide range of cultural organizations improve how they support, communicate, and deliver value to the public. Through strategic thinking and evidence-based processes, ILI measures impact, guides program development, enhances staff capacity, bolsters financial sustainability, and works to build the effectiveness of both individual organizations and the broader field of free-choice learning.

Primary Responsibilities

The position reports directly to the Board of Directors with the following responsibilities:

Organization Strategy:

Evaluate our existing programs and activities and work with the board and staff to develop our strategic purpose so that ILI is optimally positioned for success in the coming years.
Solidify the success of the organization’s current activities within existing markets while expanding the scope of our work, either within existing markets or into new markets,
Promote the organization’s image by enhancing its current reputation while at the same time expanding the scope and visibility of ILI both nationally and internationally.

Fundraising and Sustainability

Clarify the organization’s positioning and lead both earned and contributed fundraising efforts that anticipate short-term needs as well as build long-term financial sustainability.
Develop budgets and manage finances that maximize the use of existing resources and ensure operational stability and solvency.

Organization Operations

Direct and manage a dedicated, highly independent, virtual team, as well as the organizational resources, and program operations, in ways that ensure that the organization sustains its positive culture, maintains its values, and fulfills its purpose.

Board Collaboration

Work to build and support a diverse, volunteer Board of Directors to ensure that the Institute for Learning Innovation fulfills its purpose.

Job Requirements:

The successful candidate will be expected to:

Have experience in building and leading a successful organization, including a proven record of effective financial management and fundraising (working with organizational budgets of at least $1 million or more).
Be dedicated to our organizational purpose while demonstrating strategic flexibility and creative abilities that allow the organization to grow and develop.
Be a skilled communicator and promoter to lead the organization’s communications efforts in ways that clarify the organization’s unique strengths and capabilities.
Be committed to promoting and implementing evidence-based practices.
Be comfortable with technologies and building relationships via virtual tools.
Be able to travel nationally and occasionally internationally (1-2 times/month)

ILI’s Culture Supports:

Autonomy. ILI does not micromanage staff. All staff are empowered to make high-level decisions about their work, and how they will execute it. As a virtual organization, most work is conducted from the individual’s own home or other office setting of their choosing, though occasional travel is required.
Trust. Employees operate on trust. As long as staff get their agreed upon work done on time and at a high level of quality, no one is worried about the hours they work or the schedule they keep. Communication is critical. All staff are expected to have clear goals, goals which are discussed and cleared by leadership.
Meaningful work. ILI is blessed with a loyal and dedicated workforce who feel their work is meaningful. All feel fortunate to be able to directly contribute to an organization working to support the public’s ability to connect, reflect, and learn throughout their lives; that supports thriving communities with rich cultural/learning ecosystems.
Values. ILI values and respects equal opportunity and inclusion, exemplified by the use of evidence, systems thinking, and collaboration in pursuit of a more just future for all.

CEO Salary, Benefits & Timeline:

Salary. Salary will be commensurate with experience.
Benefits. We offer all employees unlimited leave as well as opportunities to participate in both health reimbursement and retirement programs.
Timing. Initial position recruitment will end Friday, June 6, 2025, with a final decision planned for the end of summer. Start date is flexible.

How to Apply:

Send the following to John Falk (John.Falk@freechoicelearning.org) using the subject line “Application for ILI CEO”

• Cover letter and Resume (pdf format)
Study ILI’s current staff and activites here and share a short video of yourself explaining how you would build on ILI’s current strengths to position the organization for future success.

How Free-Choice Learning Builds Resilience in Communities: What We Learned from Port Townsend’s Place-Based Partnership

Resilience—whether environmental, cultural, or economic—is a core aspiration for communities navigating rapid change and growing complexity. At the Institute for Learning Innovation, we believe free-choice learning is a powerful, often under-leveraged, tool to support that resilience. Free-choice learning refers to the self-directed, interest-driven learning that occurs across a range of settings, including museums, libraries, parks, and science centers. When thoughtfully designed and locally grounded, these experiences can do more than deepen individual knowledge—they can strengthen relationships, build civic capacity, and contribute to long-term community well-being.

In a recent collaboration, ILI worked alongside the Port Townsend Marine Science Center (PTMSC) in Washington to better understand the role of place-based learning in building community resilience. Through a three-year initiative funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), PTMSC implemented Community Engagement in Place-Based Education, a project designed to integrate place-based learning throughout the Port Townsend School District. This work aligned with the district’s Maritime Discovery Schools initiative and engaged educators, nonprofit partners, and community leaders in developing locally relevant, inquiry-based programming.

The initiative’s goals extended beyond academic outcomes. It aimed to build teacher capacity, strengthen nonprofit-school partnerships, and deepen students’ connection to their local environment. Programs were designed to align with the Next Generation Science Standards and were offered every third year to students in grades K, 3, 6, 9, and 12.

Evaluation led by Dr. Lynn Dierking, at Institute for Learning Innovation, revealed several key outcomes with long-term implications for community resilience:

Sustained Community Engagement: Stakeholders across the district and nonprofit sector remained actively engaged in collaborative learning initiatives even after the funding period ended.
Stronger Cross-Sector Networks: Educators and local organizations developed the capacity to co-design meaningful learning experiences, enhancing the community’s ability to respond to shared challenges.
Increased Stewardship and Sense of Place: Students reported a greater connection to their local environment and a stronger ethic of environmental responsibility.

The project’s impact has continued beyond its initial scope. Outcomes include:

The creation of the Community Marine Center Collaborative, leading to new exhibitions and expanded programming.
The formation of the Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group, a coalition of 24 organizations (including tribal governments) conducting collaborative data collection to inform regional fisheries management.
PTMSC’s relocation to a new, more accessible downtown facility, expanding community access and enhancing tourism and economic development.

This case illustrates how free-choice learning—when intentionally designed and rooted in local context—can serve as a mechanism for building more connected, adaptable, and resilient communities. It reinforces the importance of viewing learning as a shared civic responsibility, not limited to formal education settings. As communities across the country confront complex and interrelated challenges, it is critical to invest in models that foster collaboration, deepen local knowledge, and empower individuals across sectors. Free-choice learning is a community resilliancy strategy, and one that is proving to have lasting impact.

Measuring What Matters: Museums, Well-Being, and the Real Value of Experience

What is the true value of a museum visit?
Is it in the collections behind the glass? The exhibitions on display? The educational programs? These are often the traditional ways museums have sought to define their worth—but what if we’ve been looking in the wrong direction?

At a recent Museums and Change webinar, our founder and CEO Dr. John Falk invited the field to consider a radical and deeply human reframing: that the real value of museums lies not in their tangible assets, but in the intangible—specifically, in how they support visitors’ well-being.

From Things to Experiences: A Shift in Thinking
Museums have long prided themselves on their stuff: artifacts, objects, archives, and architecture. But as John shared, in the 21st century, value isn’t primarily in what a museum has. It’s in what a museum does for people.

And what it does, it turns out, is a lot.

Drawing from decades of research, John explained that museums create experiences that are memorable, meaningful, and, perhaps most significantly, that enhance individual well-being. These aren’t fleeting feelings; visitors report emotional, social, intellectual, and even physical benefits that last well beyond the visit—sometimes for days or even weeks.

In fact, according to our findings, over 95% of museum visitors report experiencing some level of benefit across all four domains of well-being. Not only that, but the average perceived value of a museum visit clocks in at a staggering $400–$900 per person—a return on investment that far exceeds the average admission ticket.

Defining Well-Being—Through the Visitor’s Eyes
So, what does “well-being” actually mean in this context?

Here’s the breakdown:

Personal well-being: A sense of identity, inspiration, or wonder. A visitor might leave feeling more like themselves, more creative, or more connected to the world.
Intellectual well-being: Learning something new, gaining perspective, or satisfying curiosity. Museums empower visitors to make sense of the world and navigate it more confidently.
Social well-being: Museums are spaces to be together—strengthening relationships, fostering belonging, and creating shared memories.
Physical well-being: Even just the act of walking, decompressing in a calming environment, or enjoying time away from daily stressors can impact health and vitality.

What’s revolutionary about this approach is that these definitions come from the visitors themselves—not from staff, curators, or assumptions about what should matter. In this model, value is user-defined and evidence-based.

Making the Case—With Data and Dollars
The implications of this work are big. It’s not just about affirmation for museum professionals (though that’s welcome). It’s about changing the way we advocate—for funding, for policy, for practice.

Museums now have a tool to speak the language of policymakers and funders: dollars. When people perceive a museum experience as worth hundreds of dollars in personal value—and when that value can be tied directly to well-being outcomes—we’re no longer making a sentimental or cultural case. We’re making an economic one.

The data show that for every dollar spent operating a museum, communities receive six dollars in societal value. That’s a return on investment that rivals even the most high-performing sectors.

Practice, Policy, and Possibility
ILI’s findings offer a clear roadmap for the future:

For Practice: Museums can use this framework to understand what’s working, amplify those experiences, and better meet the needs of current and potential audiences.
For Policy: The well-being model gives us a way to talk about why museums matter to communities—not just as places of preservation or tourism, but as engines of health, equity, and collective thriving.
For People: Ultimately, this research reminds us that museums serve humans. Not just visitors, but also staff and volunteers. These same well-being frameworks can guide more inclusive, empathetic internal practices as well.

Want to Join the Journey?
ILI’s work continues. Studies are currently underway at history museums across the U.S., and new partnerships are forming in countries like Canada, Taiwan, and beyond. And perhaps most exciting, museums that have participated in this research are already using the data to tell their stories more powerfully—to boards, funders, and communities. As John put it in the session: “People use museums to meet their needs. It’s not about the exhibit—it’s about what that exhibit allows someone to feel, think, or do.”

If your museum is interested in joining this growing effort to redefine and measure value, reach out to the Institute for Learning Innovation (connect@freechoicelearning.org). We believe the future of museums isn’t just about preserving the past. It’s about improving lives, today.

Let’s measure what matters.

Rewatch the session at AAM’s Museums and Change

Digging Into Resilience at NARST: Lessons from Gardening in a Global Pandemic

Senior Researcher Elysa Corin is presenting today at NARST, sharing findings from her NSF-funded study on free-choice science learning in a talk titled “Gardening During a Global Pandemic: Time for Nesting, Neighbors, Nature, and Knowledge.”

Her research dives into how people turned to gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic—not just as a hobby, but as a vital coping mechanism during a time of unprecedented global stress.

Drawing from a 2022 study of 349 adult plant and gardening hobbyists living in the same community, the research shows a clear connection between individuals’ levels of pandemic-related stress and their gardening behaviors. As stress increased, so did participation in gardening activities. People weren’t just spending time outdoors; they were using plants and gardens as tools for emotional regulation, connection to nature, and a sense of control amidst chaos.

One key takeaway? Gardening emerged as a powerful and widely accessible source of well-being—across age, race, gender, and socioeconomic background. This suggests that free-choice, nature-based activities can play a critical role in public health and education efforts, especially in times of societal disruption.

What this means for your work:
Whether you’re in education, health, or community programming, consider how unstructured, interest-driven activities like gardening can be integrated into your efforts to support well-being, learning, and resilience. These findings remind us that science learning doesn’t only happen in classrooms—it happens in backyards, balconies, and community gardens, especially when people need it most.

Come Chat with Us: WElysa will be in Magnolia 2 from 2:30-4:00pm Tuesday, 25 March, 2025,

Going Online: Building Inclusive Professional Learning Program for Autism

We’ve been working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, and behavioral specialists to develop a hybrid professional learning model aimed at transforming how museums support autistic individuals and their families. This work is part of Building Capacity of Informal STEM Learning Providers to Engage Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative focused on embedding inclusive practices into the core of museum culture.

The hybrid learning program builds on three years of prior research in Phase 1, which identified organizational barriers and opportunities for advancing inclusion in informal STEM learning environments. In Phase 2, our charge is to translate those insights into actionable learning—through accessible, reflective, and role-specific training modules designed for real-world museum contexts.

APPROACH

We are designing a series of interactive, online learning modules accompanied by community-based professional learning activities. The goal is to support museum professionals in developing foundational knowledge about autism and inclusive practices, while fostering a deeper culture shift within and across participating institutions.

The hybrid structure includes:

Asynchronous Learning Modules: Covering foundational topics such as the meaning of inclusion, the difference between accessibility and inclusion, the basics of autism spectrum disorder, and hands-on inclusive strategies. Modules include video content, reflection prompts, mini-assessments, and practical examples drawn from museum settings.
Role-Specific Learning Paths: Final modules are tailored to staff roles—whether in visitor-facing positions, experience design, operations, or communications—so that inclusion strategies are directly relevant and actionable.
Community of Practice Integration: Training is embedded within local and national communities of practice to encourage discussion, peer learning, and shared problem-solving. Participants are encouraged to bring module reflections into their community meetings and revisit them over time.
Capstone Project: As part of the training, participants will embed their learning into a funded-project, applying what they’ve learned to their specific institutional context.

Throughout the development process, we’ve prioritized clarity, flexibility, and practicality. Modules are designed to meet staff where they are—offering digestible content, relatable scenarios, and encouragement for making small changes that add up to long-term impact.

WHY IT MATTERS

While the content focuses on autism inclusion, the strategies are designed to benefit all visitors. The training emphasizes that inclusion is not a fixed destination, but an evolving, participatory practice. By designing a hybrid learning experience that supports both individual reflection and organizational change, we hope to foster museum environments where all people feel welcome, understood, and able to engage fully.

This work is ongoing, and we’re continuing to learn and adapt as we go—guided by input from museum professionals, autistic individuals, and community partners. The development of this training program represents a step toward not only shifting practice, but reshaping the culture of informal STEM learning. Look next for our community facing website, with free resources and space to share ideas.

Dr. John Falk Receives Fulbright Specialist Award to South Africa at University of Zululand

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 27, 2024

The Institute for Learning Innovation is thrilled to announce that Dr. John Howard Falk has been honored with a Fulbright Specialist Program award by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Dr. Falk will undertake a transformative project at the University of Zululand in South Africa, where he will engage in a dynamic exchange of knowledge and foster collaborations that benefit educational institutions and communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. Falk is among a select group of U.S. experts chosen each year through the Fulbright Specialist Program. This prestigious award highlights his significant academic and professional contributions, as well as his commitment to advancing international educational partnerships.

The Fulbright Program, a cornerstone of U.S. international educational exchange, promotes mutual understanding and cooperation between the people of the United States and other nations. With a legacy of over 75 years, the program has enriched countless lives by facilitating educational and cultural exchanges that address global challenges and build lasting relationships.

Dr. Falk’s work exemplifies the Fulbright Program’s mission to enhance global academic collaboration and address pressing issues through innovative educational practices. We congratulate Dr. Falk on this remarkable achievement and look forward to the positive impact his work will have on both the University of Zululand and the broader educational community.

Learn more by reading the Fulbright press release here: Press Release-JF-2024827

Defining Outcomes: The First Step on the Path to Community Building

For the last few years ILI has been helping organizations think about how they meet the needs of their communities. Often the first step on that path is the definition of their organization’s outcomes. Defining outcomes is a critical process for any organization aiming to measure its impact effectively and drive meaningful community engagement. Our work with the Computer History Museum (CHM) has exemplified this process through a series of structured workshops aimed at developing outcomes that inform their logic model and eventual evaluation strategy. Here is an overview of the approach, which we feel can serve as a model for other institutions.

Step 1: Establishing the Framework

The process begins with understanding the components of a logic model, including inputs (resources), activities (actions), outputs (products), and short- and long-term outcomes. In this case, we started by understanding the current actions of the organization. This foundational understanding sets the stage for outcome development. An initial workshop introduced these concepts, aligned on the goals, and began mapping out the intended outcomes for their diverse audience groups.

Step 2: Audience-Centric Outcome Development

A crucial aspect of the approach was identifying both their current audiences and the audiences they hoped to reach. These audiences were then fit into distinct groups: tech fans, technologists, leaders, cultural consumers, and youth. Each group has unique characteristics and requires tailored outcomes. For instance, tech fans are expected to visit, subscribe, and eventually become lifelong supporters of the museum. Technologists might contribute artifacts and share their expertise, while leaders and influencers are engaged to advocate for the museum’s mission and provide financial support. This segmentation ensures that the outcomes are relevant and achievable for each group.

Step 3: Collaborative Brainstorming

Using digital tools like Miro, we facilitated brainstorming sessions to identify immediate, intermediate, and long-term outcomes for each audience segment. This collaborative effort involved key stakeholders, including board members and staff, to gather diverse perspectives and ensure comprehensive coverage of potential outcomes. The synthesis of these ideas led to a working document that outlines the desired changes in knowledge, behavior, and attitudes for each group over time.

