Ryley is our newest Educational Assistant. She worked as an Office Assistant with us during the Fall semester, and previously worked with Camp Adventure over the summer. She's been a great addition to our team and we can't wait to work more with her! We'll have Ryley tell us what she's been up to:
The UNI Museum is undergoing a complete renovation of our Travelling Trunks program, which provides educators and students with an interactive learning experience with artifacts and material culture to better understand the world around them. Trunks are available for use by area educators, including classroom teachers, homeschoolers, day-care providers, Scout leaders, pre-service teachers, and after-school program leaders. Because the trunks are here to be used by area educators, we want their input for the direction of our renovation.
The museum’s goal in revamping the program is to build more versatile trunks tailored to the needs of a wider range of lessons and curriculums. To do so, we are sending out a short survey to ask teachers from surrounding school districts how we could best assist them in their classrooms. Their responses will give us a more accurate account of the needs of our surrounding educators and schools, giving us a more precise direction for the renovation.
Below is one example of the several pages from the survey. In my position as the Educational Assistant with the Friends of the Museum, I was able to collaborate with the UNI Museum’s Outreach Coordinator, Jess Cruz, to build this survey. Doing this project allowed me the opportunity to not only learn how to use the surveying software used by the university, Qualtrics, but it also provided me with a hands-on, immersive experience into the Education and Outreach side of the museum. I couldn’t have asked for a better first project!
