Nurturing Interest in Museum Careers through Summer Camp Fun

Nurturing Interest in Museum Careers through Summer Camp Fun

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
Students from Shelton Murphey Johnson House (SJM House)  in Eugene, Oregon, set out to answer in a pilot program of their Museum Career Intensive Summer Camp work on their exhibit plans. What is a Museum? What does it take to make a Museum ‘tick?’ This is the central question that the campers at Shelton Murphey Johnson House (SJM House)  in Eugene, Oregon, set out to answer in a pilot program of their Museum Career Intensive Summer Camp. This brand-new summer camp was the brainchild of Leah Murray and was made possible by a community grant from the Lane County Cultural Coalition. The week-long camp focused on careers within the museum industry. Campers learned what goes into each department of a museum and the various skill sets that are required to make a museum (or zoo, nature center, or aquarium) work.  Campers got to explore and learn these skills using a project-based learning model, where they created a public exhibition that was presented...
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Barriers to New Things

Barriers to New Things

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
Recently I tried a new product, detergent strips. They were great, and I think I’m a convert from conventional liquid or powder detergent. I couldn’t help thinking, why did it take me so long to try these! They are much more environmentally friendly, extremely efficient, and take up hardly any space on my laundry room shelf. So why did it take so long to try them, and what can we learn from this when thinking about training and staff development.  Knowledge of a Different Way The first thing is the knowledge that there is a different way of doing things. These laundry strips are not sold at the grocery store and are still relatively unknown. Because of that, one of the barriers to starting to use them was even knowing they existed. I can’t remember where I heard about them first, but the company had to spend money to help get the word out that this even was an option when thinking...
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Improv to Build Resilience

Improv to Build Resilience

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
With the rise of social media, we forget how edited everything that we see often is. It appears that creators are doing one take, and they're done, right? My husband is a social media content creator. He often gets a lot of criticism that his job is easy and he should be putting out more content. What they don't realize is that it usually takes hours of multiple takes and then lots of editing to create the final product. TEDx and standup specials are also great examples of media that we are exposed to subconsciously erodes our confidence. TEDx and standup specials are highly scripted, rehearsed, and edited but appear off the cuff or improvisational. These polished final projects that we are bombarded with constantly eat away at our Resilience. They send our brain the message that you should present to peers or clients flawlessly every time. The truth is that you will make mistakes when giving, and it is...
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Improv for the Reluctant

Improv for the Reluctant

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
I I think nothing I have done has been met with more resistance than making people do improv activities! The amount of resistance that I am met with dramatically varies depending on the group dynamics. Here are a few things that I have observed about reluctance to do improv.  Introverts = More Resistance The more self-proclaimed introverts in a group, the more resistance there will be to doing improv activities. Introverts generally need more processing time, so activities like improv games that require them to think and respond quickly are not typically their favorite thing. They also tend to like smaller groups or one on one interactions over larger group activities.  Improv muscles are like the muscles in your body; the more you work them, the stronger they get.  Group trust is critical.  There is less trust within newer teams, and therefore members are often more resistant to these activities than with more established teams.   If you, as a facilitator, are experiencing pushback around doing improv activities,...
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Improv as a Training Tool

Improv as a Training Tool

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
I My high school theater teacher would never let us do improv games or activities; he said they were reserved for advanced theater students. This was at the height of the popularity of the American version of "Whose Line is It Anyway," and I honestly felt a bit irritated that he was preventing me from getting to try my hand at improv. I continued to view improvisational skills as desirable and took any opportunity to practice and improve my skills. As my career has progressed, I see how they benefited me as an educator and museum professional and as a team member and entrepreneur. Early in my career, I got involved with the National Informal Science Education Network (NISEnet), and leaders in that organization professed the powers of improv. They gave me opportunities to not only practice these skills but learned to facilitate them in my museum. I have since used them as a crucial part of my training programs to break...
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Transformative Change Through Imagination

Transformative Change Through Imagination

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
“Pretend you are a boat, and I’ll ride you to an island, but you have magical powers, and I can’t steer you, so you end up going to the island on the other side over there, and on that island, there is a dragon…” this is an actual storyline initiated by my seven year old recently. As a mom to two girls, age four and seven, I am so lucky to get the chance to witness their imagination at play constantly. The stuff they come up with never fails to amaze me and inspire awe and wonder. Just yesterday, the girls set up a rock shop with rocks that they had collected outside and insisted I film an impromptu commercial advertising their excellent rocks at low, low prices. As an educator and someone who has worked with children much of my adult life, I know deep in my core that we need to value imagination and make space for creativity...
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Fixing Shallow Training

Fixing Shallow Training

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
Many training professionals have gotten the feedback that there wasn’t enough time or that the training content was shallow. There is so much to cover and too little time! Our instinct in preparing a training curriculum for when you have limited time and resources is to give them a bit of information on many things, but I would argue that this leaves your team feeling overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the hard work they will face post-training. These types of training can be frustrating for employees and can contribute to burnout and turnover. So how do we fix this mile-wide and inch-deep training problem? Here are five things to consider when planning to preempt shallow training.  5 Things to Fix Shallow Training  Prioritize application of knowledge in instruction over covering generalized topics at intermittent times. When you only have an hour, spend 10 minutes on new information and 50 minutes applying this new content. Help participants make connections to other training. For example, if...
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Setting Baselines and Targets

Setting Baselines and Targets

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
If you have created a logic model and are in the process of developing indicators of success as part of your evaluation plan, you must understand the process of setting baselines and targets. Targets Targets are pre-established goals set for the program, and they help create a path and end destination for what you hope to achieve with a program or service (the intervention). Often defined in numbers or percentages, they indicate success. Include these numbers in your logic model to help all stakeholders see how success is measured. For example, if your team is creating a STEM career internship for girls, a sample target might be that 90% of participants completed the full three-month internship. This completion rate target is SMART and indicates success in the short term. If you want a target that helps you show long-term impacts of the intervention -the internship- you might wish to a follow-up interview after five years, where you look for 50% of interns...
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Developing Indicators of Success

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
Success indicators (see my previous post) are crucial to monitoring and measuring the success of a program or service. In this post, I will explain how to develop indicators of success and help you to identify when to use them. Step 1: Identify Your Team  The research staff should develop indicators of success during the planning phase of your program design process in close collaboration with the program staff. If you don’t have a research team, designate who will be responsible for the oversight of the research. If any government or NGO counterparts are designing the program and have explicit knowledge of the program goals and objectives, you will want to include them.   Step 2: Identify What to Measure  Next, determine which inputs, outputs, or outcomes (see my post: What is a Logic Model?) of the program are most important to track. A program will likely use many indicators to assess the change that results from the intervention. These can be pulled from the...
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Success Indicators

Success Indicators

by Meghan SchiedelNo Comments
I’ve shared about logic models in previous posts; these are visual tools to help you develop successful programs or services. One of the critical pieces within a logic model is developing agreed-upon outcomes that indicate that the program is successful. To measure these, we need tools called success indicators.  How do they assess the outcomes of a program?  They do this by defining its characteristics or variables and then tracking those characteristics over time or between groups. Clear success indicators are the foundation of any effective monitoring and evaluation system. Organizations need success indicators for two reasons. The first is to track how a program is working and moving toward progress in reaching specific goals. Program staff and the program leadership team need to measure this change over time and make adjustments in real-time to help achieve the desired outcomes. The second reason these clear indicators are required is for accountability. Key stakeholders may contribute to the design of a program, but it is ultimately...
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