CDC knows about learning, and, over the years, one of the most significant things we have learned is that that we can’t make anyone learn anything!  Instead, we collaborate in creating, prototyping and evaluating rich, layered environments (in architecture, exhibits, and programs) that make learning enticing, accessible, and compelling —places and experiences full of images, artifacts, texts, and sounds that represent concepts and information each visitor can discover, synthesize, and share.

Facilitation of Development Processes

In working with museum users, staffs, boards, architects, exhibit designers and other project stakeholders, Dan and his firm, CDC Evaluation & Development (CDC E & D) contribute to the development and evaluation of museums and museum exhibits.  Dan facilitates thoughtfully and listens respectfully and carefully; he is particularly skilled at facilitating the involvement and self-empowerment of Native American, Latino, African-American, Asian, and Pacific Island people in these processes.

Children’s Museums

Native American Cultural Centers/Museums

In diverse American Indian communities from Seattle to the Wind River Reservation, Jemez Pueblo to the Barona-Ku’umeyaa Band, the Winnebago Tribe to the Navajo Nation, Dan and CDC E & D has had the privilege of gaining unique insights regarding the strengths and resilience of children and families of minority communities along with the challenges they face in preserving and strengthening their identities while advancing educationally and economically in the majority culture.

Charette Facilitation

Stakeholder Participation

Strategies for Learning in

• exhibit design,

• architecture,

Educational Programs & Materials

CDC exemplary educational activities and learning kits consistently utilize a constructivist approach to learning in which visitors of all ages become responsible for creating their own knowledge and understanding, often with the facilitation of competent and caring mentors such as older kids, young people, teachers, and parents. 

The hallmarks of this approach in creating materials for children, young people, and adults include:

• the juxtaposition of presenting information with open-ended questions that fosters hypothesizing and critical thinking;

• individual and group self-assessment related to the quality and quantity of the learning;

• responsibility for one’s own and each other’s learning;

• fostering positive social interaction; and

• personal satisfaction and enjoyment for the learner and teacher/mentor/curator.

Formative (front-end) and Summative Evaluation

CDC E & D designs evaluations—front-end, formative, and summative as well as prototype and post-installation exhibit impact evaluation studies—that help ensure that exhibits do what museum stakeholders and exhibit designers intend them to do.