Interview with Heath Whitaker - Concept Development Director

BD So these MSc evaluation tools are they part of your daily routine or are they something that would be pulled out every now and then?

HW No, the MSc students do an evaluation of 2 exhibits, each, as part of their, programme. They, have, they have - different modules on, learning methods and such, and I really don't know very much about how they do that, evaluation. The in-house evaluation that we do, we do with 4 catchments. We have an evaluation sheet which asks certain questions about the exhibits and I can give you a copy of one of those.

The workshop do one but sort of keep it secret, cause it's all about the things that we think might go wrong, cause we don't want to, you know, make people look out for the things that we think are wrong or indeed the things that we think are right, you want an honest evaluation so, but, but they do do an evaluation before it goes out.

We have one that goes to the helpers and that'll come back covering, you know, the popularity and the use of the exhibit and also, you know, the housekeeping, like we can't reach up to the top to dust that one, you know, but important issues in the way people approach exhibits if it looks all dusty on the top it's not going to be right so you've got to get it right.

The education group will do educational outcomes and whether they think that it meets the requirements that were set for it when it was developed, what do, when it began development.

And finally the, the maintenance crew will tell you that the bulbs keep popping and it's a nightmare to put them back in and, you know, things like that. So all that'll be drawn back.

Usually an exhibit, doesn't go from being a prototype exhibit to being a finished exhibit for about 3 months. And if, if during the evaluation there's a major modification, the counter starts again so it's got to be on the floor unmodified for 3 months. Which, you know, some exhibits have been on there for quite a few years now. You know, we change them and get them right but it's, it's very important that we have the workshop here and able to follow up on that and to make changes. If we had all the exhibits built by someone else, you know, they'd have signed them off years ago and we wouldn't be able to change them and make them better.