Step 4: Refining and Validating Outcomes

The subsequent workshop sessions focused on refining these outcomes, ensuring they were specific, measurable, and aligned with CHM’s mission. Participants reviewed the proposed outcomes, identified any missing elements, and discussed potential challenges in achieving these outcomes. This iterative process allowed for the fine-tuning of outcomes and the identification of key indicators for measurement. For example, outcomes for cultural consumers include increasing their understanding of technology’s impact and encouraging responsible technology use, while outcomes for youth emphasize building STEM skills and inspiring careers in technology.

Step 5: Integrating Feedback and Drafting a Theory of Change

The final step involves integrating feedback from all sessions to create a working theory of change (Figure 1). This model serves as a roadmap for the organization’s strategic initiatives and provides a clear framework for evaluating their impact. The goal is to align the organization’s activities with desired outcomes and identify measurable indicators. The next step is to assist the organization in effectively tracking their progress toward their outcomes and make data-driven decisions to enhance their programs and community engagement efforts.

Figure 1: Working Theory of Change

In summary, defining outcomes is a dynamic and collaborative process that requires a clear framework, audience segmentation, and iterative refinement. This structured approach not only ensures that their outcomes are aligned with their mission but also provides a robust foundation for measuring their impact and driving continuous improvement. Other organizations can learn from this model to develop their own effective outcome-based strategies.

Project Team: Dr. Monae Verbeke, Judy Koke and Nicole Claudio

Newly Funded: Taking Inclusive STEM Learning to the Next Level with Building Capacity for Autism Phase 2 Project!

ILI is thrilled to share our latest venture: “Broadening and Sustaining Capacity for Inclusive Informal STEM Learning Opportunities for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder”, funded by the AISL program at NSF. After a successful first round where we teamed up with four museums and informal learning and autism experts to make STEM learning more accessible for folks on the Autism Spectrum (ASD), we’re expanding nationally in Phase 2.

The team will take what worked well in Phase I and blend it with the latest in digital learning. We are designing a hybrid model that keeps the quality of the first phase while finding ways to create avenues for national participation. In collaborations with folks at the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC), informal learning partners at SciTech, some tech-savvy online learning professionals, and the museums of Phase 1, we are co-creating training that is as impactful online as it is on the ground.

Why This Matters

The project team is committed to working with informal learning institutions to create spaces where everyone feels welcome and gets the most out of STEM learning. By creating learning opportunities for staff across various ISL organizations—from museums to zoos to libraries — in how to better support individuals on the Autism Spectrum, we’re not just opening doors to learning; we’re building bridges to new experiences, confidence, and maybe even future careers in STEM.

What will happen in Phase 2?

Phase 2 is about creating sustainable, long-term change. We plan to work with museums across the country, including in cities like Phoenix, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Miami, to co-create a hybrid training program, ensuring it fits the needs of a wide variety of informal science organizations across the country. We’ll include online learning, a community of practice, in-person coaching, and tailored resources for continued support. The result will hopefully be impactful changes that help staff support learners on the Autism Spectrum better, from understanding ASD better to using the most effective ways to engage community members on the Autism Spectrum. We will also be working to create a dedicated online learning site, we’ll share all the best bits of what we learn, create space for informal science organizations to share their own best practices, offer free resources, and create spaces for connection with other organizations seeking to do similar work.

This is more than just a project for us; it’s a movement towards a more inclusive world where STEM learning is for everyone. By coming together, learning from each other, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, we’re setting the stage for a future where everyone, regardless of ability or background, can engage in the excitement of free-choice learning.

Stay tuned for more updates, and feel free to reach out to Dr. Verbeke (monae.verbeke@freechoicelearning.org) if you want to learn more or get involved.

This work is supported by the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, award number 2314100.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: New Study Measures the Public Value of Art Museum Experiences

Research project featuring unique, cross-sectional consortium of 11 museums across the United States explores how art museums contribute to well-being

June 08, 2023—Following a large-scale, multi-institutional research project, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) and a consortium of 11 museums across the United States have announced the results of a new study designed to define and measure the value of museums—how they contribute to the overall well-being of visitors—in an empirical, verifiable, and monetizable way. Building on the work of John H. Falk, Founder & Principal Researcher at the Institute for Learning Innovation, the Value of Museums Study was unveiled at the 2023 American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting in Denver, with its findings shared during a panel, “Leaning into Value: Measuring and Monetizing Visitor Experience,” on Friday, May 19.

According to the Institute for Learning Innovation, researchers have interviewed museumgoers about their experiences over the past four decades. Visitors reported that the benefits of museum visits could be characterized by one or more of four areas of enhanced well-being: personal, intellectual, social, and physical. For this study,—data collection for which ran from May through September 2022—the research team hypothesized that by measuring and better understanding the value of enhanced well-being created by museum experiences, it would be possible to: quantify the existing value for current visitors, enhance that value for current visitors, and extend that value to prospective visitors.

This study included prominent art museums across the United States: the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia); Cleveland Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens (Washington, DC); Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO); New Orleans Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of California; Saint Louis Art Museum; and the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore). The project’s goal was to build evidence for the societal value—personal, intellectual, social, physical—and resulting economic value and cost-benefits that museums generate through public-facing activities.

A random selection of 1,942 museum visitors from across the participating 11 museums completed a short motivation survey on-site, and a month later, the same visitors were randomly assigned to one of two surveys. One survey asked visitors to rate the degree of well-being they experienced as a result of their museum visit on four dimensions (personal, intellectual, social, and physical), and, if they had experienced enhanced well-being, for how long those benefits lasted (1–2 hours, one day, one week, two weeks, or a month or more). The other survey asked individuals to assign a monetary value, on a sliding scale of $0–$1,000, to each of the same set of well-being-related outcomes.

The vast majority of individuals surveyed indicated experiencing benefits, and most reported that those benefits lasted far beyond the timeframe of the museum visit itself. On average, museum visitors responded that their hour(s)-long visit resulted in benefits lasting one or more days, with many reporting that the benefits lasted weeks or longer. The benefits of these museum experiences were not limited to a single dimension of well-being, as most respondents experienced benefits across all four tested dimensions. The full importance of this fact became apparent when the monetization results were applied: on average, the multiday benefits of an art museum experience were equivalent to $905 per person, per visit in economic value. While this reported value in benefit is high, the study states that the true power and value created by these art museums lies in their collective value, as each institution serves tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals each year. On average, each of these museums annually delivered more than $325 million in well-being–related economic value to its visitors. A cost-benefit analysis was completed, which revealed that the average ratio of benefits created relative to the costs of creating that value was equal to 1,171%, or roughly $12 of benefit achieved for every $1 spent.

The Value of Museums study demonstrates that each of the 11 participating art museums cost-effectively delivers significant societal and economic value to their communities.

“Our research has shown that universal well-being–related values—personal, intellectual, social, emotional, and physical—are strongly correlated with perceptions of a satisfying and successful life,” says John Falk of the Institute for Learning Innovation. “A large majority of the public perceives that they derive these universal benefits following a museum visit, indicating that these museum experiences clearly have societal value.”

“As spaces that naturally foster meaningful encounters with art, rejuvenation, and educational enrichment, museums play a critical and unique role in supporting the well-being of the public,” says a joint statement from the participating museums. “This study, which represents a promising new model for institutional collaboration, has offered a valuable opportunity to hear directly from the communities museums serve across the US, and the findings will help guide our work to continuously enhance the value of the museum experience.”

2023 American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting
Panel: Leaning into Value: Measuring and Monetizing Visitor Experience
Friday, May 19, 2–3 pm (MDT)
How do you demonstrate that your institution provides social value and community impact? This is a question that all museum boards, leadership, and staff contemplate, but supplying the data that policymakers expect can be challenging. This panel and discussion will offer one model for how museums can describe and corroborate the social and financial value they deliver to their diverse publics.

Featuring: John Falk, Founder & Principal Researcher, Institute for Learning Innovation; Liza Herzog, Director of Evaluation and Impact, the Barnes Foundation; Lori Fogarty, Executive Director, Oakland Museum of Art; Julián Zugazagoitia, Director and CEO, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and Tracy Kennan, Curator of Education, New Orleans Museum of Art.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING INNOVATION
The Institute for Learning Innovation works with individuals, organizations, and communities to develop and support lifelong, free-choice learning as a mechanism for helping solve the major challenges facing humanity.

ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION

ABOUT THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

ABOUT THE DENVER ART MUSEUM

ABOUT HILLWOOD ESTATE, MUSEUM & GARDENS

ABOUT THE MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON

ABOUT THE NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART

ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART

ABOUT THE OAKLAND MUSEUM CALIFORNIA

ABOUT THE SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

ABOUT THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

Institute for Learning Innovation, Stacey Sheehan, Director of Communications, stacey.sheehan@freechoicelearning.org
Barnes Foundation: Deirdre Maher, Director of Communications, press@barnesfoundation.org
Cleveland Museum of Art, Todd Mesek, Chief Marketing Officer, tmesek@clevelandart.org
Denver Art Museum, Kristy Bassuener, Senior Director of Communications and Public Affairs, kbassuener@denverartmuseum.org & Andy Sinclair, Communications & Media Relations Manager ASinclair@denverartmuseum.org
Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, Lynn Rossotti, Director of External Affairs, lrossotti@hillwoodmuseum.org
Milwaukee Art Museum, Cortney Heimerl, Interim Director of Marketing and Communications, Cortney.Heimerl@mam.org
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kathleen Leighton, Manager, Media Relations and Video Production, kleighton@nelson-atkins.org
New Orleans Museum of Art, Charlie Tatum, Director of Marketing and Communications, ctatum@noma.org
Oakland Museum of California, Ashleigh Richelle, Associate Director of Communications, arichelle@museumca.org
Saint Louis Art Museum, Molly Morris, Communications Manager, Molly.Morris@SLAM.org
The Walters Art Museum, Sydney Adamson, Communications Manager sadamson@thewalters.org

NOW HIRING: Bilingual Spanish/English Interpreter

(REMOTE CONTRACT POSITION)

Description:

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) is collaborating with the High Desert Museum in learning how to support family STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning in their community.

We are looking for a bilingual Spanish/English individual to join our research team as an interpreter and translator to examine the impact of STEM programming on local families. Data collection will involve virtual/phone interviews with local families. This is a remote, part-time, contract position.

Start Date

First week of April

Time Commitment

The bulk of work will take place over 3 months with a small amount of work taking place 2-3 months after and then again about 6-9 months after that. The position is 5-10 hrs./week. The number of hours per week will vary depending on the varying needs of the project.

Responsibilities and Duties:

Translate documents including surveys into Spanish.
Participate in virtual/phone interviews as an interpreter with a researcher and caregivers using an existing interview guide.
Communicate with participating caregivers.
Translate survey responses.
Share reflections from the conducted interviews.
Participate in virtual (Zoom) team meetings on a regular basis.
Communicate regularly with team members via email.

Qualifications:

Required

Bilingual in Spanish and English.
Has access to a computer and the internet.
Enjoys frequent collaboration but can work well independently.
Has keen attention to detail.
Able to organize one’s own time and problem-solve.
Ability to clearly communicate and ask questions for clarification when needed.
Ability to work flexible hours (including some evenings) and days as necessary.

Preferred

Experience interviewing is a plus.
Experience interpreting is a plus.
Is comfortable working with Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Outlook).
Is comfortable working with Google apps (Google docs, Google sheets).

About Us:

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) is a virtual, independent, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization which is passionate about learning and works at the intersection of research, practice, and policy. With a more than 30-year history we are committed – now more than ever – to disrupting the narrow way in which society thinks about learning. ILI works hard to find new and more effective ways to support a variety of educational leaders and institutions in providing learning opportunities for all. Learn more about ILI here: www.instituteforlearninginnovation.org.

Job Type:

Part-time, contract.

Compensation:

$4000

Physical Demands:

This position does not require physical demands beyond the usual office work and travel requirements.

Equity:

The Institute for Learning Innovation is an equal opportunity employer who is fully committed to what we call an “IDEAL” framework, one that supports Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, and Learning for all. Please let us know should you have a disability that requires accommodation in order for you to participate in the application process, we are happy to work with you to facilitate your participation.

To Apply:

For consideration, along with your resume, please include a one-page cover letter describing the ways in which you are qualified for this position and why you would want to work with the Institute for Learning Innovation and send to:

To: debbie.siegel@freechoicelearning.org

Subject: Interpreter

Prior to hire, two recent professional references will be required

Global Well-Being: A 5th Dimension of Value

Author: Dr. John H. Falk

Those of you who have been following my work over the past couple of years know that I have been focused on defining and measuring the value of museums. I have argued that most of a museum’s value lies within the experiences it creates. Historically, the value of a museum lay primarily in its tangible assets, things like collections and buildings. However, as has been happening across all companies and organizations, tangible assets have come to represent an ever-decreasing percentage of actual value. For example, roughly 40 years ago, tangible assets such as buildings, machinery and inventory represented two-thirds of the market value of the average for-profit company. Ten years later, those same assets represented just a third of company market value (Kaplan & Norton 2001), and today, that percentage has been reduced by half again (Berman 2019). In today’s information-focused world, the value of all organizations and companies for-profit and non-profit resides largely in their intangible assets; the knowledge possessed and how that knowledge is used to create and support experiences for the public (Koller, Goedhart & Wessels, 2020). Museums are no exception.

Enhanced Well-Being Creates Value

I have learned (Falk, 2021; 2022) that museums, through the user experiences they create, clearly generate lasting value as evidenced by the durability of museum memories. The key to that durability is that museum experiences are perceived as “meaningful,” i.e., they support the public’s well-being. Not in a “pop psychology” type of way, which is often reduced to the idea of feeling happy,¹ but rather the deep, biologically-based definition of well-being that comes with feelings of enhanced survival. The perception of well-being is an evolutionary ancient mechanism for enhancing fitness (Falk, 2018) and it turns out that museums have long been successful when it comes to supporting the publics feelings of enhanced, survival-related well-being across all four of the primary dimensions of human well-being – physical, social, intellectual and personal well-being. Across all of these dimensions, museums continue to create significant public value. Value that can be directly measured, and even monetized using this well-being construct (for more details see Falk, 2021; 2022, also earlier blogs [here hotlinks].

The Fifth Dimension

Recently, though, I came to appreciate that there is a fifth, very recently evolved dimension of human well-being, one that I had not previously considered. Like many evolutionary-focused social scientists, I was particularly focused on the critical events in human history that pre-dated the rise of civilizations – that 99.9% of human hunter-gatherer evolutionary history that began around 7 million years ago when human-like creatures first branched off from our chimpanzee-like relatives somewhere in Eastern Africa and persisted until very recently amongst the tens of thousands of small, kinship-based clans, living thinly dispersed across virtually every habitable patch of land on earth (Buss, 2019). Throughout all this time, human evolution never stopped, it just became increasingly and ever-acceleratingly culturally-focused as humans continually adapted to first an agricultural, then industrial and now an information-adapted lifestyle. During this entire time frame, virtually all of cultural evolution has focused on refining and elaborating how humans can enhance their survival through the initial four basic human dimensions of well-being, but only very recently have we become aware that our survival depends upon not just our immediate environment, and just our closest circle of friends and relatives, but equally upon settings and denizens living well beyond our immediate boundaries and daily awareness. For the very first time in biological history, a species became aware, and recently because of global pandemics, climate change and international conflicts painfully aware, that its own survival also depended on the well-being of all other living and non-living parts of the planet. In fact, this highly abstract form of survival-related concern, a well-being-related need I’m calling global well-being, is so unusual and recently evolved, that it is only within the past 50 years or so that a majority of earth’s humans have come to be consciously aware of this form of well-being and has begun to act in ways that acknowledge that their survival is just as dependent on these global issues as are they dependent on the four older and more obvious forms of well-being.²

Global Well-Being

Global well-being occurs when a person perceives that they are supporting and directly contributing to the just and equitable treatment of all humanity and/or feels like they are supporting and directly contributing to the health, security, and increasingly, sustainability of the planet (cf., JYU, 2021). As I define this fifth dimension of well-being, just like with the previous four dimensions of well-being – physical, social, intellectual, and personal – feelings of global well-being are perceived at the individual level and despite being “other-focused,” are still operationally “self-focused.” For example, the fact that someone on the other side of the planet is doing some good for the environment is perceived as a good thing, but it is rarely registered by the individual as a feeling of global well-being, at least not in the sense that I am using the term. For someone to feel a sense of global well-being, that person must perceive that they are personally involved, they feel like they have somehow directly affected the health and well-being of others on the planet. Perceptions of global well-being can be as modest as the feelings of doing something for others that regularly recycling or contributing to an environmental organization engenders, or it can be as extensive as the feelings one has when one donates a year of one’s life to almost daily working on a particular social or environmental issue.

