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Hard facts
Evaluation as a Guide

In a medium where all activities have an aspect of experimentation, it is important to be able to link goals with outcomes.

TPL is in the unique postion of having access to students who have had a continuous 5 years' exposure to interactive learning. The profile that emerges will be an invaluable tool to understanding how technology can serve the needs of the studio partcipants and artist coach, enhancing the learning experiences of both.

What did we expect to do?
Did we do it?

In order to answer these questions, we have depended to great extent on our post-exchange data, both written and on videotape.

Videotaped Interviews
Short films about interactivity and the performing arts form the nucleus of our evaluation data and also serve to represent the experience to potential Interactive Partners and to others who are interested in integrating the performing arts and technology. Several of these movies were taken directly from the post-exchange videotaping sessions.

When you review the chapter heading The TPL Model & DANCE, watch the movie Young Choreographers. The artists speaking are two-year graduates of a pre-professional dance program that incorporates interactivity.

Also, do check out this short movie How Kids Feel [6.3 MB].

Written Responses
You may download .pdf files of our evaluation instruments by clicking on the links below ---

• Evaluation Information Chart

• Baseline Data

• Discussion Questions

• Follow-Up Survey

• Participant (Student)

• Coach

• Technicians

A Model in Process
Generalities demand proof, particularly as the medium is untested. Yet we say unequivocally that those who participate in TPL Interactive Exchanges, if hesitant upon walking into the studio, emerge from the experience convinced that they have witnessed the application of an important new tool for coaching the performing arts. Even very young children, as in the movie to the left, make this assessment.

In the months and years ahead, we will continue to rely on a number of different evaluation tools to assess our progress. We will continue to rely on live recordings to provide the best testimony of the relative ease or discomfiture participants feel in interactive exchanges.

Another new project, TPL World Bridge, relies heavily on an extensive evaluation cmponent. We reproduce here a description of our planned evaluation program. These remarks are based on an Evaluation Plan deisgned by William Cleveland of the Center for the Study of Arts & Community.