Museum of Science, Boston

Creating a Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (C-COVES), a National Forum Project, will convene a forum of experts to study the visitor experience within and across a diverse group of science museums. The two-day forum will bring together experts, evaluators, and stakeholders from a range of informal science institutions to start developing a sustainable, flexible system for collecting, managing, sharing, and analyzing science museum visitor data within and across institutions. The development of a collaborative community of institutions with shared strategies and instruments will build capacity for field-wide understanding of science museum visitors while enhancing the ability of individual institutions to measure and assess the experiences of their own visitors.