Past TopicsVSA offers opportunities for professionals and students to further hone their skills through webinars, web chats, book clubs, and virtual networking. Virtual learning offerings address a variety of topics in our field and provide helpful resources and strategies relevant to a wide range of practitioners. These offerings provide opportunities for audience engagement, and provide time for participants to ask questions. Members of VSA receive discounted registration to these events, so consider joining! If you have ideas or suggestions for future PD events, please let us know at [email protected]. We appreciate your continued support of VSA. Consider making a donation to VSA's Annual Fund which helps us continue to offer these enriching programs. VSA offers a variety of Professional Development opportunities, including the webchats and webinars highlighted below, as well as regular Community Support Groups, Networking Game Night Sessions, Book Clubs, and Watch Parties. Transferring Skills: Connecting Visitor Studies to Other Fields Throughout the pandemic Museums, Zoos, Aquariums, and other cultural centers have continued to be impacted by closures, loss of revenue, and staffing reductions. Many VSA members and other research and evaluation staff have found themselves laid-off, furloughed, or otherwise without work. In these uncertain times it can be difficult to find new, exciting, and rewarding positions within the museum field. Join VSA for a 1 hour webchat with a panel of researchers and evaluators as they discuss their experience transferring visitor studies skills into different industries and fields. Topics to look forward to include:
Presenters:
A recording of this presentation is available to VSA members, please email association headquarters to receive access. Witnessing Visitor Experience: First Person Video Technology for Museum Research In recent years, numerous research teams have experimented with using video research methodologies to understand visitor experiences in museum settings. Bringing together researchers with recent publications in this area, this webinar will focus on how these researchers used video technology in innovative ways to record minute visitor experiences and the major benefits and limitations of video-based data sets. Our hope is this webinar will inspire others to consider video methodologies for their own visitor research interests. Our presenters are:
A recording of this webinar can be purchased here. $10 for VSA Members, $20 for Non-Members Share your Voice! Town Hall on VSA’s DEAI Priorities and Action Steps As VSA continues its work to center diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) in its organizational practices and policies, outreach and membership offerings, and leadership in the visitor studies and informal learning fields, we want to make sure that the voices of members and professionals in our community are engaged and included in the process. As part of our quarterly DEAI Webchat series, we invite you to a free web chat designed to:
The DEAI Task Force invites you to join us for a participatory dialogue to help inform VSA’s DEAI initiatives, share knowledge and insights, and help shape the next steps along this pathway. Please come with your ideas and questions related to the VSA's DEAI Priorities and Action Steps document. A recording of this web chat can be found here. Evaluation Goals, Methods, and Ongoing Insights for Widening Access and Relevance in the Smithsonian’s Fossil Hall Members of the team tasked with renovating the Smithsonian’s Hall of Fossils – Deep Time exhibition share the struggles, lessons learned, and findings from their seven-year mammoth project. Topics include key takeaways from audience research, communication of challenging topics like climate change and evolution, and keys to broadening accessibility and inclusion. The group will also share methodological considerations and lessons learned from the exhibition, audience research program, and accessibility project. A recording of this web chat can be found here. Culture Track: A Two Part Series In this time of upheaval, museums, zoos, aquariums, and cultural organizations have wondered how they can best support and remain relevant to their communities. Join VSA's two-part series on Culture Track: a national study led by LaPlaca Cohen and Slover Linett to uncover how organizations can be responsive to and benefit their communities while grappling with adjustments in light of COVID-19. Culture Track Part 1: Findings and Methodologies for Culture and Community in a Time of Crisis Members of the Slover Linett and LaPlaca Cohen teams provide an overview of key takeaways for organizations looking to better understand and connect with their audiences as well as the general public during Covid-19. The group will also share methodological considerations and lessons learned from designing, coordinating, analyzing, and reporting on a field-wide initiative that scaled from an initial expected 10,000 responses to over 120,000. Panelists include:
Jen Benoit-Bryan, Slover Linett A recording of this web chat can be found here.
A panel of cultural industry professionals discuss how their organizations have used the Culture Track study to inform decisions during Covid, and how findings fit with other research studies undertaken during Covid-19. Panelists include:
Caroline Goeser, Museum of Fine Art, Houston
Lindsay Maldonado, Shedd Aquarium Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts Jen Benoit-Bryan, Slover Linett A recording of this web chat can be found here. VSA’s Zoo & Aquarium Focus Interest Group (ZAFIG) Virtual Mini Conference! While we can't meet in person this year, VSA’s Zoo and Aquarium Focused Interest Group (ZAFIG) wanted to provide a virtual opportunity for our community to present work being done in zoos and aquariums from the past year. Focusing on hot topics in the zoo-aquarium field, this conference-like web chat will include 5 mini-sessions that allow for sharing, learning, and dialogue. Our exciting slate of presentations includes:
Conducting Community-Based Research: What We Learned as Beginners In this convening, community partners and Exploratorium researchers will describe an NSF-funded exhibition and research project, called Middle Ground. The Middle Ground experience is facilitated by community partners and includes exhibits that support exploration of social science research into bias and stereotyping, humor and generosity, how we work together, and how we pull apart into tribes. Audience researcher and consultant Cecilia Garibay will describe key principles for conducting community-based research and evaluation that attends to and incorporates community context while a panel of presenters will share examples of implementing these principles in practice. We will conclude by sharing challenges and insights from this approach. A recording of this web chat can be found here. Reflections on “Racism, Unrest, and the Role of the Museum Field” In the midst of global anti-racism protests and civil unrest, many museums and informal learning institutions have publicly committed to supporting racial justice and rejected the idea of returning to “business as usual” as they begin to reopen. Inspired by the recent AAM panel, “Racism, Unrest, and the Role of Museums” (Lonnie Bunch, Johnetta Cole, and Lori Fogerty), this web chat will focus on questions around the role of visitor studies and evaluation in supporting transformational change in the museum field, such as:
A recording of this web chat can be found here. Conducting Focus Groups In-Person and Online Focus groups are a key visitor studies methodology, although they can be costly. In this web chat, presenters will provide tips for budget-friendly focus group approaches that can be employed both in-person and online. The goals for the web chat are to:
A recording of this webinar can be purchased here. $10 for VSA Members, $20 for Non-Members. Google Analytics 101: Understanding Your Visitors’ Behavior Online Learn ways that Google Analytics can help you uncover insights into your website visitors and app users. Presenters will share examples of how they use it to understand visitor behavior online. Presenters:
Overview
Attending to Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion in the Time of Coronavirus Featuring Dr. Cecilia Garibay (The Garibay Group). During this web convening, we discussed the following: A recording of this web chat can be found here. Culturally Responsive Visitor Studies: An Interactive Workshop with Dr. Katrina Bledsoe Join the Visitor Studies Association (VSA) for an interactive webinar focusing on the considerations and potential challenges relating to cultural responsiveness within the evaluation process. Dr. Katrina L. Bledsoe, a leader and expert on issues surrounding cultural responsiveness and equity-focused evaluation, will present this virtual workshop, providing examples from her professional experience. Participants will work together to think about how evaluators and informal learning professionals can identify and address the culture and context that exist within the evaluation process. Participants will also have the opportunity to think about how they can integrate cultural responsiveness into evaluation practice. The webinar will utilize presentation, large group discussion, and breakout rooms to:
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