I'm really interested in the knowledge society and what that means for museums and organisational change. I have been re-visiting my Peter Drucker texts and been re-inspired by that man's foresight and genius! Susan Groundwater-Smith also put me onto this useful piece of work by Gurteen (2006) who suggested the following attributes of a knowledge worker:
The Gurteen Knowledge Website is useful too.
After my excellent lunch the other day with Rob and Gillian, I got inspired (or was that instructed!) by Rob to re-visit his 2005 paper The "Museum Constant": One-third plus or minus a bit (Visitor Studies Today!, 8/2, pp1, 4-7). Rob reports on an analysis of museum visiting data collected over a 13 year period with Australians asking about their leisure activities, demographic profile and personality/self-description items. Generally it was found that around 35% of the Sydney population visit museums, with the interest in museums more noticeable in those who agreed with the statement "I am interested in abstract ideas", then followed by education level.
Four things struck me from that as we struggle here with thinking about our general exhibitions and program offer:
In my recent survey of what Australians do online, I found that while those who visit museums undertake the same kinds of online activities (such as read blogs, comment on sites, use RSS feeds, etc), they were more likely to use a wiki; listen to a podcast; tag a web page; comment on a blog; post a rating/review; participate in a discussion board/forum; read a blog.
I'm wondering in future whether these kinds of stats will be affected by the online world and the new kinds of relationships museums will have with their audiences that visit them both virtually and physically? I'm becoming (surprisingly) more interested in how we then develop closer relationships in these aspects as we our rebuild our website and deeply think about our physical offer. To me, the conceptual aspects that Rob talks about are ripe for the picking in those who will interact with us online too.
Maybe time for some targeted research in this area??
What we did this afternoon was for the students to interview some of the Museum's scientists about what they do and their personal and professional interests. Mark and Amanda fielded many questions about their work and how they got interested in their field of work.
There were some really provocative and interesting questions from the students. One lovely one was How do we know what people know and what people don't know? Mark answered that by reminding us that all the answers aren't always to be found on the internet and that there are really cool books that you can use too. They also asked What was the most interesting thing they had discovered? Mark discovered a new species of wallaby, and Amanda's friend also discovered a new species of fish. Other questions were: What is the most weirdest and wackiest thing you've ever done in your job? Any scary experiences? Where's the most interesting place you've been to? Thanks Mark and Amanda, I know I learned more about you two who I usually see every day! Now I understand more about your passions and why you got into doing what you do. Amanda reminded us to hang in there as it may take some time to get some paid work.
The discussions have been really productive, some ideas that emerged at the end were that they:
The day finished with us going on a tour of an area that the Museum is thinking about turning into a new media space. And after that we thanked them, gave each school a certificate and finished!
Thanks so much for all your efforts as we now have a goldmine of information we can use when developing our new website and other digital technologies.
What is it like to learn using computers and digital technologies and what do we think about the web? You can do anything, go anywhere in the world, and do anything unexpected and find anything. Web is about bringing things together and mixing them (people and things). Web opens new doors and new discoveries. Finding unexpected things, using shortcuts, learning more about how to use it. The internet is big, lots of stuff to discover and find out. Wild and unexpected and creative.
Next we went on a visit – one to the Palaeontology collection and one to the Museum's search and discover area. We were curious to find out how objects in the Museum could be made more interesting by supplementing them through digital technologies. All ideas were great and really useful. Some from my group were:
We also got them to complete a survey with ten of their friends before they came here. The survey asked them questions about what they do online in order to compare to data we have collected from adults in Australia and the US. I'm still working on that! They also completed the sentence: Not being able to access the web is like not being able to ..., and here's some of what they said:
The final activity we did this morning was to think about websites b y looking at a site called ShowMe. This got a really bad review unfortunately and they felt that the site was developed by older people who weren't in touch with them ... Since they didn't like it we asked them to show us what sites they did like. Two sites from my group were FreeRice, where you learn about vocabulary/words while contributing to a good cause. They loved the colours and clean design of that site too. The other was MiniClip Games, for storing games which they felt was really well-organised, easy to find the games and fun as well.
One thing that struck me as they talked was that they felt the Museum's site was the place where we should store our content, videos, images and so on, not necessarily YouTube, Flickr and other places. They felt we should separate ourselves from what they perceive as fun sites – I'm not sure about this myself and is something that I'll be exploring further.
It's an exciting day for us here at the Museum. Around 24 students from schools across NSW are attending the second of our Kids' Colleges. This one is looking at digital technologies, how young people are using the web and to explore how e-learning relate to museums and young people. I'll attempt to blog as we go with my impressions so this may be a long and fragmented post ...
Attended this roundtable today organised by the Le@rning Federation through the Curriculum Corporation. Was a large gathering of museum representatives and folks from various education domains. Really productive discussion and I learned lots about how different education domains access content through their own learning portals. This presents issues for institutions who may need to get their content accepted by a huge range of education jurisdictions, not only the state system but providers like the Catholic Education system. It was interesting to hear from Charles Morgan from Tasmania who described how the learning objects are actually used in the classroom, and this brought alive the TLF process to me. Tim Hart from Museum Victoria raised incredibly important issues around museum and digitisation and working with organisations like TLF. The points I took away were:
To me the issue of metadata and standards are the most critical one facing the sector. When I raised the issue of how the various domains will deal with the future of the web and social networks and the way students learn and interact in the future, I found out that this actually won't be a problem as long as the metadata is right – we need to be able to map a common authentification according to Seb (I don't know what that really means but I'm sure someone's onto it!).
