Professional Development opportunities offered in the past are listed below. Please click on the opportunity for an event description as well as recordings and supplemental materials if available. Most Workshops are available for purchase.
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Please join us for a book club-style discussion of this year’s Screven Award winning article, “A Review of Augmented Reality for Informal Science Learning Supporting Design of Intergenerational Group Learning.” Conversation will be directed by the interests and input of participants.
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Becoming the Change we Want to See: An Informal Dialogue with the authors (with an Intro to the Organizational Level Dimensions of DEAI Framework from Dr. Cecilia Garibay)
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VSA Conference Reflection Webchat
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Whether you are preparing your VSA conference session or for a meeting with museum leadership, presentation is part of our lives. In this webchat, we will share some presentation tips to help you craft an on point presentation for many contexts. The PD Committee members leading this webchat are thinking about “presentation” at large, so we will be sharing tips for data visualization and reporting, oral communications, and more! Have some go-to presentation tips of your own? We encourage you to bring those tips to the session to build upon our collective knowledge.
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The Pulse Forum is an opportunity for Zoo, Aquarium, and Garden professionals who are interested in evaluation to come together ahead of VSA's annual conference to get a finger on the pulse of current trends of our community in a more informal space. This Pulse Forum is open to evaluators, educators, exhibit developers, designers, marketing professionals, planners, academics, and directors who share a passion for improving the quality of visitor experiences in zoos, aquariums, and public gardens. Across cultural institutions and fields, all are welcome to attend and submit proposals; this year’s Pulse Forum will be free for VSA Members. There will be a $5 registration fee for Non-Members.
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What do you do when traditional data collection tools just won't work for your project? This session will explore strategies for learning from visitors in tricky physical contexts, in hard-to-wrangle programmatic situations, and in leisure experiences you just don't want to interrupt. We invite you to join us for a 90-minute session to begin exploring these issues and begin working through them as they relate to your own context. Come for the practical tools to support your planning processes; stay for a sense of fun and a focus on making research and evaluation more friendly.
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The Visitor Studies Journal and the Visitor Studies Association are releasing a call for submissions for a themed issue on the topic of “Redefining the Visitor Studies field for a Changing World”. The issue seeks to create a platform for reflecting on the state of the Visitor Studies field today, ways in which we need to evolve the field based on new learnings, understandings and contexts, as well as new directions in the field, both in North America and internationally.
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We're starting the new year with some new tools to clarify our communication in 2024! A tool share is a chance to get energized with colleagues while talking about some fun tools to make visitor studies easier. This is an engaging, fast-moving web chat where we aim to cover as many tools and strategies as we can in one hour. Our hosts will kick us off with some of their own tips and resources, and then we’ll turn it over to you. Each participant is strongly encouraged to bring one thing to share related to communication: this includes tools for data collection, maintaining relationships with colleagues, presenting findings, and beyond. We want to hear about it!
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December 14, 3:00-4:30pm ET / 12-1:30pm PT Join the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) and the Visitor Studies Association (VSA) for an artificial intelligence-focused watch party. During the watch party, we will view the recording from this year’s Alan J. Friedman Science Center Dialogues, a plenary session that took place live at the ASTC 2023 Conference in October.
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Please join us for a book club-style discussion of this year’s Screven Award winning article, “Looking to Read: How Visitors Use Exhibit Labels in the Art Museum.” Conversation will be directed by the interests and input of participants. We encourage you to come ready to share your thoughts and raise questions!
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Please join Visitor Studies Association (VSA) as we host a Tea with the Visitor Studies Group (VSG), a United Kingdom-based membership organization for individuals whose role involves, uses or benefits from visitor studies. Bring your tea, coffee, beverage of choice, and join us for light facilitated conversations and merriment!
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Please join us for a book club-style discussion of this year’s Screven Award-winning article, "Awe & Memories of Learning in Science and Art.” The conversation will be directed by the interests and input of participants. In the first 30 minutes, we will have an open discussion about individual questions and curiosities. Two of the authors, C. Aaron Price and Lauren Applebaum, will join us for the second 30 minutes of the discussion. We encourage you to come ready to share your thoughts and raise questions! This webchat is available to VSA Members only.
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Evaluation 101: Evaluation for Grant Seekers
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