INFO-693 Audience Research & Evaluation

3 Credits

Through hands-on experience, this course introduces students to the theory and practice of audience evaluation in a museum setting. Students will gain first-hand knowledge by executing an evaluation for a New York City institution. After two introductory sessions spent learning basic theory and practice, students will meet with museum staff to determine the research question and will then plan and execute the evaluation. Students learn how to build a research question, what to run the evaluation, how to mine the data for insights, how to write a compelling and useful report, and how to present findings to stakeholders. The final project is the evaluation report and presentation given to museum stakeholders. Through this course, students are able to immediately put theory to practice and will execute a portfolio-worthy final project. Although we are experiencing an era of "big data," it remains challenging for museums to understand their visitors. Despite the mountains of data available about people, museums often rely on seemingly dated audience evaluation techniques; and for good reason: "big data" doesn't provide a complete picture of visitor behavior. This course examines the limitation of different research methodologies, data points, and evaluation approaches, and provides a critical understanding of the usefulness of audience evaluation as it relates to the museum field.