January Brown Bag Session

Thank you everyone for attending our first ever brown bag session last Thursday. I felt it was a great success because everyone brought great ideas and insight to the table. Our discussion of themes was grounded in a short blog entry by Dr. Doug Knapp, Indiana University, summarizing his research regarding long term retention of interpretive themes. Our discussion raised questions such as: what are the ways we can use the tool of interpretive themes? What are our goals for our interpretive programs? Is it important for themes to be retained in the long term?

It seemed the general consensus was that it is important to develop thematic programs. However, the way we understand this process is somewhat different from the "conventional wisdom" or the exact way you were taught in interp training. The theme, first and foremost, needs to be something that naturally emerges out of your interest in the story. It has to be something you belive in. It is equally important as an organizational tool for yourself to help you develop your program and craft your story. We (including Dr. Knapp) agreed that it is not the theme itself that is most important per se, but the way in which the theme is conveyed. Knapp writes, "The techniques / experiences that brought the theme to life were more important than an offering of key words and/or phrases."

We also discussed how the quality of delivery and appropriate technique lead to the best outcomes for the visitors. This too I think was in agreement with Knapp's findings, "research shows that if a theme is to carry with the visitor beyond the boundaries of the resource site, the techniques to convey this information should be viewed as important as the message." In large part that is because the technique is "easier" for visitors to remember. They remember what they did or what they saw but not necessarily the content of the talk. Knapp looks at an interpretive experience from more of a social psychology standpoint. His research is based on the idea that an interpretive experience is episodic. That is, it is better to evaluate visitors' experience by looking at episodic memory (what people remember of that 'episode') instead of semantic memory (factual memory of info presented). In some of his other work he discusses what factors aide in long term memory retention and how to incorporate those factors into our interpretive programs.

There was disagreement with Knapp's assumption that long term retention of the theme is the most important outcome for an interpretive program. This assumption is also made in some IDP training materials. Based on our own experience, many interpreters agreed that the goal supersedes the theme in importance. If a visitor can have a positive experience and take away one simple, clear idea from our programs then their experience will be memorable. In making memories visitors will create their own meanings based on their own life experiences and not out of our efforts to force the meaning of anything on them.

I think as we go forward developing our new programs this month these are great concepts to think about and keep in mind. I know we've had a lot of research time taken up by meetings and trainings recently so thanks again for coming last week. I would like to stay to the once a month schedule of brown bag sessions though as I think discussion at one session can naturally lead into related topics for the following month. I believe that was the case this time as we talked briefly about structuring programs in the way of introductions, transitions and conclusions. I was thinking that for anyone interested we could meet February 25th at 2:30 p.m. on the island to discuss introductions, transitions, and conclusions. If you have a work-in-progress maybe it would be helpful to have a workshop style meeting to gain input from peers. Let me know what you think and if it doesn't fit our schedules or interests we'll just skip February and pick up with the brown bags in March.

Thanks again! Let me know if there is anything I missed that you think is important to recap for our ongoing work.
Eric