Museums Australia (Victoria) Education Conference 17 September

Attended one day of this three day event. Was really good and here are my notes.

Brett McLennan, ACMI, the twitch response:

• works actively and with agility – rapid feedback
  
• students and young people adapting to notion of fast response – they still have different learning styles, but are all processing small bits of information rapidly
  
• a sound byte generation – don't necessarily go deeper into content
  
• need to build programs that combine twitch response and the heavy lifting mode – to dive more deeply into what's there and apply that knowledge back to other areas
  
• dealing with new generation 'readers', they expect/demand:
  
  • dynamic immersive experiences
    
  • texts that enable them to be innovative and creative
    
  • immediate feedback – including opportune for engagement and debate
    
  • this challenge faced by all generations not only this one
    
  • they network differently to what has gone before – Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are good examples of this
    

Angelina Russo, Social Media and Cultural Institutions, Engagement, Experience, Environment, Evaluation:

• today's museums are opening up more to audiences and recognising that museums are social experiences
  
• participation often on the museum's terms
  
• sites where people are already talking about you on blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos etc uploading their own content and are seen by the world
  
• peer networks, e.g. Amazon
  
• discussed the Engaging Social Media research project
  
• Distributed innovation and co-creation – paradigm shift for museums, but not necessarily a new idea or way of working
  
• Value networks
  
• Future?
  
  • Connecting cultural experiences with boarder experience economies
    
  • Creating new knowledge and networks which support co-creation
    
  • Evaluating the experience – socially, culturally and economically
    

My paper – in the interests of climate change and reducing consumption I re-purposed our Museums and the Web 2008 paper so have a look at that...

Education programs sharing session

Benalla Art Gallery, DEECD and Hume Region – program that any teacher can facilitate back in the in school, inquiry-based and critical thinking skills, encourage them to think more deeply about artworks in creating their response drawing on a large knowledge base. Used Intel thinking tools, online graphic organiser sites. Sounded like a great program and reminded me how wonderfully creative, imaginative and clever young people are. Impressed with the way the project drew on materials across a range of museums and galleries and using a wiki as a way to organise and disseminate the information for teachers and students. Finished with a great quote form the subject of the artist Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop I have a conviction that it's only when you are put at full stretch that you can realise your full potential. How true!

SA Maritime Museum outreach program, Treasures of the Sea – an audio trail designed to promote key messages of the Maritime Museum and engage students with new technologies. I'm constantly inspired by people that are a section of one person and doing cool things for their audiences.

Queensland Museum Teachers-in-Residence program – seconded teachers programs are a good way forward. Talked about getting the QM website more interactive and compliant. QM education staff role to work with senior curators to understand what they're doing and then present information in engaging ways for students. Discussed three programs Mangrove Challenge; Refugee Stories and the Disease Detective. Liked the way that David explained how the staff all learned about this web stuff together – they weren't experts in technology but experts on pedagogy. Good one David!

Paul Howard Experiences at TATE Modern – development of an online community grid that tapped into an already existing community. Wanted also to extend audience reach beyond the physical site and develop new audiences. Talked about the benefits of doing stuff online through being able to re-visit the site and for curators t be able to adapt collections and material to suit the evolving needs of the group.

Ice e-mystery, TMAG – looking at ways to bring content to people who can't get to Antarctica, give interesting work and ideas to students that done normally have that access that is based on science and developing literacy skills. Also about promoting international collaboration and understanding. Connected the physical and online environments by encouraging them to visit TMAG exhibition. Another inspiring story of museum staff working creatively with little or no resource using free tools available on the web (in this case Wordpress) and seeking funding from different sources.

Educational websites

Barbara Piscitelli was asking me about useful websites for museum and gallery education.

Museums/galleries:

• SFMOMA online education resources
  
• Educator Resource Centre at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum
  
• MOMA's Red Studio
  
• Ingenious at the Science Museum, London
  
• Walker Art Center – I just love them
  

Barbara – you'll see here I selected mostly gallery websites as I know that's your interest.