In the case of museums, feelings of enhanced global well-being can be created through specific museum experiences; experiences that result in the user perceiving that as a consequence of their museum experience they have somehow contributed in some small way to the betterment of humankind or the planet. Perhaps through an exhibition experience, they gained a greater sense of understanding about and commitment to engaging in actions that will make a difference towards ameliorating climate change. Or perhaps they gained new insights and empathy towards a historically discriminated-against minority and now feel like they will be able to take actions that will materially enhance the quality of their society’s social fabric. Or it just may be the development of a greater awareness of the efforts the museum is engaged in that are benefiting the globe, and thus feeling like, through their admission ticket, they are directly contributing towards improving the lives of refugees or helping to save the lives of endangered wildlife. In all these cases, the key is that the individual feels somehow directly engaged; that they feel a sense of agency towards helping to influence these global issues and by so doing, perceive that they have enhanced their own survival-related well-being. Though some might say that such small-scale, individual actions are inadequate to the challenges the world faces, I like many others (cf., JYU, 2021; Wallace-Wells, 2022), believe that ultimately, it is only through such individual choices and actions that any meaningful change will ever happen.

Worldwide, museums are increasingly trying to support this kind of well-being. However, since the typical museum experience is often very brief, the contribution any particular museum makes to these kinds of large, intractable social or environmental issues are likely to be seen as extremely limited. In fact, most past efforts designed to measure how museum experiences related to large-scale global issues impact actual events on the ground have provided, at best, mixed evidence of success (e.g., Cameron, 2012; Jones, Hussain & Spiewa, 2020; Smith, Broad & Weiler, 2008; Spitzer, 2014). Consequently, many museums, despite strongly believing in the importance of acting in ways that support planetary well-being, sometimes struggle in justifying these actions to boards, funders and the public.

However, as my current well-being-focused approach to defining and measuring museum value demonstrates, the quality of the experiences a museum delivers influences value, but the real advantage museums have over many other institutions is quantity – the sheer volume of people museums serve can result in significant outcomes. As I have shown, the benefits of a museum experience tend to be modest, but they last longer than expected. When each of these outsized but individually modest impacts are multiplied by the hundreds of thousands and millions of visitors that have these experiences, the collective impact is actually enormous.

In theory, then, this is exactly how museums can have an influence on the public’s global well-being. It can be next to impossible to see the impact of any one individual’s actions on any of the many large, challenging problems facing the world. However, as suggested above, it is the collective impact from many, many small impacts that is critical. I believe it should now be possible to directly measure and monetize the value created through supporting enhanced feelings of global well-being; just as it now is possible to capture the value of such historically intangible, and difficult-to-measure values as physical, social, intellectual, and personal well-being.

Next Steps

Being able to conceptualize and begin to define the contours of this new dimension of well-being is very important, and frankly exciting. To be accomplished, though, it is important to be able to validly and reliably measure this fifth dimension. My ability to validly and reliably measure the first four dimensions of well-being were significantly aided by the availability of decades of museum audience research related to why people went to museums and self-reports of the long-term memories/benefits the public perceived they gained from these experiences. In the vast majority of these audience studies, researchers tended to focus on how people perceived the social, intellectual and/or personal outcomes of their museum experiences. Although not as frequently emphasized, some research also focused on the physical dimensions of museum experiences. Though it does exist, the literature on how museums have supported the public’s perceptions of cultural and environmental dimensions of global well-being is considerably thinner. However, I suspect there may be more out there than I am aware of.

With that thought in mind, I would like to encourage anyone to share with me any existing research studies (published or not) or even anecdotes that directly relate to the dimension of global well-being. You can send these to me at john.falk@freechoicelearning.org.

I would love to be able to mine these works, much as I did with the other four dimensions, for outcomes and potential measures that I could utilize in my efforts to describe and measure this form of well-being. Then, as I did with the earlier four dimensions, I will conduct one or more rounds of pilot testing on this new dimension, so that I can ultimately build and share with the field an instrument that fully encompasses all five dimensions of well-being-related value created by museums.

To be honest, although this fifth dimension of well-being is becoming increasingly important to many people, this need is not going to replace the need for physical, social, intellectual, and personal well-being any time soon. These first four dimensions of well-being remain at the core of human survival-related needs. But adding this fifth dimension is a recognition that evolution does not stand still, and clearly humanity is beginning to appreciate that its historic me-focused survival-related actions are not always positive, and in fact, many of our behaviors can and do directly threaten the very survival and fitness they were designed to support. Museums can and should play a role in re-focusing human activities towards a more just and sustainable future. Being able to document how museum experiences shift people’s perceptions of their global well-being has the potential to be an immensely powerful tool in understanding and measuring the value of museums, now and into the future.

References Cited

Berman, B. (2019). $21 trillion in U.S. intangible assets is 84% of S&P 500 value – IP rights and reputation included. IPCloseup.com. https://ipcloseup.com/2019/06/04/21-trillion-in-u-s-intangible-asset-value-is-84-of-sp-500-value-ip-rights-and-reputation-included/ Retrieved March 27, 2022.

Buss, D.M. (ed.) (2019). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind, Sixth Edition. New York: Routledge.

Cameron, F. (2012). Climate change, agencies and the museum and science center sector. Museum Management and Curatorship, 27(4), 317–339.

Falk, J.H. (2018). Born to choose: Evolution, self, and well-being. London: Routledge.

Falk, J.H. (2021). The value of Museums: Enhancing societal well-being. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Falk, J.H. (2022). Making the case for the value of museum experiences. Museum Management & Curatorship. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2021.2023906

JYU. (2021). Wisdom community. Planetary well-being. Humanities and Social Science Communication, 8 (258). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00899-3 Retrieved October 23, 2022.

Jones, R., Hussain, N. & Spiewa, M. (2020). The critical role research and evaluation assume in the post-truth era of climate change. Journal of Museum Education, 45(1), 64-73.

Kaplan, R.S. & Norton, D.P. (2001). The Strategy-Focused Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Koller, T., Goedhart, M. & Wessels, D. (2020). Valuation: Measuring and managing the value of companies, Seventh Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Smith, L., Broad, S. & Weiler, B. (2008). A closer examination of the impact of zoo visits on visitor behavior. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16(5), 544-562.

Spitzer, W. (2014). Shaping the public dialog on climate change. In D. Dalbotten, G. Roehrig, & P. Hamilton (Eds.), Future Earth – Advancing civic understanding of the Anthropocene (pp. 89–97). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Wallace-Wells, D. (2022). Beyond catastrophe: A new climate reality is coming into view. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html Retrieved October 30, 2022.

End Notes

¹ Happiness is just one of many manifestations of well-being, but in and of itself does not represent the essence of well-being. For more detail see Falk (2021).

² I make no claims to being an historian but clearly there are many examples one could point to as signs of this kind of well-being. I single out the environmental 50 years ago as the beginning of the growing worldwide acceptance for a perception of the need for global well-being but clearly there are examples that pre-date this time. For example, the late 19^th/early 20^th century labor movements, the post-World War II “ban the bomb” movement, as well as the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the peace movement were all arguably attributable to a growing perception of the need for global well-being. Also worth noting are the pervasive and in many cases quite ancient “land ethics” held by many hunter-gatherer/aboriginal communities; which also could be argued to be exemplars of the awareness and manifestation of a global sense of well-being.

Update: A new chapter for Dr. Dierking

(Photo Dr. Lynn Dierking finds her niche in Marrakech – and with us!)

Dr. Lynn Dierking has always worn many hats but recently, she retired from Oregon State University after spending the past 15 years as a Sea Grant Professor of Free-Choice Learning.

Now able to commit to our organization in a much greater capacity she has hit the ground running in a new role as Principal Researcher. Lynn applies renewed energy and enthusiasm to her work and a strong commitment to the learning of families, youth, and children across the lifetime and is passionate about IDEAL (our unique twist on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access. We add the letter “L,” for Learning, recognizing its critical function in creating a healthy, sustainable, and just world.)

Diving right in, Lynn has submitted or been a part of several grants and requests for proposals, consulted with long-time partners at the USS Constitution Museum in Boston about new directions in family learning, and is actively working with a team on a project at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto as they reimagine their Discovery Gallery.

She even managed to fit in a celebratory trip to France and Morocco!

Please join us in congratulating Lynn and welcoming her into this new and exciting chapter. She can be reached at Lynn.Dierking@freechoicelearning.org.

Stem Friends: Friendships and STEM interest

Discovering the role that 4^th and 5th-grade friendships have to play in children’s STEM interest

Most parents understand that their child’s friendships hold great influence on their perceptions, hobbies, and interests – but today, our Data Scientist, David Meier, provides us with some interesting evidence that demonstrates how your children’s friends feel about STEM may greatly impact your own child’s STEM interest!

Interesting results emerged when we analyzed data from our Camp Invention Research Project: Institute for Learning Innovation study regarding what STEM areas girls and boys enjoy learning about. Using a five-point rating scale with five being the highest, we asked 485 fourth and fifth-grade Camp Invention participants how much they liked finding out about or learning about various STEM topics. These topics were selected to measure interest in three main STEM areas: Life Science, Earth Science, and Technology and Engineering.

Utilizing T-Tests, we found that the 209 girls liked finding out about Life Science more than the 276 boys (average rating of 3.69 to 3.37) and that the boys liked finding out about Technology and Engineering more than the girls (average rating of 4.18 to 3.98).

While this finding may not be overly surprising to some people, what we found particularly interesting is that no statistically significant difference was found between the reported liking of finding out about Earth Science between the girls and the boys (average rating of 4.15 and 4.00).

We also asked the participants to rate their agreement to the question, “My friends think science and engineering are cool.”

Utilizing regression models, we found there to be a statistically significant and positive relationship between a participant’s friends thinking science and engineering are cool and their own enjoyment in finding out about all three of the STEM areas!

Interestingly, while no difference in the average rating for liking learning about Earth Science was found between the girls and the boys, the relationship between girls’ friends thinking science and engineering is cool and their rating of liking finding out about Earth Science was stronger than for the boys.

Indeed, for the girls, we found that for every one-unit increase in the rating of their friends’ thinking science and engineering is cool we could predict a corresponding increase of .21 units in their own rating of liking finding out about Earth Science (the predicted increase for the boys was .19 units).

While the statistical tests we utilized don’t prove causation, their statistically significant and predictive quality provides us evidence that there definitely is a positive relationship between friends’ attitudes towards science and engineering and a child’s own enjoyment in finding out about Life Science, Earth Science, and Technology and Engineering.

Parents, have you found this to be displayed in your own children’s friendships?

For more information on these findings, feel free to contact Data Scientist, David Meier.

CEO SEARCH

Chief Executive Officer

Full-Time, Remote (can work anywhere in/near a major metro area)

About ILI

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) works with individuals, organizations, and communities to develop and support lifelong, free-choice learning as a mechanism for helping solve the major challenges facing humanity. The Institute for Learning Innovation imagines a future that holds widespread appreciation for a learning ecosystem that makes lifelong, free-choice learning possible and for the importance of investing in the research, development, and training that ensures that this system is as effective and accessible to as many people as possible.

The Opportunity

ILI was founded in 1986 and is going through a momentous Founder Succession stage. To deliver on our strategic vision, we are looking for a visionary and entrepreneurial leader who will have the freedom and opportunity to lead this highly respected organization to amplify our impact on the world. This is a unique opportunity at a unique time to change the way we learn.

Your Primary Responsibilities

The position reports directly to the Board of Directors with the following responsibilities:

1) Organization Strategy

Work with Board and staff to develop a strategic approach for fulfilling and communicating the Institute for Learning Innovation’s mission.
Guide the organization’s operational and programming activities to create a high-impact and thriving institution;
Implement and evaluate our programs and research activities
Promote our image by deepening and enhancing efforts to make our work visible nationally and internationally;
Build an external presence that creates new opportunities.
Build partnerships, expand markets and establish relationships that deepen and amplify our impact and reach

2) Fundraising and Sustainability

Lead fundraising efforts to ensure the financial health of the organization.
Lead earned and contributed revenue activities.
Develop budgets and manage finances that maximize resources and ensures we operate within our means
Anticipate short term and long term financial and operational needs

3) Organization Operations

Direct and manage a virtual team, resources, and program operations to ensure that the organization fulfills its mission.
Ensures commitment and productivity by building progressive and highly-functional teams.
Ensures retention by valuing and developing staff.

4) Board Governance

Work with the Board to fulfill the Institute for Learning Innovation’s mission.

Qualities

Strategic Thinking: Develops a clear direction for future growth, sustainability, and creativity. Addresses issues to ensure a sustainable operational environment. Anticipates needs and priorities.

Entrepreneurship: Champions innovation and encourages new ideas. Builds momentum by communicating clearly and consistently. Acts decisively. Helps others to successfully manage the organization and organizational change. Recognizes successes and informed risk-taking.

Accountability: Sets expectations and high standards to accomplish goals. Follows through on all commitments. Maintains focus but knows when to be flexible and adapt accordingly. Maintains a positive attitude, recovers quickly from setbacks. Questions how things were done to develop ways to do things more efficiently. Encourages diverse thought and welcomes contributions and input.

Relationship Management/Collaboration: Builds, maintains and values positive relationships inside and outside the organization. Allocates effort to understand and meet the needs of staff, partners and collaborators. Assists others in accomplishing their goals. Communicates effectively and speaks and writes clearly. Listens and values the contributions of others.

Integrity: Is ethical and honest in all dealings. Treats others fairly and equitably. Delivers what is promised. Is respected by others.

Learning Agility: Learns technology, new systems, and processes to improve organizational proficiency. Inspires and encourages others to learn and grow in their roles.

Coaching and Development: Encourages and inspires employees’ development and long-term career growth. Conveys high expectations for others. Regularly provides helpful guidance and advice.

Execution: Ability to make plans and execute against them to implement profitable outcomes for the organization.

Candidate Response:

Demonstrate how you have exhibited the leadership qualities that we have identified.
Demonstrate your track record of fundraising across federal, state, and local sources and how you have grown these revenue streams
Demonstrate how you have built successful teams and successfully grown an organization;
Evidence of leading strategic planning initiatives and turning plans into actions with demonstrable success;
Successful strategies to engage funders in unique or entrepreneurial ways;
Successful strategies that have established new networks across untapped or underserved constituencies;
Examples of creating successful products, services, or saleable assets based on intellectual property or incumbent skillsets and programs of work;
Examples of evaluative practice and how you have successfully implemented data-driven or data-informed decision-making.
Examples of how you have successfully selected and implemented tools or technology to support growth or new opportunities in an organization;

We offer:

Autonomy. In collaboration and negotiation with staff, you will make high-level decisions about the work you will do and how you will execute it. We don’t micromanage here. Just communicate clearly and discuss decisions with those affected by it.

Flexible schedule. Go to appointments and run errands when you need to, as long as you’re getting your work done in good quality and on time. We have core hours, but no one is looking over your shoulder.

Ample paid time off. We offer all employees unlimited leave.

Meaningful work. You’ll contribute directly to an organization that is committed to diversity, equity, and social justice and is helping to transform the nature of where, when, how, and with whom people learn across their lifetimes.

Frequent travel (1 to 2 times per month may be required)

The Salary for this position is $150, 000, with a bonus based on fundraising performance.

To apply:

Send the following to ILI.CEOSearch@freechoicelearning.org, using the subject line: “APPLICANT- CEO SEARCH”

Cover letter and resume (pdf format) that addresses the candidate response topics
Study ILI’s vision and mission here and share a short video of yourself explaining why you believe in free-choice learning.

ILI is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

The Power of Museums 2022

From the International Council of Museums

Portugal 2022

Many people report that museum experiences make them feel better about themselves, more informed, happier, healthier, and more enriched; all outcomes directly related to enhanced well-being. Historically, benefits such as enhanced well-being were seen as vague and intangible, recently, Dr. John H. Falk was at ICOM in Portugal presenting a keynote that described how enhanced well-being, when properly conceptualized, CAN actually be defined and measured.

You can view his presentation here: Falk THE POWER OF MUSEUMS 2022 v2

Take me to the science center!

Evidence that visits to the local science center matter in children’s sense of scientific relevance and their own self-efficacy in science

Analyses of data from our Multi-Modal Science Effects Study reveals a significant and positive relationships between visiting science centers and children’s perceived science relevance and science self-efficacy. Over 1,700 fifth and sixth-grade students were asked to rate their level of agreement to questions such as “Science will be useful in my future” and “Science helps me understand the world around me” that are designed to measure a perceived relevance of science. Additionally, students were asked to rate their level of agreement to the questions “I like science” and “I know quite a bit about science” that are designed to measure a perceived science self-efficacy.
These ratings for science relevance and science self-efficacy were then averaged and their relationships with science center visitation analyzed.

