Shaping Outcomes
Are you familiar with this course offered through IMLS? Several SI staff had the opportunity to participate in a training session about this approach yesterday, and it was a real eye-opener. Here’s an example –
In a typical project, you get an idea. You plan the program, budgeting resources and costs, and argue successfully for modest funding. You offer the services and monitor the results.
Using Outcomes Based Planning and Evaluation, planning of the program includes defining what success will look like for the specific target audience, and how you will evaluate that outcome based on measurable indicators. It makes you realize the difference between outputs and outcomes, outcomes being so much richer in terms of demonstrating long-term impact on your audience. And that’s the key – the goals are centered on the end user, the specific target audience, be they African Americans in Chicago, 8th graders on a tour to DC, or 20-somethings with stereotypes on Asians (all actual Smithsonian examples which came up.)
Much of this content may sound like common sense, or like every strategic planning book you’ve ever read. Many of the methodologies are the same. But I would recommend this approach nonetheless… the online course is free, and is peppered with really wonderful case studies.
Especially interesting to me was to see how often the goals I identified were institutional goals, rather than audience goals – the opposite of the Shaping Outcomes objective. Whether the audience I defined were Affiliate organizations themselves, or the audiences they serve, our goals at Affiliations are the same – that they can access, appreciate, and be transformed by the Smithsonian, the national museum that they support through their tax dollars. When that happens, it’s as good for us as it hopefully is for the audience. Maybe that’s not so bad?!
It’s fabulous. For example, I watched a three-minute video of the 2007 Teacher of the Year talk about how she used Global Sound to introduce her students to the music of Zimbabwe, and to explain the different classifications of instruments. I watched a short video of Iraqi virtuoso Rahim Alhaj record a song on the oud. (I didn’t know what an oud was either! the ” (ÅÅd) ” is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument similar to a lute used in traditional Middle Eastern music. See picture above.) I downloaded the Center’s fantastic Oral History Interviewing Guide. You can search the site by instrument, culture, country, genre.. you name it.
The Institution’s podcasts are collected here. Some are familiar – the Hirshhorn and the Freer/Sackler presented theirs at an Affiliations Conference a few years ago. But have you heard Cheetah Chat from the National Zoo? Interested in hearing about what Smithsonian scientists are researching these days? The Undersecretary of Science has a podcast to share our findings. NMAI is producing fabulous podcasts that are audio or video recordings of their concerts, public art projects, or particular objects in their exhibitions (like a Tlingit elder describing the craftsmanship and story behind a Brown Bear Clan Hat from Alaska).
What is it? Trade literature is mass produced by manufacturers to promote and explain their products to wholesalers and retailers. The Smithsonian’s collection numbers at least 400,000 pieces (it’s still being catalogued!), with the bulk of the collection dating from 1880-1950. Because this genre of books, pamphlets, brochures, et al, were meant to be discarded (some manufacturers even encouraged an annual purge), the ephemera is quite rare. 