Online educational resources:

• Futurelab innovation in education – a good resource
  
• Their Space – eeducation for a digital generation – my favourite report on young people and the internet
  
• Larry Ferlazzo's websites of the day – a great resource mainly for ESL learning but widely applicable. This link is to his best of the best for 2007 but the whole blog is worth exploring
  
• TeacherTube – a place for teachers (and students) to upload and share videos and tips
  

I know this is only a taste – it's a huge web world out there, the trick is to subscribe to a few things rather than a lot. To that end, for those folks who don't already know – we have a large online network called Museum 3.0 with over 240 members. Feel free to sign up and continue these conversations – we're having a discussion about education on there right now! It's the one-stop shop for all things museum and gallery-related.

Learning vs education vs entertainment??

This question popped up from Ken at lunch yesterday: What are visitors seeking from cultural attractions in terms of education and/or entertaining experiences? Can these co-exist?

Well Ken, since you don't want to read my thesis online, or even Chapter 7 which answers these questions I will summarise it for you here. Watch out for a future edition of Curator where these findings will be published in more detail.

When comparing the concepts of learning, education and entertainment four differences emerged:

• the general language used to explain each concept differed, with more active words used to talk about learning, such as discovering, exploring, applying and experiencing and participants describing education in more concrete ways
  
• previous research established that people had generally negative views of education as a passive process over which they had no control, yet in my study negative views of education expressed emanated from a perceived lack of choice
  
• although there were differences in the language used to describe these concepts, there was still an appreciation of the role that education played in both acquiring facts and information, and in delivering learning, and unlike some of the studies reviewed in the literature, education was not seen as necessarily negative, just different
  
• in contrast to learning and education, descriptions of entertainment included words and phrases that were based on feelings and emotions.
  

I suggested that the museum environment allows the concepts of learning, education and entertainment to closely overlap in positive ways as shown in the diagram below. Overall I concluded that learning, entertainment and education are not competing concepts or opposites — they are complementary. Museums should not be concerned about their entertainment value and role, as results indicated that adult visitors felt that entertainment added to learning, not detracted from it, and overall, museums should promote themselves as places for enjoyable and entertaining learning experiences.

The relationship between learning, education and entertainment

Timing and pace of museum education visits

This question from Cathy Burke (UK): Dear Lynda, Susan Groundwater-Smith suggested I contact you to see if you know of any studies that have examined matters of timing and pace in the way that museum educators organised the experience of children visiting museums - especially on children's views on or experience of this - I am involved with a project that has generated this question at Manchester Art Gallery here in the UK. Looking for suitable literature. Feels like it is an important issue but I am finding it difficult to find relevant studies.

Hi Cathy. I don't know of any studies about this actually. A good resource is the Visitor Studies Group email alert where you can post a question. You could also look at Janette Griffin's thesis on school visits and museums, especially the lit review. It is available online at this link (I think!). If it doesn't work then go to the home page, search for University of Technology and her name and it should pop up. You could also email Janette (her details are on the UTS website).

There have been many general studies of timing in museums which may also be a good place to start. The Methodology chapter of my thesis has relevant lit and references (scroll down the page and it's there as a pdf).

I'd be really interested in what you find - can you let us all know via the blog please?

Evaluating teacher/student experiences at museums

My colleague here at the Museum, Pauline, is digging around for recent published studies of evaluations with teachers about their experiences, expectations and needs when visiting museums and cultural institutions generally.

The recent post I wrote in response to Alison's request is also useful background.

Pauline has promised to post some of the things she has found so far, but I was wondering if anyone had some studies, information, findings etc they'd like to share with us??

What are the most effective ways to recruit new audiences and build repeat visitations to a cultural institution?