Utilizing T-Tests, we found that children who had visited their local science center at least once in their life had higher ratings of science relevance than those that had not (4.00 and 3.87 respectively on a scale of 1 to 5). We also found that children who had visited their local science center at least once in their life had higher ratings of science self-efficacy than those that had not (4.08 and 3.98 respectively on a scale of 1 to 5).

Additionally, utilizing a regression model, we found that every visit to the local science center could predict a corresponding increase of .015 units in children’s science self-efficacy rating.

Interestingly, this relationship was slightly greater for girls, in which each visit could predict a corresponding increase of .016 units.

While the statistical tests we utilized don’t prove causation, their statistically significant and predictive quality provides evidence that there definitely is a positive relationship between science center visits and children’s sense of the relevance of science and their own self-efficacy with science.

Another great reason to round up the kids and head out to the science center this weekend!

David Meier
Data Scientist

Mapping ASD Inclusion: Navigating Information on Museum Websites

How do you plan a trip or a day out? If you’re like me, and the greater majority of Americans (Morning Consult, 2021), you use websites to help you plan your trip in advance. Websites are the go-to for learning about what adventures await us and if you are from a community who is differently abled, you may be looking to ensure that your visit is going to be inclusive and/or meet your specific needs. We know that those who are differently abled rely on websites as their most important resource when planning a day out (Carneiro, et. al., 2021).

Days out for many families include visiting a science museum. Yet, for those with an autism diagnosis that can mean a whole host of challenges. As part of the Building Capacity for ASD project our team has sought to support museums in enhancing their inclusive practices, especially for people on the autism spectrum. In proposing this work, we also realized it would be useful to understand how and to what effect museums communicated their offerings for those on the autism spectrum online. This National Inventory of ASD practices and programs will hopefully become a useful tool for museums and our visitors. In this post, I reflect on my research experience, share what questions I encountered in the process, and invite others to this ongoing, active discussion.

Research Logistics
I set out to understand how various museums communicated their current offerings for people on the autism spectrum. I explored inclusive exhibit spaces, helpful visitor guides, and interactive program activities, on a variety of websites. For this project, our team certainly wanted to catalogue, celebrate, and incorporate the best practices already championed by individuals and organizations in the field. Spreadsheet at the ready, I was hopeful that my findings would meaningfully inform the project by broadening understanding the current state of autism offerings in museums.

During the Spring and Summer of 2021 with the help of Shreyas Hallur, one of our project’s advisory board members, we investigated over 250 museum websites from across the United States. With so many museums in the United States we began with a limited search of the 2 largest cities in each state, selecting 4 museums from each city. We quickly realized:

• Museum websites can appear very different from each other.

• Not all information related to accessibility was in one consistent place on all museum websites and there was little consistency across the field.

• Navigating museum websites was trickier and more time-consuming than we anticipated.

This led us to the question: How do these factors compound and affect the experiences of audiences looking for accessible options for themselves or others?

Intersectionality and Minding our Blind Spots
As a queer Filipino American woman, my experiences with privilege are specific to me and my intersecting communities. There are aspects of my identity and background that have conditioned my hyperawareness of racism, homophobia, and sexism. Likewise, I have internalized, implicit biases and ignorant blind spots. Working on this project, I realized more fully the extent of my ableism and the inequitable access that grants me but not all others.

Beginning the plans and data collection for this research in early 2021, the world had lived through the COVID-19 pandemic for a year. More than ever, we were connecting with others online and virtually. For me this also meant that within my social networks, I heard from friends and others that I follow about the pandemic’s compounding effect on their disabilities and mental health. They were reflecting on the ways in which more able-bodied, neurotypical people were experiencing challenges and accommodations more frequently.

More people related to the struggles of navigating in-person activities and had to determine whether they felt comfortable with varying levels of social distancing, attendance numbers, and sanitation. Simultaneously, more benefited from increased virtual programming that reached beyond local audiences. Many also faced difficult decisions based on where, how long, and with whom they would spend time. Moreover, the combination of these factors can sometimes outweigh the great desire to participate, learn, and connect with others.

These are not unfamiliar experiences for people with special needs, sensory sensitivities, autism, or other health-related differences. This is because society historically and systemically privileges able-bodied, neurotypical communities. It was through listening to these friends, creators, and advocates that I committed to reflect on my own blind spots and bring these lessons to the center of my work practices.

For this project that meant looking through museum websites not only as a researcher, but more as a whole person. Putting myself in the shoes of someone else searching for helpful information – anything to make those difficult decisions easier.

Call to Action
The question that followed me through the rest of the research was this: What can we accomplish when our goal is not just reaching audiences, but making all their experiences with our organizations easier and better?

Although our research process found information about accessibility and inclusive experiences on many museum websites, it was sometimes frustrating and time-consuming to find. My hope is that we utilize these collective experiences from the last year to reflect on how much we ask of our audiences and experiment with ways to ease these tasks. Whether they are learning about difficult topics in exhibits, knowing the locations of quiet, sensory-friendly spaces, or searching the website for accessibility information.

What’s Next:
In the coming months we will be working to publish our results online. As well, we are currently seeking methods to create an interactive online map showcasing our findings for both museum goers and museum professionals. We hope to share these findings at both the Visitor Studies Association Conference and the Association for Science and Technology Conference.

In the meantime, personally, I’m developing a bit of a “To Do” List, or at least a list of things I plan to be mindful of, do more or do better.

My working To-Do (more) List

Notice and note my own experiences. Consider the ease (or lack thereof) in finding the information I need.
Actively seek out input from communities of all abilities and backgrounds. Implement their suggestions and share the credit.
Creatively reflect on how to expand access. Question whether there are benefits to making accessibility information more visible and accommodations available to visitors of all abilities.
Regularly recommit to learning and sharing better practices. Consider how we can work together to build on and support the accessibility initiatives of our local partners and others in and beyond our fields.

This list is likely to evolve and grow over time and I look forward to continuing my personal growth and discovery and to sharing more of our findings.

Best,

Nicole Claudio

Research Assistant

Institute for Learning Innovation

Ashanti Davis- Research Associate

We are thrilled to be able to include Ashanti Davis as part of our growing team!

Described as an Artist, Thinker, Social Justice Advocate, and Museum Practitioner who believes in the power of art and creativity to create meaningful change, Ashanti has led interdisciplinary teams in the development of unique STEM experiences and exhibitions and has acted as Chair and co-instigator for internal groups for Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility.

As someone who represents both culturally and cognitively diverse communities, she understands the necessity for cultural competency and the decolonization of museological practice and leadership, ultimately shifting the ways in which museums engage intentionally with their entire community.

Davis is an Alumni Fellow of the ASTC Leadership and Diversity Fellowship program, received a BA in Creative Arts and Communications from Richmond American International University, and an MA in Museum Studies and Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University in 2021. She looks forward to continuing her work as a leader in the Arts and Culture sector and catalyzing meaningful change through lenses of social justice, curiosity, and creativity for all communities. “

“In 2019, Dr. Falk invited me to participate in the Science Museum Futures project and I really enjoyed participating in the collaborative, high-level thinking about the field and what we need to change to better serve our communities. I’ve always appreciated that as leaders in the field, ILI uses evidence-based findings to support and bring innovation to various learning environments so that all people – everywhere – can access the opportunities they desire and deserve.” said Davis.

Ashanti is currently supporting the work taking place at ILI by contributing to several projects.

“Ashanti is emerging as a leader in free-choice learning. She brings a unique blend of insights and experiences, having worked both on the ground, directly with diverse communities and audiences, and on a national scale in a variety of leadership roles. It’s both a pleasure and a privilege and a privilege to work with her.” said Executive Director, John H. Falk, Ph.D.

Welcome to the team, Ashanti!

Data Scientists : Tools of the trade

Today our Data Scientist, David Meier, talks about some of the tools he uses on a daily basis and why he chose them.

Trying to change the oil in your car with a paintbrush would be quite a debacle. Most people have heard the adage, “The right tool for the job” and it is as valid a statement with regard to social science research as it is to car maintenance. Often, we find that several similar tools could do the job but there is one that does it just a little bit easier, quicker, and/or better than the others. Sometimes that one tool has a price tag or learning curve that is just too much to bear. Below I’ll outline what works for me.

Please keep in mind that what follows are only my personal opinions and not the official views of the Institute for Learning Innovation. My experience is genuine, with no paid endorsements for any of the tools mentioned below.

Online Surveys

The Data Scientist can’t do much without some data. I’ve used both Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey in the past and while overall I prefer Qualtrics, I’m currently using SurveyMonkey. Qualtrics certainly has more bells and whistles, however, I’ve found that their business/pricing model changes over the last few years makes them not really a viable choice for smaller organizations anymore. Although neither Qualtrics nor SurveyMonkey offers a perpetual license option, SurveyMonkey’s paid tier plans are far more reasonably priced. While SurveyMonkey lacks the myriad of intricate options of modern-day Qualtrics, for the most part it does what I need it to with their Team Premier paid tier including functionality such as question and page skip logic, crosstabs, multilingual surveys, and up to 15,000 responses per year. We heavily utilized the skip logic functionality for our California State Library-funded California Cultural Collections Protection Survey Project.

Quantitative Analyses

Okay, I’ve got the data, now what? When it comes to quantitative analyses and inferential statistical techniques, I prefer the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Honestly, I’ve always been a bit biased in favor of SPSS because that is what we used in my graduate program so I was pretty familiar with it. However, like Qualtrics, the pricing and package model for SPSS has changed over the last decade. Gone are the days of buying a perpetual license for a particular version. Now it’s all about monthly “rental” and modular addons. Instead of the continual expense of SPSS, I’ve chosen to use Stata. Stata offers perpetual licenses and lies in the sweet spot between the expense of SPSS and the sharp learning curve of R. The quantitative analyses for many of our projects such as Rural Gateways and STEM 360 were performed with Stata.

Qualitative Analyses

So that covers the numbers, but what about the letters? For qualitative analyses I’ve used both Atlas.ti and NVivo 11 Pro. Atlas.ti, it worked well enough for me but I found NVivo 11 Pro to be “cleaner” and more user-friendly with a lot more advanced functionality. Given this and its perpetual licensing, I would definitely recommend NVivo 11 Pro to both the novice and experienced qualitative researcher. Right now we are utilizing NVivo 11 Pro for the thematic coding of hundreds of documents for our Women in STEM Conference.

File sharing

Analyses are done, time to share with the team. There are a lot of file-sharing software options out there. Honestly, I find many of them to be similar with regard to price, storage, and usability. However, for a larger segment of the global population, I have found Basecamp to be the most user-friendly. Basecamp is costlier than Dropbox if you have less than five users and has less features, but I’ve found these tradeoffs for its simplicity of use to be more than worth it in the long run.

Reference Management

Okay, time to share the results with the world. A common dissemination method is the journal article or book chapter. Reference management software such as Zotero, Mendeley, and Endnote can make your writing time a lot easier, helping you to almost magically insert citations and create bibliographies. Honestly, I’ve only now come around to the idea of using one of these pieces of software. I’ve been steadily creating my own libraries of articles and splicing together my Frankenstein Master Reference List (FMRL) over the years, but a recent demonstration of the ease of citation insertion and “tracking” within a Word document has convinced me to drop the notion that using this kind of software is “cheating” and I think I’m going to give Zotero a chance. While you can’t properly code media within Zotero, or any other specific Reference Management software that I’m aware of, you can add tags and create projects/libraries within Zotero.

I hope my experience with the above-mentioned tools will help you as you continue your good work!

Be well,

David

Nicole Claudio – Research Associate

After having the opportunity to work with her as an independent contractor – we are so pleased to announce that Nicole Claudio has joined ILI as a full-time Research Associate!

Nicole is committed to understanding how museums and other free-choice learning environments can better serve all learners in their efforts to build a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them, making her a complementary fit who aligns with the shared goals and mission of our organization.

Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, she studied anthropology at Loyola University Chicago where she discovered a passion for research that strengthens community relationships. This led to a master’s degree in museum studies and specialization in museum evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle, and ultimately, to the pursual of a career in culturally responsive evaluation.

Nicole has led institutional dialogue that clarifies programmatic learning outcomes, designed study plans that captured qualitative and quantitative information, and analyzed data for useful, actionable conclusions.

Currently, she is supporting ILI by interpreting the findings of a landscape study about inclusive museum programs available to people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and working with librarians to explore youth engagement with STEM activities in rural communities.

“At the beginning of 2021, I began working with Judy Koke and Monae Verbeke as a contracted evaluator. I quickly felt a fulfilling sense of purpose. There is tremendous relief and inspiration that emerges when you collaborate with invested, thoughtful, and open-minded teams – such as those at ILI and their partners. I have had the pleasure of contributing to work that advances values I care deeply about: broadening equitable access to learning opportunities and amplifying community voices. In my new role, I am thrilled and motivated to see the positive changes we continue creating together.“

Welcome, Nicole! We are so pleased to have you on the team.

A simple way to increase children’s perceived science relevance and science self-efficacy

Analyses of data from our Multi-Modal Science Effects Study: Institute for Learning Innovation study reveal a significant and positive relationship between family science TV show watching and science reading.

Over 1,700 fifth and sixth-grade students were asked to rate their level of agreement to eight statements designed to measure a perceived relevance of science such as “Science will be useful in my future” and “Science helps me understand the world around me”. Additionally, students were asked to rate their level of agreement to four statements such as “I think science is interesting” and “I know quite a bit about science”. These particular questions were designed to measure a perceived science self-efficacy.

The ratings for both science relevance and science self-efficacy were then averaged and their relationships to the level of agreement to the questions “My family enjoys watching science shows on TV” and “My family enjoys reading science books or magazine articles” were then analyzed.

Utilizing regressions models, we discovered that for every “unit” of increase in perceived family enjoyment in watching science TV shows, we could predict a corresponding increase of .36 units in a student’s sense of science relevance and an increase of .22 units in their science self-efficacy rating.

We also found that for every “unit” of increase in perceived family enjoyment in reading science books or magazine articles, we could predict a corresponding increase of .41 units in a student’s sense of science relevance and an increase of .26 units in their science self-efficacy rating.

While the regression models we ran don’t prove causation, their statistically significant predictive quality provides us evidence that there definitely is a positive relationship between perceived family enjoyment in science TV watching and science book and magazine article reading and children’s sense of the relevance of science and their own self-efficacy with science.

So, If you have already been watching science-based TV programs with your kids, or reading books or magazines that feature science-related stories- keep it up! And if not, now is the perfect time to start.

Funders and Museums: A New Form of Partnership

This article is a conversation between a funder and a museum practitioner, exploring a new form of partnership.

How do funders support important changes in the museum field? How do museums work collaboratively with funders, while maintaining vision and integrity?

Brittany Vernon, Director of Awards & Cohorts, Evaluation and Learning & Engagement at Art Bridges has been working closely with a number of museum partners and with Judith Koke, Deputy Director of the Institute for Learning Innovation, to explore the needs of museums and museum educators and in particular to develop ways that foundations like Art Bridges might meet those needs and create new ways for funders and museums to work together to achieve common goals.

Judy Koke (JK): Art Bridges is a rather new foundation, with a specific agenda – can you tell us the core purpose of Art Bridges (AB)?

Brittany Vernon (BV): Our mission at Art Bridges is to expand access to American art. We hope to energize the art museum field in exciting and innovative ways and to support our partners in deepening their connection with their local communities, by finding new ways to share important works of art.

JK: Those of us who work in art museums have a deep commitment to the power of art to move us, to help us understand ourselves and our world, and to open a dialogue about what it means to be human. Yet, that is not true of most members of the general public. In addition to helping to travel and display art how does AB contribute to building access to art and creating opportunities for even more members of our society to understand the role art can play in their lives and community?

BV: We begin with physical access to art. To date we have shared our collection of around 100 works of art and supported traveling exhibitions for over 100 museum partners. But, beyond the more transactional funding or logistics of creating access to art – we are responsive to the field and work collaboratively to shape how art is connected to audiences in transformative and multidisciplinary ways, with a particular emphasis on reaching new audiences. That is the focus of the Learning & Engagement department that I lead. We ask our partners tough questions and consider the best approaches towards activating art for new audiences and making connections between what is displayed and the diverse daily lived experiences of visitors.

JK: In my decades of working in this field – there is often a strange relationship between funders and practitioners. Museums define partnerships with funders as transactional, but perhaps this isn’t in the best interest of the communities they serve. As practitioners, we are often frustrated that funding cycles are shorter than what is required to make significant changes within communities and organizations and that we have to work so hard to fit what our communities need into frameworks the funder develops. The funders I’ve spoken to often feel undervalued – and treated as solely a money source, rather than as a partner. They’ll ask why grantees always ask for money after a plan is already developed and with no room for input. How do you work differently?

