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Dear List members,
The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries in the Department
of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester has been commissioned
by Resource: the Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives to research
ways of defining and measuring the impact of learning in museums,
libraries and archives. This study is one element of the Inspiring
Learning Framework that Resource is developing. A copy of the Inspiring
Learning Framework paper can be found on the Resource website
(w.w.w.resource.gov.uk).
Resource is seeking information on the impact of MAL on learning
and to use this to demonstrate the value of archives, museums and
libraries to government.
We would like the research process to be open to comment, and
intend to use a number of email lists to inform people working in
museums, libraries and archives of our thoughts as they develop.
At the moment we are working on defining learning outcomes. We
need to develop a generic way of doing this that can be used across all
three domains (libraries, archives and museums). By 'Learning outcomes'
we are not thinking about processes, for example delivering programmes
for specific groups of learners, but about the measurable impact on a
child, teacher, adult, visitor , for example thinking in different ways,
knowing more about something, changing their mind about something etc).
We would be interested in hearing from you, in particular
regarding how you define learning outcomes?
At the moment we are gathering information on ways of thinking
about what might count as a 'learning outcome'. Once we have come to a
view of what the answer might be (hopefully incorporating the comments
you will send us) we will post our draft definitions of learning
outcomes to this list for comment. This will happen in the New Year.
Having developed an appropriate set of generic learning
outcomes, we will be developing specific research tools for measuring
these outcomes. This will include both qualitative and quantitative
methods. We will be starting on this work after Christmas and will
contact you again about your thoughts on this. Many thanks for your
interest.
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Jocelyn Dodd
Theano Moussouri
John Vincent
Marlene Morrison
Chris Pickford
Francois Matarasso