This question came from Alison Wishart, State Library of Queensland (who promises to blog a response!): "My assumption is that one of the most effective ways is to give school students, who visit the cultural institution with their school group, an exciting and rewarding experience so that the students then go home and tell their parents about the fantastic cultural institution and the family visits as a group again and again. Is there any written research in this area that you could point me to?"

Alison, research that I know of has continually found that the characteristic which most impacts on adult museum visits is whether they were taken to museums as children and the types of experiences they engaged in. The "big picture" references are:
* Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (1992). The Museum Experience. Washington: Whalesback Books.
* Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (2000). Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

Prince investigated a range of attitudes and perceptions that were key to museum visiting. He found that visitors’ previous experiences with museums, as well as with learning and education generally, determined whether people then visited museums and the subsequent experiences they remembered. The reference for his work is:
* Prince, D. (1990). Factors Influencing Museum Visits: An Empirical Evaluation of Audience Selection. Museum Management and Curatorship, 9, 149-168.

Other references for these conclusions from a family perspective are:
* Ellenbogen, K. (2002). Museums in Family Life: An Ethnographic Case Study. In G. Leinhardt & K. Crowley & K. Knutson (Eds.), Learning Conversations in Museums (pp. 81-101). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
* Ellenbogen, K., Luke, J., & Dierking, L. (2004). Family Learning Research in Museums: An Emerging Disciplinary Matrix? Science Education, 88(Supplement 1), S48-S58.

and from a school-visit perspective are:
* Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (1997). School Field trips: Assessing Their Long-Term Impact. Curator, 40(3), 211-218.

The latter is particularly useful. A general overview of school visits and museums, with a comprehensive reference list is:
* Griffin, J. (2004). Research on Students and Museums: Looking More Closely at the Students in School Groups. Science Education, 88(Supplement 1), S60-S70.

I'm not sure if there have been any long-term tracking studies of visitation, but certainly Ellen's work is worth checking out.

Of course your broader question about new audiences generally is a whole new area but I have started small here. The big issue of how to attract and keep youth audiences (for example) can be found on here on my website. We also found in our study of audiences with disabilities that if museums offered great learning experiences, not just accessible ones, these groups would visit more regularly (and bring a whole lot more people with them).

Look forward to hearing from you.

Research on museum websites developed for teachers

I received the following email from the VSG list:

"Jessica from Randi Korn & Associates is looking for fairly recent studies of museum Web sites developed for teachers. She is trying to comb the literature to get an idea of how teachers are using the Web, specifically museum Web sites."

Jessica, I did a detailed study in November 2005 to gain a better understanding of how emerging internet technologies are affecting the learning environment, with a specific focus on teachers and high-school students. The overall objective of the research project was to provide us with guidance on how to best develop a website that meets the needs of students and teachers in the primary and secondary levels across a range of curriculum areas. General objectives were to gain insights into how students and teachers are using the internet and what they are looking for when they access websites.

We conducted a series of five focus groups with students and teachers from a mix of public and private educational institutions. There were primary school teachers from years 5-6; secondary school teachers from years 7-10 (mainly science teachers and co-ordinators); students aged 13 to 16; and a group of teachers specialising in technology and computing. The aim of the discussion was to look at participants’ use of the internet, their knowledge of media, and their reaction to a range of websites.

Ahead of time, participants received a letter outlining the aims of the research and providing a list of websites to review. These museum, gallery and general sites had targeted materials for teachers and allowed a two-way exchange of information - these proved to be extremey useful as a way to seek general and specific feedback - here's the list of the sites we used. As well, participants brought along a list of the website ‘favourites’ they used for recreation and education, which again gave us useful insights into how they were using the web.

The paper from this study (Kelly and Breault, 2006) will be published in the proceedings of the 2006 ICOM-CECA conference this year. I'm happy to email this paper to anyone who wants it.

Also, I'd be interested to hear of others' experiences, BUT rather than email - which only reaches a select few - why not blog your responses for many to share??