BV: At Art Bridges rather than using the term “grantees” every museum we work with is considered a partner because we collaborate so closely. Without minimizing the importance of funding projects – yes the money matters – we also work to connect partners to each other so they may share resources. We work with our partners to explore ways of aligning proposals with our goals of funding projects that are transformative, multidisciplinary and/or community building through reaching new audiences. We work to find additional opportunities for AB support, continually identify learning opportunities, and find ways to build capacity by leveraging external experts and partners’ strengths. We do this work while honoring a deep commitment to issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and working hard to be responsive to our partners’ needs and the art museum field as a whole.

JK: Being flexible and responsive to the challenges faced by your partners seems integral to the work that Art Bridges does. Why is that so important to you as funders, and how do you incorporate flexibility and responsiveness into the way you work?

BV: Just as museums are shifting their approaches to community engagement, we too are working with and not for museums. In listening to their needs and goals we are able to improve our operations, create programs, and facilitate professional development opportunities to help our partners build their capacity to create lasting impact in their communities. We regularly hold partner convenings and focus groups, utilize surveys and ask for informal feedback as we think strategically about how to be the best resource for them. In our latest round of focus groups many of our partners expressed similar challenges and needs they anticipate in the years ahead. Issues like virtual program engagement, reaching new audiences and sustaining those relationships, and evaluating impact are just some of the things our partners are thinking about. Art Bridges will use this information to determine how we can expand the focus of our projects, alleviate some of the pressures, and encourage our partners to think beyond their limitations.

JK: How do you start these conversations with potential partners? Please share your approach.

BV: In each instance, we start by listening to the needs of our partners. Who is coming to their museum and who isn’t? Why might this be so? How does a loan or exhibition fit their museum goals and what are they hoping to accomplish with it? What do programs typically look like at their institution? What is a dream program they’ve always wanted to do and never had the support to execute? How can Art Bridges help them achieve their goals? We then collaborate through a series of conversations and build from there. Our discussions usually lead to a combination of support that funds programming and community outreach.

JK: Brittany – can you offer an example of how this worked with a partner?

BV: A recent example of this is evident in our work with a mid-size museum in the Northeast. Our partner mentioned that they were interested in exploring the idea of a virtual artist residency, a program they had never done before. They also mentioned some past success with performance art in their galleries and a desire to build on that impact. Our conversations eventually led to the museum proposing a choreographer in “virtual” residence program that would speak to their loan of Southern Souvenir No. II, ca. 1948, by Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015) from the Art Bridges collection. While Cortor was known for his often celebratory depictions of Black women and the female nude, this work also depicts a darker reality of Black life in the American South during the 1940s.This combination of celebration and destruction lent itself to a dynamic response.The final project included an evocative series of virtual dance workshops, an artist talk and an original full length dance performance in front of the Cortor. Although we worked closely together in the proposal phase, we left the details of how the program would be executed for the partner to decide.

JK: So, I’m curious – this is a new way of working with museums. Do partners ever push back? Do they feel you’re getting into their business?

BV: I am not aware of any partners being unhappy with their projects because they are the ones who drive the final product. They choose the programs they think will create the most impact for their community and that will meet their goals. We also encourage them to be realistic about what they can handle from a capacity standpoint to ensure success. Art Bridges serves in an advisory capacity to brainstorm with them about ways to think bigger and deeper. Again, we want to be the sounding board for our partners to consider other perspectives and question the status quo. We don’t require any partner to do a program they don’t want to do. Further, many of our partners use other funders for program ideas that fall outside of Art Bridges’ focus for funding, which we encourage

JK: I know you bring potential projects to a Board to approve – what are they looking for in a project?

BV: A successful Art Bridges Learning & Engagement project meets one or more of the following criteria: Transformative, Multidisciplinary and Community Building. The project described above met all three components and exemplifies the type of work that can transform the art museum field. Because the virtual component was something the museum had never tried before, this program served as a low risk pilot for a transformative way of thinking about engagement in the future. Combining dance, music and movement with the visual arts was a naturally multidisciplinary approach. And finally, by intentionally choosing a local professor and choreographer to engage their local community, new audiences were cultivated and support was built around the larger vision of the museum to install more artwork by Black artists.

JK: It is so interesting to me, that just as art museums have moved beyond thinking of their work as acquiring and presenting the best possible art to creating new ways for communities to engage with the art on their terms, Art Bridges is also moving beyond the traditional way of thinking of foundation work as more than funding and art – but as redefining partnerships. Museums are changing as society changes – and so are funders.

BV: Yes, we’re very eager to further develop our process and work with more partners. I’d encourage any art museum interested in transforming the way that they relate to and connect with existing and new audiences to contact us to start a conversation.

ABOUT ART BRIDGES

Art Bridges is the vision of philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton and is dedicated to expanding access to American art in all regions across the United States. Since 2017, Art Bridges has been creating and supporting programs that bring outstanding works of American art out of storage and into communities. Art Bridges partners with a growing network of nearly 150 museums of all sizes and locations to provide financial and strategic support for exhibition development, collection loans from Art Bridges and other museums, and programs designed to educate, inspire and deepen engagement with local audiences. The Art Bridges Collection features American masterworks of historic American art to the present day and encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, among other mediums. For more information on who we reach and how to partner with us, visit www.ArtBridgesFoundation.org and follow us @ArtBridgesFoundation.

DR. MILTON CHEN MAKES $10,000 DONATION TO INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING INNOVATION ON BEHALF OF W.K KELLOGG FOUNDATION TRUSTEE FUND

We are so pleased to share that The W.K Kellogg Foundation has presented the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) with a $10,000 donation.

Founded in 1930 by breakfast cereal pioneer, Will Keith Kellogg, WKKF is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, WKKF works with communities to improve conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work, and in life. The gift came by way of Board Trustee Dr. Milton Chen whose career has spanned four decades working at the intersection of PreK-12 education, media, and technology.

Dr. Chen was the director of research at the Sesame Workshop where he helped develop Sesame Street, The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact as well as an Assistant Professor at Harvard. He has been awarded the Elmo Award from the Sesame Workshop, Fred Rogers Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Robin Winks Award for Enhancing Public Education Understanding of the National Parks. He’s also published a book called, “Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools,” which was named one of the year’s 10 best education books by the American School Board Journal in 2010.

When asked why he chose to allocate this donation to ILI in particular, Dr. Chen said “For many years, the Institute for Learning Innovation has sought to understand how, when, where and why learning happens – a much more expansive and realistic view of learning rather than simply equating it with schooling. I believe our society would make better progress if more policymakers understood this more holistic view. I’m glad to support the work taking place at ILI”

We have deep gratitude for the Kellogg Foundation and its commitment to reshaping communities through equity and education. We know that 95% of lifelong learning happens OUTSIDE of the classroom. Yet, focus (and funding) remains centered on schools. We are profoundly appreciative of Dr. Chen and his understanding and acknowledgment of this reality.

For over 30 years we’ve gathered data that demonstrates the impact that is made when diverse groups of all ages can follow their curiosity and learn at will in settings like museums, science centers, libraries, and community groups. This generous donation will allow us to expand our reach and create a larger impact in these areas as we continue to support these community-based learning opportunities and the people working in these spaces so that people everywhere have access to the learning opportunities they want, need, and deserve.

For additional information regarding making donations please contact ILI’s Executive Director, Dr. John H. Falk at john.falk@freechoicelearning.org

For media inquiries please contact ILI’s Director of Communications stacey.sheehan@stacey.sheehan@freechoicelearning.org

Dr. John H. Falk’s latest book is here!

We are so excited to announce the arrival of this highly anticipated book. Written by our own Dr. John H. Falk, The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being provides a timely and compelling way for museum professionals to better understand and explain the benefits created by museum experiences. The key insight this book advances is that museum experiences successfully support a major driver of human behavior – the desire for enhanced well-being.

Knowingly or not, the business of museums has always been to support and enhance the public’s personal, intellectual, social, and physical well-being. Over the years, museums have excelled at this task, as evidenced by the almost indelible memories museum experiences engender. People report that museum experiences make them feel better about themselves, more informed, happier, healthier, and more enriched; all outcomes are directly related to enhanced well-being. Historically, benefits such as enhanced well-being were seen as vague and intangible, but Dr. Falk shows that enhanced well-being when properly conceptualized, can not only be defined and measured but also can be monetized.

Sadly, many in the museum world are painfully aware that what worked yesterday for museums may not work in the future as recessions and pandemics rapidly alter the landscape. Although insights about past experiences are interesting, what is needed now is a roadmap for the future.

Fortunately for museums, the public’s need for enhanced well-being will not be disappearing any time soon; enhanced well-being is now, and will always be a fundamental and ongoing human need.

What has and will change, though, is how people choose to satisfy their well-being-related needs. The Value of Museums provides tangible suggestions for how museum professionals can build on their legacy of success at supporting the public’s well-being, adapting to changing times, and remaining relevant and sustainable in the future.

For a short time, the publisher ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD have generously provided a discount code to allow those who are interested to save 30% OFF. When ordering, enter code RLFANDF30 at checkout.

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Connected Audience 2022: An Update

Exploring the Evidence for Cultural Institutions‘ Relevance

April 2022

The Connected Audience Conference 2022 will address the pressing issue of Public Value and Relevance. We invite you to join your colleagues from around the world to explore the role that cultural organizations can, do, and should play in our communities. The Conference will be virtual and take place over the week of April 25–29, 2022.

More information on featured speakers and the call for proposals for workshops and presentations can be found here.

FLAME Receives IMLS Award

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Many of us reach museum leadership roles with a strong background in the content area, but rather less training in business and leadership. That’s why we’re so thankful to be able to announce that last week we were awarded an IMLS grant that supports ILI’s work with one of our allied organizations – FLAME (the Forum for Leadership in Art Museum Education).

This National Leadership in Museums award investigates impacts on Directors/Leadership after they’ve attended 3 valuable bootcamps. The camps will cover topics such as financial acumen, strategic planning and sense-making and will offer new tools to those charged with navigating volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments.(VUCA)

Learn more here: https://www.imls.gov/news/imls-invests-63-million-museum-national-leadership-projects

Evidence that parental and caregiver support matters in their children’s STEM interest

Most people would agree with the assumption that parental and/or caregiver support greatly influences their children’s interest and attitudes towards science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Today, however, our Data Scientist, David Meier, provides us with some evidence that this is more than a hopeful assumption by sharing results from two of our projects.

Analyses of current data from our STEM 360 project reveal a significant and positive relationship between children’s perceived parental support with schoolwork and their own interest in science, technology, and math. Students were asked to rate their level of agreement to the questions, “My parents/guardians help me with my homework” and “My parents/guardians talk to me about my grades.” These ratings were then averaged and their relationship to other variables analyzed. Utilizing a regression model, we found that for every “unit” of increase in perceived parental support, we could predict a corresponding increase of .27 units in a student’s science interest rating, an increase of .13 units in their technology interest rating, and an increase of .23 units in their math interest rating.

Additionally, in analyzing data from our Camp Invention project, we found a significant and positive relationship between children’s perceived caregiver attitudes towards science and engineering and their science self-concept, science relevance, and science interest ratings. Students were asked to rate their level of agreement to the questions, “My parents want me to become a scientist or engineer when I grow up,” “My parents encourage me to do things science or engineering related,” “My parents expect me to do well in school, especially in science,” and “My parents are interested in science and engineering.” These ratings were then averaged and their relationship to other variables analyzed. Science self-concept was measured with student’s agreement with statements such as, “I know quite a bit about science and engineering.” Science relevance with statements such as, “Science and engineering will be useful in my future” and “Science and engineering help me understand the world around me.” Utilizing a regression model, we found that for every unit of increase in perceived parental attitudes towards science and engineering, we could predict a corresponding increase of .25 units in a student’s science self-concept rating, an increase of .44 units in their science relevance rating, and an increase of .24 units in their science interest rating.

While the regression models we ran don’t prove direct causation, their statistically significant predictive quality provides us evidence that there definitely is a positive relationship between perceived parental/caregiver support and STEM interest and children’s STEM-related variables. In short – if you have been wondering if all of the additional time and effort you’ve been making prior to and during the past pandemic year has made an impact on the child(ren) in your life, you can rest assured that it will likely have a positive and long term impact.

Photo Credit: Kenny Krosky

A love for learning and the VSA

Next week is my official first week as the Secretary for Visitor Studies Association. I joined the board in an interim capacity in December and I am excited to now join the group in this official capacity. The Visitor Studies Association has meant so much to me, both in a professional capacity and also as a piece of my personal identity. As I entered the field, I was nervous. I didn’t know anyone else who was interested in studying and improving the visitor experience. I hoped that others would also find value in the work I was doing. That first VSA cemented my love for learning more about why and how people engage with us – I found a home in VSA. Since, I’ve continued to look for ways to get involved in the community, make contributions, and meet people that share my values.

Over the years, I have continued to increase my involvement with VSA, becoming more connected to the community through the ZAFIG interest group, publishing in the Visitor Studies journal, attending webinars, and hosting conference sessions. Attending webinars has been great for my professional development and a great way to network. While I was in England for several years, and unable to physically attend the Visitor Studies conferences each year, I was able to continue to engage with the community through webinars like the ‘Representing Diversity: Advocating for Inclusive Development’ and Evaluation session.

Professional development to me isn’t just about learning something new, which of course I have done through VSA, but it’s also about building relationships with others and contributing to the community. So, when I heard that VSA needed an interim Secretary for the board, I decided to apply and felt fortunate to be welcomed right away. I have enjoyed working behind the scenes supporting the organization. I am particularly excited to continue to support the organization in the coming year. I hope to find additional ways to support the professional development working group, including ways to support connections between new members and those who have been involved for many years. I have met so many wonderful community members through VSA. Our community has been welcoming and supportive since my first time attending. I might only have met you in the elevator, with my former dog Chase, on my way down for a quick walk before the morning’s keynote. At a conference dining discussion. Or perhaps, you were one of the adventurous individuals who took advantage of a VSA social event. The connections I have made at VSA influence my career every day.

There are so many ways to be involved in the Visitor Studies Association – by hosting or attending webinars, donating to the annual auction, joining a focused interest group, or participating in a working group. If you haven’t yet been, attending this year’s annual conference, July 13 – 15^th, is a great way to begin to engage with the community. And if we haven’t yet met, please say hello during this year’s conference – I’ll be at each of the social hours!

Dr. Monae Verbeke

Director of Evaluation

Institute for Learning Innovation

On-Ramps to Where?

An essay by:

John H. Falk

and

Lynn D. Dierking

Introduction

For generations, educators have supported children and youth’s free-choice science learning through informal education experiences, such as visits to museums, science centers, zoos and aquariums, both school visits, as well as those with family/friends; various online programs, summer camps and scouting, and a growing array of increasingly targeted science/STEM programs in afterschool, on weekends, and over the summer months. A recent

U.K -wide survey of science educator goals, both in school and outside,² found that despite the diversity of study participants, there was widespread convergence on programmatic goals. Informal science education leaders, as well as formal education leaders, all agreed that their top two goals were: “Make science enjoyable and interesting” (91%) and “Inspire a general interest in, and long-term engagement with science” (89%). Although these survey data are from a single nation, there is no reason to question the generalizability of these findings. Formal and informal educators consistently espouse these two goals. The question is, how successful are they at achieving these goals?

As we say in the U.S., there is good news and not-so-good news. The good news is that there is a considerable, and growing body of research, showing that individually and collectively, free-choice science learning experiences do contribute to children and youth perceiving science as both enjoyable and interesting. A variety of studies have demonstrated that both individually and collectively, informal experiences result in positive attitudes toward science and its enjoyment.³ However, evidence that free-choice learning experiences in a variety of informal science settings, influence children/youths’ long-term science interests and participation in science, is less certain and more equivocal. This is the focus of this paper.

Fostering Persistent, Long-Term Interest and Participation in Science

Although there is evidence that informal science education experiences significantly contribute to children and youth’s long-term interest and participation in science,⁴ these data also suggest that such contributions are far from universal and often specific to particular programs and youth. By contrast, substantial research suggests that youth persistence in science is typically more a consequence of affective, socioemotional factors, such as identity, interest, and motivation, and sociocultural/physical factors, such as social/cultural capital, income, education, and geography.⁵

Data from a decade-long research project, SYNERGIES, in a diverse, under-resourced Portland community reinforces these findings. Over the length of this effort, we have conducted long-term investigations of the science learning pathways of 11-14-year-old youth living in this community.⁶ These data suggest that the conditions required for children/youth to move from initial, situated interest and participation, to continued in-depth engagement (interest and participation) that could lead to long-term engagement and mastery of a particular science topic/practice are much more involved and complicated than most informal science education practitioners s have assumed. A recent, in-depth study of three youth over five years who were interested in STEM,⁷ showed that informal science experiences themselves only marginally contributed to youths’ long-term science interest and engagement. Much more significant were each of the youth’s habitus,⁸ in particular, a family’s social, cultural, and financial capital. In the presence of family social, cultural and financial capital, youth persisted in their interests, including being able to access informal education experiences, However, when families because of race/ethnicity, income and other factors, did not have social, cultural and financial capital, external resources like informal education, or for that matter schools, failed to be sufficient to ensure long-term persistence in science interest and/or engagement.

