Traveling Experiment Gallery: Final Evaluation Report

This report summarizes the evaluation of the first 20 months of the National Science Foundation-funded tour of the Traveling Experiment Gallery. The Traveling Experiment Gallery is the touring version of Science Museum of Minnesota's successful core science hall, the Experiment Gallery. The evaluation of the Traveling Experiment Gallery was conducted using naturalistic inquiry methodology. Depth interviews were conducted with 28 staff and six volunteers at the five museums and science centers which have hosted the exhibition. The evaluators also spent almost 30 hours observing visitors, floor personnel, and visitor-staff interactions within the exhibition, and conducted depth interviews with 16 visitor groups, which included 32 individual visitors. In all, there was approximately 110 hours of data collection. The two major threads of the evaluation, the host museum staff experience and the visitor experience, were woven together to produce this report.