Well, well, well. Somebody's finally making some progress! Yesterday I skyped with Steven Goodman from the EVC in New York City and asked him about how the EVC addresses issues of social justice and community and how they then assess those efforts. I was tremendously nervous but I think it went well and it gave me some good things to think about, one of those being the immense value of direct participant responses as a measure of success, and how those responses can be solicited in a way that encourages and aides teens in being deeply self-reflective and critical about their work and their ideas.
For my Cyberpedagogy Lab course, we spent the semester across the street working with the museum's After School Matters teen program, Teen Lab. As the program participants got familiar with the museum and learned stop motion animation, our class of five employed a variety of documentation strategies and then assessed the pros and cons of each (feasibility, usefulness, input-to-output ratio, etc), all in an effort to understand these things better ourselves while also giving the museum education staff a packet of ideas that will hopefully be helpful to them in the future.
When we presented our findings to the museum education staff, one particular piece of data seemed to stand out to them as it had to us: a simple paragraph written by one of the students that clearly, concisely, and excitedly detailed what she'd gotten out of the experience of participating in Teen Lab. Who could ask for more than a direct positive statement from one- or ideally all- of a program's participants to reinforce the excellent work being done? Similarly, who could ask for more than a direct critical statement that would allow program organizers to immediately address issues and concerns?
The Teen Lab experience was on my mind as I spoke with Steve about the difficulty of assessing the successes and failures of arts programs for organizational, funding, and other purposes, and I was so pleased to hear about how EVC pushes its students to examine and convey their experiences within EVC in a start-to-finish way, always encouraging self reflection and expression.
Paper (or digital) surveys are a quick and easy way to ask direct questions and get direct answers that are clearly valuable, but check boxes and yes-or-no answers leave much to be desired in the way of detail, nuance, and actual human experience. How can more arts organizations effectively adopt strategies that will elicit more elaborate and candid responses from their participants?