Of course, one might conclude that this is the (unfortunate) nature of things – with children/youth born into privilege having benefits and opportunities, and that those less fortunate not having those benefits and opportunities, but in fact, this need not be the case. There are many other non-science-related fields/disciplines, in which organizations/institutions regularly provide supports, that enable families to surmount their social, cultural and financial capital.

Fostering Persistent, Long-Term Interest and Participation in Sports & Music Education Experiences

Organized sports are among the most popular free-choice learning activities for children and youth worldwide,⁹ involving billions of children/youth in programs associated with everything from soccer/football, to martial arts, to swimming, and more. Such programs are available for children as young as 3 or 4, with tiered programs offered to all children to continuously participate from these early pre-school ages on through childhood and adolescence. Programs are specifically designed to support age-appropriate skill development, with programs for early childhood directly connected to programs for primary school-aged children, and primary school-aged programs designed to support and feed into secondary school-aged programs. At every level, children not only learn physical and social skills, but are encouraged to proceed to the next level, particularly those who demonstrate interest and talent. Although childhood participation in such programs still requires a degree of parental social, cultural, and financial capital, these kinds of free-choice sports opportunities are designed in ways that even children of parents lacking social, cultural and financial capital are made aware of the opportunities and encouraged to have their children participate. It is not until the ages of 11-14, that youth engage in sports through school. Perhaps most notably, when children in these school-based programs exhibit specific interest or skill, the leaders of these program work diligently to communicate with parents and guardians, strongly encouraging and supporting continued participation, often connecting them with out-of-school opportunities.

An analogous situation, although perhaps not as widespread or culturally supported, exists in the performing arts, particularly music programs.¹⁰ As with sports, organized music programs outside of school, exist for young children, as well as adolescents; most performance-oriented music programs in schools do not begin until age 11. Like sports programs, the leaders of these programs reach out to the parents/guardians of children who exhibit promise, and/or interest, and then strongly support and encourage continued participation. In both sports and music, youth with talent, are keenly sought and often their continued participation is free or subsidized.

In this way, sports and music programs create clear pathways for children/youth (whether underrepresented or under-resourced), to move from novice to increasing levels of expertise. They provide an abundance of entry level programs, clear and well-signed opportunities, and scaffolding for children and youth to grow and progress at every level of expertise. Thus, long-term interest and persistence in both sports and music are not disproportionately dependent upon parental social, cultural, and financial capital, or if there are challenges, there is intentional effort to ameliorate such differences. As a consequence, unlike in the field of science, it is rare to find a professional athlete or classical musician, or for that matter, a highly skilled hobbyist in these domains, who did not come through the ranks of organized, informal education programs, since they mindfully and systemically provide support for children and youth to progress from novice to mastery.¹¹

Towards a More Systematic Approach to Long-Term, In-depth Engagement in Science

The current informal science education model is clearly deficient when it comes to supporting one of its key goals–creating opportunities for children/youth to remain interested and engaged with science long-term. Sadly, this need not be the case. If informal/free-choice science learning experiences were more thoughtfully and systemically conceptualized and organized, perhaps modeled after comparable sports and music programs, more children and youth would be able, and willing to move from interested novices to deeply engaged masters–whether vocationally or through leisure pursuits. For this change to happen, we believe three conditions should be in place. In particular, the science learning ecosystem needs to be better Customized, Coordinated and Connected.¹²

Customize opportunities: SYNERGIES research shows that a major constraint for children/youth in science was the fact that there were too few opportunities to engage in their specific interests. By customizing informal science resources in the ecosystem, that is considering the interests of individual youth, rather than providing one-size-fits-all programs. Typically, most informal STEM programming is designed as a generic introduction to a particular topic, which piques interest, but leaves children and youth seeking the next step, which is more difficult to identify or may not exist. One of the youths in SYNERGIES research attended a community-based program on coding. The program succeeded in triggering his interest in coding, but the program curriculum was essentially the same every year, minimizing the opportunity for him, and other youth, to extend their knowledge to other coding languages (e.g., Python and JavaScript). If such programs offered opportunities for repeat-attendees to learn new skills and continue to be challenged in their learning, such programs might better be able to provide the support youth need to persist in their interest.

Coordinate resources: A major constraint for youth when forming (and trying to sustain) science interests is the uncoordinated nature of various science offerings within different settings and contexts. This makes it extremely difficult for youth to find “the next thing,” that might be aligned with their interests. The lack of coordination, and consistent “signposting” of experiences and opportunities, is one of the reasons why only children/youth with parents who have social, cultural, and financial capital persist in their interests, since these parents are able to navigate the uncharted waters of the ecosystem, while parents with less capital in these areas, find it difficult to support their children. SYNERGIES findings suggest that successful ecosystem coordination requires all science providers in an ecosystem to commit to on-going and continuous communication among and between themselves, ensuring that opportunities and options are clearly and continuously signposted for children/youth and their families.

Connect learners to resources: As SYNERGIES data so strongly show,¹³ the social networks and connections that an individual has can strongly influence his/her ability to access resources and opportunities in a learning ecosystem.¹⁴ The results of differing levels of social, cultural, and financial capital were quite apparent in the differing pathways of the youth in this study. A major challenge in the future will be to develop effective supports to enhance “Navigational Knowledge” for families and other mentors. Possible solutions include the cultivation of science-specific mentors,¹⁵ in which adult volunteers were hired specifically to serve as brokers between youth and the science learning resources in a community. As Ching, Santo, Hoadley and Peppler, suggest, such brokering entails engaging in practices that connect youth to “events, programs, internships, individuals and institutions related to their interests to support them beyond the window of a specific program or event.”¹⁶

If the free-choice learning organizations/institutions within the science learning ecosystem, along with schools, can implement these kinds of Customized, Coordinated and Connected mechanisms, it seems possible that they could not only continue to achieve their goal of fostering enhanced short-term interest and enthusiasm for science, but equally meet the goal of stimulating and supporting long-term interest and participation in science, which was Mac Laetsch’s vision and dream.

End Notes

1 Preprint release with permission of editors. Citation: Falk, J. H. and Dierking, L. D. (in press). On-Ramps to Where? In. J. Diamond and S. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Amplifying Informal Science Learning. Routledge.

²Falk, J.H., Dierking, L.D., Osborne, J., Wenger, M., Dawson, E. & Wong, B. (2015). Analyzing science education in the U.K.: Taking a system-wide approach. Science Education, 99(1), 145–173.

3 e.g., Bonnette, R. Crowley, K. & Schunn, C. (2019). Falling in love and staying in love with science: Ongoing informal science experiences support fascination for all children. International Journal of Science Education, 41, 1626 – 1643.

Bevan, B., Dillon, J., Hein, G.E., Macdonald, M., Michalchik, V., Miller, D., Root, D., Rudder, L., Xanthoudaki, M., & Yoon, S. (2010). Making science matter: Collaborations between informal science education organizations and schools. Washington, D.C.: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education.

Falk, J.H., Dierking, L.D., Swanger, L., Staus, N., Back, M., Barriault, C., Catalao, C., Chambers, C., Chew, L.-L., Dahl, S.A., Falla, S., Gorecki, B., Lau, T.C., Lloyd, A., Martin, J., Santer, J., Singer, S., Solli, A., Trepanier, G., Tyystjärvi, K. & Verheyden, P. (2016). Correlating science center use with adult science literacy: An international, cross-institutional study. Science Education, 100(5), 849–876.

Falk, J.H., Pattison, S., Meier, D., Livingston, K. & Bibas, D. (2018). The contribution of science-rich resources to public science interest. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 55(3), 422-445.

National Research Council. (2009). Learning science in informal environments. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2015). Identifying and supporting productive STEM programs in out-of-school settings. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Stocklmayer, S.M., Rennie, L.J. & Gilbert, J.K. (2010). The roles of the formal and informal sectors in the provision of effective science education. Studies in Science Education, 46(1), 1–44.

4 Crowley, K., Barron, B.J., Knutson, K., & Martin, C. (2015). Interest and the development of pathways to science. In K. A. Renninger, M. Nieswandt, and S. Hidi (Eds.). Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning (pp 297-313). Washington DC: AERA

Falk, J. H., & Needham, M. D. (2013). Factors contributing to adult knowledge of science and technology. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50(4), 431-452.

Jones, M. G., Childers, G., Corin, E., Chesnutt, K., & Andre, T. (2019). Free choice science learning and STEM career choice. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 9(1), 29-39.

Maltese, A. & Tai, R. (2010). Eyeballs in the fridge: Sources of early interest in science. International Journal of Science Education, 32(5), 669-685.

Rahm, J., & Moore, J. C. (2016). A case study of long‐term engagement and identity‐in‐practice: Insights into the STEM pathways of four underrepresented youths. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(5), 768-801.

Tai, R. H., Liu, C. Q., Maltese, A. V., & Fan, X. (2006). Planning early for careers in science. Science, 312, 1143-1144.

Venville, G., Rennie, L., Hanbury, C., & Longnecker, N. (2013). Scientists reflect on why they chose to study science. Research in Science Education, 43(6), 2207-2233.

5 Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B. & Wong, B. (2012). Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus: How Families Shape Children’s Engagement and Identification with Science. American Educational Research Journal. 49(5), 881-908.

Bell, P., Bricker, L., Reeve, S., Zimmerman, H. T., & Tzou, C. (2013). Discovering and supporting successful learning pathways of youth in and out of school: Accounting for the development of everyday expertise across settings. In LOST opportunities (pp. 119-140). Springer, Dordrecht.

Shaby, N., Staus, N., Dierking, L. & Falk, J. (2021). Pathways of interest and participation: How STEM-interested youth navigate a learning ecosystem. Science Education, 105(4), 628-652. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21621

6 cf., Falk, J.H., Dierking, L.D., Staus, N., Penuel, W., Wyld, J. & Bailey, D. (2016). Understanding youth STEM interest pathways within a single community: The Synergies Project. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 6(4), 369-384.

Staus, N.L., Falk, J.H., Penuel, W., Dierking, L., Wyld, J., & Bailey, D. (2020). Interested, disinterested, or neutral: Exploring STEM interest pathways in a low income urban community. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 16(6). DOI: https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/7927

7 Shaby, N., Staus, N., Dierking, L. & Falk, J. (2021). Pathways of interest and participation: How STEM-interested youth navigate a learning ecosystem. Science Education, 105(4), 628-652. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21621

8 cf., Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B. & Wong, B. (2012). Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus: How Families Shape Children’s Engagement and Identification with Science. American Educational Research Journal. 49(5), 881-908.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education. (pp. 241-258). Westport, CT: Greenwood.

9 cf., Kjonniksen, L., Anderssen, N. & Wold, B. (2009). Organized youth sport as a predictor of physical activity in adulthood. Scandinavian journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 19(5), 646-654.

Vertonghen, J. & Theeboom, M. (2010). The social-psychological outcomes of martial arts practice among youth: A review. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, 9(4)), 528-537.

1⁰ Hesser, B., & Bartleet, B.L. (Eds.). (2020). Music as a global resource: Solutions for cultural, social, health, educational, environmental, and economic issues (5th Edition). New York: Music as a Global Resource.

¹¹ Kjonniksen, L., Anderssen, N. & Wold, B. (2009). Organized youth sport as a predictor of physical activity in adulthood. Scandinavian journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 19(5), 646-654.

Tunstall, T. (2012). Changing lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the transformative power of music. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.

1² cf., Falk, J.H. & Dierking, L.D (2018). Viewing science learning through an ecosystem lens: A story in two parts (pp. 9-30). In R D. Corrigan, C. Buntting, A. & J. Loughran (eds.) Navigating the changing landscape of formal and informal science learning opportunities, pp 9-29. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

1³ Shaby, N., Staus, N., Dierking, L. & Falk, J. (2021). Pathways of interest and participation: How STEM-interested youth navigate a learning ecosystem. Science Education, 105(4), 628-652. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21621

1⁴ Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education. (pp. 241-258). Westport, CT: Greenwood.

1⁵ e.g., Allen, S., Kastelein, K., Mokros, J., Atkinson, J., & Byrd, S. (2020). STEM Guides: professional brokers in rural STEM ecosystems. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 10(1), 17-35.

Falk, J.H. & Griesmer, R. (2019). Future trajectories for STEM education at Virginia Air and Space Center. Dimensions, 20(1), 31-36.

1⁶ Ching, D., Santo, R., Hoadley, C., & Peppler, K. (2016). Not just a blip in someone’s life: Integrating brokering practices into out-of-school programming as a means of supporting and expanding youth futures. On the Horizon, 24(3), p. 296.

Special thanks to Rifkin Professional Karate for providing the featured image for this post. https://rifkinprokarate.com/

The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being

We are pleased to announce the timely arrival of a new book written by our own Dr. John Falk.

“Written by one of the world’s leading authorities on the public use of museums, The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being provides a timely and compelling way for museum professionals to better understand and explain the benefits created by museum experiences. The key insight this book advances is that museum experiences successfully support a major driver of human behavior – the desire for enhanced well-being. Knowingly or not, the business of museums has always been to support and enhance the public’s personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. Over the years, museums have excelled at this task, as evidenced by the almost indelible memories museum experiences engender. People report that museum experiences make them feel better about themselves, more informed, happier, healthier and more enriched; all outcomes directly related to enhanced well-being. Historically, benefits such as enhanced well-being were seen as vague and intangible, but Falk shows that enhanced well-being, when properly conceptualized, can not only be defined and measured, but also can be monetized.

However, as many in the museum world are painfully aware, what worked yesterday for museums may not work in the future as recessions and pandemics rapidly alter the landscape. Although insights about past experiences are interesting, what is needed now is a roadmap for the future. Fortunately for museums, the public’s need for enhanced well-being will not be disappearing any time soon; enhanced well-being is now, and will always be, a fundamental and on-going human need. What has and will change, though, is how people choose to satisfy their well-being-related needs. The Value of Museums provides tangible suggestions for how museum professionals can build on their legacy of success at supporting the public’s well-being, adapting to changing times, and remaining relevant and sustainable in the future.”

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538149201/The-Value-of-Museums-Enhancing-Societal-Well-Being

Portal To The Public Wins Enduring Achievement Award

ARIS ANNOUNCES 2020 and 2021 BROADER IMPACTS AWARDEES

Award recipients to be recognized during the annual summit.

May 11, 2021 – The Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) today announced three Broader Impacts (BI) Champions who have contributed significantly to establishing and advancing the broader impacts of scientific research.

2021 BI Champions:

· Alan Leshner, former Chief Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

· Kei Koizumi, Chief of Staff, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

· Brooke Smith, Director of Public Engagement with Science, The Kavli Foundation

“This year’s class of BI Champions represent the past, present, and future of public engagement and are responsible for monumental strides in broader impacts. We look forward to honoring them during the annual Summit,” said Susan Renoe, Ph.D., PI and Executive Director, ARIS. During the May 11 awards ceremony at the Broader Impacts Summit, the BI Champions will be individually recognized for their work.

Several other awards will be presented during the event, including individuals who were not recognized in 2020 due to extenuating circumstances:

· Impact Goals Award

o 2020: Matt Wilkins, Galactic Polymath Education Studio

o 2021: Courtney Price, The Ohio State University;

Zachary Constan, Michigan State University

· Impact Innovations Award

o 2020: Center for Educational Networks and Impacts, Virginia Tech – Lisa McNair will receive the award on behalf of the Center of Educational

Networks and Impacts.

o 2021: Chelsie Boodoo, Michigan State University;

Daniel Puentes, Michigan State University;

Spectrum Discovery Area and SciNation on the Flathead

Reservation – Whisper-Camel Means will receive the award on

behalf of Spectrum Discovery Area and SciNation on the Flathead

Reservation.

· Enduring Achievement Award

o 2020: Portal to the Public, The Institute for Learning Innovation – Dennis Schatz will receive the award on behalf of Portal to the Public.

o 2021: USA National Phenology Network – Theresa Crimmins will receive the

award on behalf of the USA National Phenology Network.

The following individuals serve on the ARIS Awards Committee: Matthew Johnson, Chair, Penn State University; Elizabeth Ambos, former Executive Officer, Council on Undergraduate Research; Nathan Meier, University of Nebraska; Michael Jacobson, Binghamton University; John Saltmarsh, University of Massachusetts, Boston; and Laurie Van Egeren, Michigan State University.

About ARIS:

The Advancing Research Impacts in Society (ARIS) Center works with U.S. and international scientists and engagement practitioners to build capacity, advance scholarship, grow partnerships, and provide resources to help them engage with and demonstrate the impact of research in their communities and society. The ARIS Center emphasizes support for serving traditionally underserved populations while providing inclusive public engagement to ensure a diverse science workforce.

Founded in September 2018 after being awarded a $5.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), ARIS has advisors, partners, research, and higher educational support from more than 25 leading organizations and from experts around the world.

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Principal Components Analysis – and everyone’s favorite sandwich!

Is your survey scale or instrument measuring one, and only one psychological construct? How do you know? What does it matter?

As our Data Scientist, David Meier will tell you, refining your survey scales to ensure they are measuring unique constructs is critical for the validity of your inferential statistical interpretations. You can’t truly know if someone likes peanut butter or jelly more if your scale is asking them about peanut butter and jelly simultaneously. That’s where dimension reduction techniques come in. Dimension reduction techniques help you discover how many “dimensions” are being captured by your survey scale questions based on the responses of your participants. Using a dimension reduction technique, you could discover that your peanut butter and jelly questions really have two dimensions, a “peanut butter liking” dimension and a “jelly liking” dimension. Armed with this knowledge, you can put the really “peanut buttery” questions into their own scale, the really “jelly” ones into theirs, and cut out the ones that don’t seem to capture more of one than the other.

There are several dimension reduction techniques out there, but Dave’s “go-to” is Principal Components Analysis (PCA). While more specialized and complex dimension reduction techniques exist, PCA is relatively straightforward and a great place to start your dimension reduction efforts. Below are three links to works that employed PCA with regard to Student Attitudes Toward STEM Education, STEM Interest, and STEM Career Interest, one of which even co-authored by our very own Lynn Dierking and John Falk!

JOTS v36n1 – Complete Issue (ed.gov)

Tyler-Wood et al (2010).pdf (edc.org)

(14) (PDF) Understanding youth STEM interest pathways within a single community: the Synergies project (researchgate.net)

Measuring Organizational Return on Investment

This is the third in a series of blogs I have written about the importance and feasibility of putting an actual dollar figure on the value created by cultural experiences (find previous blogs here and here). The premise of all these pieces begins with an appreciation of the fact that cultural institutions currently have a credibility problem.

The Value of Cultural Institutions

The issue of demonstrating, let alone establishing the value that cultural institutions such as museums create has long been essential; but never more so than today. With institutions closing down due to the Covid-19 pandemic and revenues becoming harder to generate, institutional leaders and their boards of directors are scrambling to find answers.

The sector has argued that they are essential organizations, that they deliver genuine value to their communities. Despite numerous efforts aimed at making this case, recent history suggests that past approaches have not been totally persuasive. For better or worse, these days most political decisions related to value/worth ultimately revolve around, or more accurately devolve, into issues of money. Specifically, policymakers want to know whether the benefits that accrue from the existence/use of an institution are truly worth the cost required to maintain and run it. This “calculus” is typically referred to as Return on Investment.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment, or ROI for short, is one of the most common ways investors, and policymakers and funders, evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments to each other.¹ ROI is a standardized way to measure the performance or value of something, thus allowing direct comparisons between similar or even dissimilar investments. It is determined by calculating whether the benefit (return) of something is greater than or less than what it cost to create that benefit (investment). The result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio with return always as the top number and investment as the bottom number. For example, a good, overall ROI in both the for-profit and non-profit world is about 10%, or a return of $1.10 for every $1.00 spent, with anything over 20% considered excellent.²It is not uncommon for non-profits to have an even lower return on investment rates.³

Pilot Research

I recently completed a pilot study involving six museums across three countries – an indoor/outdoor nature and science museum (U.S.), virtual art and cultural museum (Canada), a living history museum (U.S.), a state historical museum (U.S.), a zoo (Canada) and an interactive science museum (Finland). Two data sets were independently collected from the users of these institutions. The first data set measured the benefits, framed in terms of enhanced well-being, that museum users derived as a consequence of a recent museum experience. A second data set measured the value, in Dollars (U.S. or Canadian) or Euros that this population of users perceived these specific, enhanced well-being benefits were worth. By combining data from these two sets of data I was able to convert the well-being benefits derived from museum use into a monetary value; the financial worth of the enhanced well-being generated by use of the museum. For more information on the theory and findings from these studies please see my earlier blogs (here and here). For five of the six museums involved in this pilot research, the sample sizes were large enough to confidently calculate the museum’s ROI.

Not surprisingly, ROI varied from institution to institution, but overall the numbers for each institution were very satisfying.⁴ For example, the smallest museum, History Nebraska, with an annual budget of around $600,000 generated value on the order of $10,000,000. This is an eye-popping 16,667% ROI. While the largest institution, Toronto Zoo with an annual budget of $30.3 million had an even greater 18,285% ROI – this was based on the creation of a total public value in enhanced well-being of more than $550 million (U.S.). The other institutions in my sample had equally striking ROIs. For example, the ROI of Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, with a total annual operating cost of $13.5 million, was 12,741%. Even a living history museum such as Billings Farm & Museum, with enormous overhead and thus greater relative annual operating costs than most museums, had a more than enviable ROI of 6,738%. Although only a single, relatively small sample, the investigation of just a single, one-off workshop program offered by Myseum of Toronto also provided a very useful measure of impact. This limited, 2020 virtual program cost a relatively small amount of money to produce, with the two iterations of the workshop costing Myseum a combined $2,754 to produce. Although only serving 197 people in total, Myseum’s ROI for these two workshops was a hefty 21,116%, or $211+ returned value for every dollar spent.

Implications

The use of this kind of tangible, Return on Investment type of data should make it possible for cultural institution professionals to not only speak the language of policymakers, but convincingly and directly demonstrate that the value they deliver to the community is more than equal to that of any other sector. The bottom line, at least based on this preliminary work, is that the value generated by cultural institutions, in this case, museum experiences, is truly impressive and clearly a value worth investing in. Specifically, these data show that, on average, every dollar given to a museum is likely to generate something on the order of $100 to $200 dollars in value to the community. These return figures, though, are just the tip of the iceberg since museums/cultural institutions provide value in numerous other ways beyond just the experiences they provide. However, even if one just focused on these experience values, there is more than meets the eye. The ROI numbers cited above represent average value delivered, not, as I will describe more fully in a subsequent blog, the value delivered to those most in need. Those values are even higher.

For those wishing to learn more about this work and the deeper and important research that underlays these ideas I encourage you to read my forthcoming book – The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being.⁵ Those wanting to potentially be part of further work in this area, please feel free to contact me at john.falk@freechoicelearning.org .

End Notes

Weinstein, M. & Bradburd, R. (2013). The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving. New York: Columbia University Press.
Peterson, R. (2018). 10 experts explain what is a good ROI and why. BarnRaisers.com https://barnraisersllc.com/2018/05/28/good-roi-experts-explain-industries/ Retrieved March 14, 2021.
Schmidt, M. (2021). Return of Investment metric ROI measures profitability. Solution Matrix, LTD. https://www.business-case-analysis.com/return-on-investment.html Retrieved March 14, 2021.
NOTE: Given the challenges of 2020, all ROIs, with the exception of Myseum, were calculated using 2019 cost and attendance figures.
Falk, J.H. (2021). The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield.

UPDATE: Is it Actually Possible to put a Dollar Figure on your Organization’s Public Value?

An update by John H. Falk, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Institute for Learning Innovation

Last July I wrote a blog proposing that it might be possible to actually put a dollar figure on the value created by cultural experiences. Here’s a quick recap of that original blog and an update on where this effort currently stands.

Recap – Cultural Institutions Have a Problem

The issue of demonstrating, let alone establishing the value cultural institutions create has long been essential; but never more so than today. With institutions closing down due to the Covid-19 pandemic and funding drying up, institutional leaders and their boards of directors are scrambling to find answers.

The sector has argued that they are essential organizations, that they deliver genuine value to their communities. Despite numerous efforts aimed at making this case, the evidence would suggest that current approaches have not been terribly persuasive. For better or worse, these days most political decisions related to value/worth ultimately revolve around, or more accurately devolve, into issues of money. Specifically, policy makers want to know whether the benefits that accrue from the existence/use of an institution are truly worth the cost required to maintain and run it.

When framing issues in monetary terms it is important to appreciate that what is important, ultimately, is not the actual dollar figure but the sense of value that dollar figure represents. Money enables people to quickly and reliably compare the worth of commodities, even wildly disparate goods and services such as a basket of apples, a haircut or a visit to a museum. What I proposed a half a year ago – you can read the entire blog here – was that institutions like museums, historic sites, operas, symphonies, arts festivals, natural area parks and preserves have long understood the need to demonstrate that they make a significant monetary contribution to their community but historically have not been able to agree on what the nature of that contribution is, let alone what it is worth. I argue that community policy makers and the public actually already believe that these institutions are “good,” in fact, they intuitively understand that these types of institutions measurably enhance the overall WELL-BEING¹ of the individuals who engage with them. What is currently lacking, though, is the ability of cultural institutions to make this value both explicit and tangible.

In other words, the real question becomes how to define, measure and monetize enhanced well-being.

Recap – Defining and Monetizing Well-Being is the Solution

Step one is defining this idea of “well-being.” Importantly, I do NOT define well-being in the same way as most currently do, that is from a purely psychological perspective, or as it has become popularly thought of as a synonym for happiness. Rather, I define well-being from an evolutionary perspective.² Biologically speaking, well-being refers to the on-going and never-ending effort every human engages in to achieve personal, intellectual, social and physical balance in their life. Research has shown, that attaining these types of well-being-related outcomes are ultimately what allow a person to feel like they have lived a satisfying and successful life.⁴ For further details, I again would refer you back to my initial blog, or if you really want the full details, you can read my 2018 book Born to Choose: Evolution, Self and Well-Being.²

From this perspective, achieving well-being is a fundamental goal of life, and thus the reason people utilize cultural institutions is that they perceive that these experiences enhance their sense of life-balance; specifically, their personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. People say things like “museums relax and recharge me,“ or “I came away inspired,” or “I learned more about myself,” or “I built stronger bonds with my loved ones.“ Statements such as these describe the various ways in which these experiences enhance people’s well-being and my research, and that of others has shown that users of cultural institutions do indeed consistently report having these kinds of enhanced well-being outcomes.³

Thus, if as I have argued, enhanced well-being is both fundamental to human survival and fitness and it is an outcome that cultural institutions deliver, then it follows that if it was possible to both measure and monetize these outcomes, it should be possible to show that cultural experiences generate significant monetary value.

Six months ago, I suggested that I believed I had come up with a way to both validly and reliably measure and monetize these kinds of enhanced well-being-related outcomes. Which in turn would make it possible for cultural sector leaders to more persuasively argue the case for the importance of their institutions. I also honestly stated at the time, that this “solution” was only a solution in theory. I needed to actually test my ideas. I needed to run a pilot study, collect real data from real users, and analyze that data to see if it was indeed possible to measure and monetize the value of cultural experiences. I ended my blog with a request for volunteers. Happily, a half dozen institutions were willing to take a flier on this idea; all from the museum sector.

Research Update

I have now conducted a pilot study of the value of museum experiences, collecting data from six types of museums across three countries – a natural history/science museum (U.S.), a virtual art and cultural museum (Canada), a living history museum (U.S.), a state historical museum (U.S.), a zoo (Canada) and an interactive science museum (Finland). Though the findings are preliminary, and some of the data is still coming in as I write this blog, I can now report initial estimates of the monetary value museum experiences deliver.

As suggested above, in theory achieving a sense of heightened well-being, particularly the enhanced personal intellectual, social and physical well-being that museums and other types of cultural experiences afford, should be very important to people. It was reassuring to discover that my data showed that people do indeed value these types of enhanced well-being outcomes. Consistently across both institution type and across multiple countries, people indicated that achieving these outcomes were worth a considerable amount of money, with the actual value increasing as a function of their duration. In other words, even a short-term and ephemeral increase in personal, intellectual, social or physical well-being was valuable, but the longer that benefit lasted, the more it was worth. Importantly, even the lowest assigned dollar values to any one of these possible outcomes was significant, typically exceeding by a factor of 2 to 4 times the $10 average cost of a museum admission.⁵

However, this preliminary research showed that a typical museum experience rarely engendered only a single well-being outcome. Most users reported multiple types of well-being-related benefits from their museum experience and most of these benefits persisted for days, and often weeks. Thus, the perceived dollar value⁶ of a museum experience ranged from a minimum value of around $200 dollars per person, per experience to in excess of $1,200 or more per person, per experience, with an average museum experience being assessed as being worth between $700 and $800 per person.⁷ Given the historic popularity of museum experiences, with use numbers for most museums being on the order of several hundred thousand individual uses per year, the annual value to the public generated by these experiences are in the neighborhood of hundreds of millions of dollars – representing in most cases, an order of magnitude greater financial benefit to the community than what it cost to produce those benefits. These are significant figures, an indication of just how considerable is the value of museum, and by extension, other comparable cultural experiences.

This is an On-Going Story …

I do not want to imply that calculating the dollar value of cultural institution/organization experiences is easy, but I can now say it is possible. Obviously, this effort has just begun and will require additional testing, but the initial proof of concept involving several hundred museum users from across six institutions and three countries provides initial evidence for the inherent validity and reliability of this approach.

I am guardedly optimistic that this new approach will make it possible to define and measure the financial benefit of a wide range of cultural experiences. Making it possible for sector professionals, as well as the public and policymakers, to compare the value of cultural institution experiences to other goods and services, both those delivered by the for-profit sector as well those delivered by the non-profit sector. Finally, as suggested above, it should also make it possible to directly assess the value of cultural experiences generated to the costs associated with creating those experiences; known in economics as “return on investment” (ROI). Although this approach is clearly still in its infancy, I envision this methodology, or one like it, eventually becoming standard practice across the field.

Although my colleagues and I continue to collect and analyze the data from this initial pilot study, it is not too soon to begin thinking about the full-scale implementation of this research approach. If you think your institution might be interested in being among the first to systematically calculate the financial value of the experiences you provide, please contact me at john.falk@freechoicelearning.org . Otherwise, stay tuned, as I plan to share additional results in a future blog as well as in my forthcoming book The Value of the Museum Experience: Enhanced Well-Being (Rowman-Littlefield).

End Notes

[1] In my original blog, I introduced a new term Equipoise to describe the phenomenon I was focused on, rather than using the more familiar, and apt term Well-Being. At the time, I naively thought it would be easier to just start with a new term rather than deal with all the pop-psychology baggage that currently surrounds the term well-being. I was wrong. Admitting my tactical error, I have gone back to using the term Well-Being, and of course, doing my best to deal with the linguistic baggage that surrounds this term.

²Falk, J. H. (2018). Born to choose: Evolution, self, and well-being. New York: Routledge.

³cf., Falk, J. H. (in press). The Value of the Museum Experience: Enhanced well-being. Lanham, MD: Rowman-Littlefield.

⁴for review of the data, see Falk, J. H. (2018). Born to choose: Evolution, self, and well-being. New York: Routledge.

⁵Based on average museum adult admission charge of about $10.

cf., Smithsonian Institution (2007). Going free? Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and general admission fees. Technical Report. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy and Analysis. https://www.si.edu/Content/opanda/docs/Rpts2007/07.04.Admissions.Final.pdf Retrieved January 3, 2021.

Grant, D. (2019). How much is too much? On the difficulty of calculating museum admission prices. New Criterion.com. https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/how-much-is-too-much Retrieved January 3, 2021.

⁶Since values did not significantly vary between countries, for convenience all values were converted to U.S. dollars.

⁷Falk, J.H. & Meier, D. (in prep.). Monetizing the value of museum experiences: A preliminary study. Museum Management and Curatorship.

Special Announcement- Network Affiliations

As you know, here at ILI we spend a lot of time thinking (and talking about) learning.

How to broaden access and participation, what supports effective learning and who gets to be considered an expert? It’s all a part of our ongoing quest to change the narrow ways in which people think about learning. Most people think about learning in classroom settings – when in fact, we’re learning every day, everywhere. Having moved from apprenticeship, through an industrial model of learning, today we find ourselves in the learner- led era, where people choose what where and when they learn.

That’s why we’ve opened the door to welcome in a coalition of others who are similarly dedicated to changing the landscape of learning. Other organizations like Portal to the Public (helping experts connect with general audiences), FLAME (providing professional development for education leaders), and the Science Communication Trainers Network ( a community of practice for SciComm researchers, trainers, and practitioners) are now affiliated with ILI , extending our reach and strengthening our impact.

Watch this space for a series introducing our new affiliated organizations and our projects as we work together to build inclusion and access.

Evaluating Differently

For many of us working in informal science learning, we’re just coming out of our busiest season of the year. Projects wrapped up. A new administration took office. We navigated a holiday season unlike any other. And for most, several federal and private grants were due.

Among other things, 2020 brought with it a heightened awareness of the disparities in our communities which has pushed many of us to think more carefully about the ways in which we do our work. For my colleagues and I here at ILI, that included considering how we might evaluate differently. Whether it be that we needed to find innovative ways to evaluate the influence and reach programs or how and whose voices we represent in our work.

For me, last year has been a deeply reflective process in understanding how I represent the voices of others and how I come to know what I know. A significant sum of my work focuses on expanding how and who we reach in informal science learning. Frequently, we’ve used surveys and other traditional qualitative evaluation methods to measure dimensions such as reach, attitudes, interest, and knowledge gain. These tools are tied to these methodologies that have been tested over a long period of time and can offer us an opportunity to learn about our existing visitors. However, they can also leave a gap in truly knowing about communities. The longer I am a part of the field, the more I realize the methods we so heavily rely on were most often developed within the same silos as the cultural constructs that have disenfranchised so many. It leads me, and many in our field, to wonder whose voices are represented in our tools? How do our ways of knowing develop? And which ways of knowing are not represented in our work?

For instance, when we talk about capital, what definition of capital are we discussing? Over the last four years we have worked on an NSF project studying the changes in science capital of young adults participating in a park-based informal science learning experience. What we began to recognize is that the ways we describe the science-related activities participants could take part in were not necessarily meaningful to the communities we surveyed. Not to say that these individuals and communities are not engaging in free-choice science pursuits; it’s simply that these other ways of knowing are not recognized in our programs. While we may value activities such as visiting science centers and libraries, some communities may not value these as much as fishing or farming, activities that are as just as much about science. These other ways of knowing and engaging may not fall under middle-class, Western ways of engaging, but it is essential we recognize them in our work.

What do we do then, when our tools do not represent and meet the needs of our community? In many cases, we are grappling with these very ideas. In seminars hosted by Visitor Studies (referenced below) and papers shared on InformalScience.org, several leaders in our field are helping us think about these very questions. In one VSA webinar spring, Dr. Cecilia Garibay led us in a discussion on advocating and supporting the work of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. The conversation was lively, including a fair bit on how and in what ways diverse voices should be included in evaluation work. It goes without saying, without diverse voices at the table, both in the design process and in the evaluation itself, our studies are unlikely to be reflective of the people they represent. What I have found to be missing from the conversation was a reflection on our reliance upon tools that may or may not serve their function. The tools we use to evaluate may not be well-suited for the projects we develop.

I have reflected more deeply on how I can improve on this in my own work. In what ways can I learn from the people I am working with – and those already doing good work in the field? In the case of the previous example, we tested the science capital tool with a multi-month process of combined focus groups and counter storytelling. It has been through these qualitative stories that we recognized significant omissions in the response options in our primary evaluation tool. While this may seem like an easy fix, how often do we stop to re-validate our tools for our communities? How often do we consider what methods and tools would be culturally appropriate for our communities? And how often do we step outside our boxes to invite our communities in to collaborate in the evaluation design process? Are we asking ourselves how our communities would define impact or success?

What’s next in understanding and evaluating other ways of knowing? We’re still unsure. But what we do know is that ILI, our networks, and the community around us are thinking critically about this topic. We’d love to hear more about your successes, needs, and challenges in doing this work as we learn together. For more information please see the resources below. To discuss, please contact the writer.

Dr. Monae Verbeke

Director of Evaluation

Institute for Learning Innovation

monae.verbeke@freechoicelearning.org

Past Webinars and Papers:

Effective and Equitable Community Engagement: Collaborating with Integrity and Reciprocity

https://www.astc.org/event/effective-and-equitable-community-engagement-collaborating-with-integrity-and-reciprocity/

Shifting Paradigms: Embracing Multiple Worldviews in Science Centers

https://www.astc.org/astc-dimensions/shifting-paradigms-embracing-multiple-worldviews-in-science-centers/

Attending to Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion in the time of Coronavirus

https://www.visitorstudies.org/past-topics

Fu, A. C., Kannan, A., Shavelson, R. J., Peterson, L., & Kurpius, A. (2016). Room for rigor: Designs and methods in informal science education evaluation. Visitor Studies, 19(1), 12–38.

Peterman, K., Verbeke, M., & Nielsen, K. (2020). Looking Back to Think Ahead: Reflections on Science Festival Evaluation and Research. Visitor Studies, 23(2), 205-217.

Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative inquiry, 8(1), 23-44.

Future Webinars:

The State of DEAI in Museums and What it Means for Visitor Studies
Wednesday, February 10, 2021, at 4:00-5:00 pm Eastern

Register Here

SciComm Trainers Network: Building a community committed to equity in science engagement

Whether it’s watching a demonstration at a science fair, learning new ideas at a science museum, or simply talking to a scientist, the transfer of knowledge from scientists to members of their communities represents a clear example of the free-choice learning championed by the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI). As such ILI has formed a strategic partnership with the SciComm Trainers Network (SCTN) to support its long-term growth and sustainability.

SCTN is a community of science communication researchers, trainers, and practitioners. Network members range from freelance consultants to leaders of large organizations committed to improving the public’s engagement with science. The group was born out of a series of meetings that began in 2017 with the goal of connecting established and emerging leaders who were passionate about science communication. In 2019, the SciComm Trainers Network was formally established with an aim to cultivate community among participants, professionalize the field of SciComm training, and broaden participation in the network and the field. To accomplish this work, the network embraced four guiding principles.

Inspiring Community. Participants build connections and cultivate trusting, positive relationships that enrich and enliven all participants’ work and support the wellbeing of everyone in the network.
Equitable Inclusion. Participants create an empowering network that seeks out and elevates a wide variety of perspectives, experiences, and identities, especially those that have historically been underrepresented. This includes ensuring equitable access to the opportunities provided by the network.
Respectful Collaboration. Participants advance our common purpose while respecting ownership and livelihoods, including boundaries around proprietary information, intellectual property, and business practices.
Accountability. Participants hold themselves and each other to ways of working that advance the quality and professionalism of the field, particularly through effective and reflective conduct and communication.

Over the past year, the network has been actively working toward these aspirations. With funding from the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative and the Kavli Foundation, the group hosted community conversations to support members as they navigated through the early months of the COVID-19, provided planning and speaker support for the #BlackInSciComm week hosted last October, developed a mechanism to connect members with potential funders to develop ideas that will support the field of SciComm, and hosted a virtual convening to help members stay connected and meet new people in the field.

This year, the Network looks forward to continuing to support the needs of SciComm Trainers everywhere. We are developing ways to more easily bridge research and practice in addition to creating new spaces for members to connect about shared interests on a regular basis. We continue to center justice, equity, and diversity and are committed to leading and supporting efforts that allow these ideals to proliferate in our field.

If you are interested in learning more about the SciComm Trainers Network, please visit our website. If you want to be a part of this growing community, please email Chloe Poston, the SCTN Network Weaver.

UPDATES TO OUR MEETING CODE OF CONDUCT

Our Meeting Code of Conduct

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) convenes gatherings that are welcoming, respectful, inclusive, and collaborative. ILI’s Gatherings Code of Conduct applies to all ILI-sponsored gatherings, as well as affiliated events connected with an ILI gathering, whether in public or private facilities.

Expected behavior

Treat everyone with the same respect you would expect of them.

Be mindful that fellow participants may be coming from differing cultural traditions than yourself, please approach any perceived differences with an open mind.

Be mindful of you and your fellow participant’s surroundings.

Respect copying and use of presented materials and ideas as indicated by ILI’s Guidelines on Photography and Social Media (link), including knowing when you need to obtain permission regarding copying and sharing materials.

Respect the rules and policies of the gathering venue, hotels, online platform, or any other contractor associated with the event.

Examples of unacceptable behavior

Promoting or participating in harassment, bullying, discrimination, or intimidation on-site, online, and/or on social media.
Verbal, written, or other forms of harassment of any attendee, speaker, volunteer, exhibitor, staff member, service provider, or another guest.

Examples of abuse include, but are not limited to, verbal comments knowingly showing prejudice towards a person’s gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, national origin, inappropriate use of nudity and/or sexual images.

Threatening a person.
Disruption or disallowing participation by others.
Failure to follow gathering protocols.
Physical or verbal abuse, including attacks on individuals vs. respectful, disagreeing dialogue.
Use of social or mainstream media to target individual actions of participants in a way that could harm their privacy or professional status or open them to slander or libel.

Knowingly violating copyright, or copying presenter information without obtaining permission, as outlined in ILI’s Guidelines on Photography and Social Media (link).

Consequences and reporting unacceptable behavior

Anyone violating the Code of Conduct may be removed from the current gathering. Egregious behavior may result in bans from future ILI gatherings or other sanctions, depending on the specifics, as applicable.

Gathering attendees should be aware that ILI staff monitor and moderate attendee posts that mention ILI and use hashtags associated with an ILI gathering. Failure to follow the above guidelines may result in posts being blocked or other consequences. For more information on photography and social media practices, review ILI’s Guidelines on Photography and Social Media (link).

If you experience or witness behavior that constitutes a life-threatening, or other serious threat to public safety, at an on-site gathering, contact 911 or appropriate security. Please report other incidents or suspected incidents to ILI staff, leadership, or security. At many events, ILI staff and representatives will be wearing an ILI nametag. 

Acknowledgement and agreement to abide by the ILI Gatherings Code of Conduct is required at registration for any online or on-site event.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES

ABOUT THE GUIDELINES

The Gatherings Code of Conduct [LINK] provide overall guidance for all gathering attendees and participants in our community. ILI has set out these specific guidelines for the use of social media and photography at all ILI gatherings and professional events. We expect all gathering participants to follow the guidelines outlined below. 

Social media guidelines and best practices

We welcome social media use at all ILI gatherings, including live tweeting. Use includes all digital and in-person gathering settings.

In particular, we ask social media users to adhere to the following:

Use the appropriate gathering hashtag [e.g. #MuseumFutures, #NPSC, #WomeninSTEM].

Employ commonly used hashtags that relate to the content to increase engagement.

Treat all participants, attendees, staff, and vendors with respect and consideration, valuing a diversity of views and opinions.

Be respectful and collaborative; communicate openly and with respect for others, critiquing ideas rather than individuals.

Avoid personal attacks directed toward other attendees, participants, staff, and/or suppliers/vendors.

Credit (identify) presenters by name.

Do not take or share photographs of minor’s faces on social media without explicit verbal or written permission of a parent or guardian.

Do not share recordings of presentations without the convener’s expressed written permission.

Photography guidelines and best practices

Photography by individuals for personal use and for social media is permitted unless otherwise specified. While doing so, please follow these guidelines:

Photography for personal and social media use is permitted throughout ILI gatherings – including sessions, lectures, town halls, plenaries, and keynotes – unless the presenter has opted to be excluded.

Attendees are expected to honor the preference of any presenter who has indicated “no photo.” ILI will support and enforce this expectation.

The presenter must be identified by name when a photograph of the presenter, presenter’s slides, or poster is shared on social media or elsewhere.

Attendees should be respectful and considerate of others. Do not use flash, block attendees view of presenters when capturing photos, or otherwise disrupt presentations.

Do not photograph individuals under 18 years of age without explicit verbal or written permission of a parent or guardian. If in doubt, ask.

Photography permission

Permission is understood to be granted unless the following conditions apply: 

The presenter has affixed a “no photo” image or language to the poster or presentation.
The presenter, and/or the convener on behalf of the presenter, explicitly states to the audience their preference for no photographs.

If a presenter has a “no photo” preference, due to attendees often coming in and out gathering sessions, we recommend that presenters should affix a “no photos” image on all slides to ensure that attendees are aware of the presenter’s preference.

Limits to audio and video recording

Audio and video recording by individuals for personal use and for social media use is allowed only at social events, in the Exhibit Hall and in public spaces throughout the gathering. Audio and video recording can be disruptive to the presentation and the attendees, and in addition, there are legal considerations that preclude attendees from making recordings. 

The ILI GO program provides a controlled avenue for sharing science and presentations from the gathering. Video of selected sessions and lectures are made available free of charge to everyone. 

The following limitations and exceptions apply to audio/video recording:

Recording of all sessions, named or public lectures, town halls, plenaries and keynotes is not allowed for personal, social media, or any other use.

Be respectful and considerate of others.

Do not record individuals under 18 years of age in any setting without permission of their parent or guardian. If in doubt, ask.

ILI staff and contractors who capture content from selected sessions, lectures, keynotes and town halls are excluded from this prohibition, since they would only do this with an ethical approach, as defined by the Belmont Report.

NOW HIRING: FIELD RESEARCH COORDINATOR (Alameda County, CA and surrounding area)

Field Research Coordinator

Description:

We’re looking for someone committed to helping transform the world of learning!

The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) seeks an organized and dynamic people person to help gather information (via online surveys and conversation) from adult hobbyist gardeners and assist with data analysis and report writing. This National Science Foundation funded study is investigating which community-based resources hobbyist gardeners access to support their learning, and which resources work for whom. More information about the project may be found here. The applicant selected will work in a contract position, part-time for up to 18 months, and will report to the Principal Investigator, Dr. Elysa Corin.

Responsibilities and Duties:

Coordinate data collection via an online survey of urban gardeners
Speak to survey takers about their experience with the survey
Collaborate with the PI to conduct focus groups in Alameda County, CA based on an existing interview guide
Travel to sites within Alameda County, CA
Assist with quantitative and qualitative data cleaning/management

Potentially assist with quantitative and qualitative analyses
Assist with report writing and communication of project findings
Participate in virtual (Zoom) team meetings on a regular basis
Communicate regularly with team members via email
Complete project-related internet research

The ideal candidate:

Enjoys frequent collaboration but is able to work well independently
Has experience working in a remote or self-directed professional environment
Has experience collecting social science-type data in person with participants
Has experience engaging in social science evaluation or research
Has excellent writing, editing, and general communication skills
Is comfortable interacting with research participants from various ethnic and demographic backgrounds
Is comfortable working with Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Outlook)
Has an interest in gardening
Is located in or near Alameda County, CA

About Us:

Education/Experience:

A Bachelor’s Degree, or equivalent knowledge and experience

Job Type:

Part-time, some local travel.

Compensation:

$15/hour to $20/hour, based on experience.

Physical Demands:

This position does not require physical demands beyond the usual office work and travel requirements.

Equity:

To Apply:

For consideration, along with your CV or Resume, please include a one-page cover letter describing the ways in which you are qualified for this position and why you would want to work with the Institute for Learning Innovation and send to:

To: fieldresearchcoordinator@freechoicelearning.org

Subject: Field Research Coordinator

Applications will be accepted until the close of Friday, January 15, 2021.

Prior to hire, three recent professional references will be required.

Initial inquiries will be addressed via email – No phone calls, please.

INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING INNOVATION RECEIVES 4 NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANT AWARDS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NOV 17, 2020

BEAVERTON, OREGON- The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) is pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded funding to four very important research projects that are centered around free-choice learning and are designed to expand access, equity, and inclusion for learners of all ages.

Science Museum Futures is a conference grant designed to convene a year-long conversation about relevancy and sustainability with small and medium-sized science museums and reflects ILI’s long-standing dedication to supporting free-choice learning institutions.

Cultivating Science will explore how urban gardeners in the San Francisco Bay area access STEM learning resources to support their gardening interest. A goal of this project is to better understand how to support the participation of historically underrepresented populations in free-choice STEM activities (like gardening) and contribute to greater lifelong STEM learning.

Building Capacity was funded to investigate the professional development required across museum departments to allow for the construction of truly inclusive learning opportunities for the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) community. This project supports our mission and commitment to increasing access to valuable science learning opportunities for all learners.

Learning Solutions is a project designed to support the “just in time” urgent learning that changemakers and those working on important societal problems may find themselves faced with when attempting to overcome barriers to success.

“To say we were thrilled to receive word that not one, but all four of these ground-breaking projects were funded, is an understatement. The NSF’s support of this work is a validation of the importance of expanding understanding and implementation of opportunities for lifelong, free-choice learning,” said Director Dr. John H. Falk.

The Institute for Learning Innovation is a virtual, non-profit organization working to promote lifelong learning, outside the classroom.

For further information on these projects visit the Institute for Learning Innovation online at www.instituteforlearninginnovation.org or contact Communications Director, Mrs. Stacey Sheehan, at (716) 246- 2049 or stacey.sheehan@freechoicelearning.org