The wrap-up of the workshop was asking for one salient point from each working group. These were (from my perspective):
Afternoon was a symposium. First paper Pedagogy and digital content: findings from three years evaluation of TLF online curriculum content by Professor Peter Freebody, University of Sydney. His report will be on TLF website end of the month. Key points for me that are relevant to what the Museum's doing:
Several niggles I had – I didn't get a sense of what the actual experience of teachers and students were? The processes of evaluation, while I accept they need to be long-term and rigorous have the potential to be left behind –by the time you've disseminated the findings the audience has actually move on. I also have problems with language used around "mature" users and waiting – I think this is rather paternalistic – who's to define what mature practice is? It needs to be end-user defined, not defined by the researcher?? Guess I'll need to read the report.
Professor Stephen Heppell
Transforming practice – what (else) does it take? Points:
This was one of the most stimulating, fun and useful talks about the future of the web I have ever heard I must say. There was so much more he said that I haven't blogged about but I will be incorporating them into a paper I'm writing about the organisational change process in museums through the implementation of Web 2.0.
May Redfern asks: I am currently writing a paper for a conference on measuring cost/benefit analysis for museums delivering health and well being agendas (part of the broader social value remit). I was therefore just wondering if you know of examples of best practice in this area? At the moment I'm focusing on the UK's MLA's generic social outcomes framework and the new economics foundation's measurements. It would be great if I could add some more 'real life' examples of health/well-being policy delivery and evaluation in a museum setting.
Hi May. This is a tough one. I don't know of any specific evaluations and programs but I'm sure there must be some in the UK especially given their social inclusion agenda. Maybe ask via the Visitor Studies Group – they have a great email list.
The other person who springs to mind is Lois Silverman who has researched museums as therapy and come up with some interesting findings. She has published quite a lot and a quick Google search brings up various pieces she has done. Lois also has a chapter in the Richard Sandell edited book Museums, Society and Social Inequality that may be a good start. Last I heard she was at Indiana University in the Department of Parks, Recreation etc, but have looked through their (frustrating!) site and can't uncover anything further.
Good luck with your abstract – is it for the Inclusive Museum conference next June?
Anonymous asked: Dear Lynda, Does visitors book and feedback form that we found at the end of exhibition falls under summative evaluation?
Hi Anonymous. In my view visitors' books and feedback forms, when used strategically, can be a very valuable and easy form of summative evaluation. For example, we used feedback forms for a controversial exhibition, and by posting up others' forms coupled with media clippings found that we had a series of conversation happening – visitor-to-museum and visitor-to-visitor. Feedback forms can also help gather demographic information if you don't have the resources to do a targeted survey.
For more information about summative evaluation see the information sheet called Exhibition Evaluation on my website, and also the paper outlining the history and future of audience research that I have posted to my wiki – it is the one called Evaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums (go down the page a bit).
This question from Georgina Bishop, Natural History Museum, London: Hi Lynda, Hope all is well with you. I am gathering some information on Biodiversity exhibitions as we are in the beginning stages of developing a brief for one that will happen as part of the NHM's masterplanning. I think that you also have a Biodiversity exhibition and I wondered if it would be possible for you to send me any front-end research you did as part of this.
Hi Georgina and I am well thanks! I have chosen to blog my response so others can have access.
We did a series of studies for our former Biodiversity: Life Supporting Life exhibition as follows:
These files have now posted on my wiki at a new page called Evaluation reports. When reading them you need to keep in mind the time they were conducted. I think many of the topics and understandings that we tested at that time would be vastly different now. For example, the issue of climate change was not really even thought about then. We have done work on climate change which I have blogged about here, so I would also reference that work when you are looking at biodiversity.
There is also a project called Who Cares about the Environment? run by the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation that has been tracking attitudes to, knowledge of and skills and behaviour of adults regarding the environment over many years and is worth checking out. I'm sure there have been studies of this kind in the UK too. The Pew Internet/Exploratorium report The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science is also relevant as it showed that 20% Americans used the internet to find out information about science, including environment and climate change issues (second only to television at 41%) and this has implications for the conjunction of physical exhibitions and what museums provide on the web I believe.
Good luck.
This question from Martin Bazley and Nicky Boyd, London via the Visitor Studies Group email alert: We are doing some research into online audiences for the London Museums Hub. Have you done any evaluation of your online audiences, or do you know of any other data or research? They also detail a range of other questions around audience and methodology.
Martin and Nicky, this is a really growing field of evaluation and we have been active in this area over the past year or so. As part of her internship here, Mel Broe did literature review of online audiences and evaluation which she posted here on my blog. I also posted about a study I did with teachers and students and the web which has a series of extra comments and links. I also presented a paper with some very initial work on digital audiences and museums to a bunch of interesting folks in Tubingen, Germany, just last week. I posted that paper on my wiki (go to the second one). I am developing this paper more as we do further research with online audiences aged 18-30 (which is being presented to us today) and teenagers (via an e-kids' college we are running here in two weeks time). I promise to blog about these projects further.
I also suggest you go to the Museums and Web search papers site and have a look there.
One (of the many) outstanding evaluators in Australia, Carolyn Meehan from Museum Victoria in Melbourne, has done very interesting online work and you could email her.
Spending some time learning about the innovative projects that are happening at the Knowledge Media Research Centre. One that I hadn't heard about was the project being undertaken by Lars, who is using video technologies for students to record what they are learning. He is also developing a electronic tracking system which I think is really exciting – it allows people who are tracking/observing visitors in exhibitions to use a PDA and set of icons/symbols that they click on when visitors are doing something (e.g. pointing, reading, talking, etc). These are also time-stamped so you can record what they are doing when and for how long. Lars is using open source software in designing the tracking system and hopes to make it available for others to test and give feedback.
Spoke with Daniel who is looking at mobile technologies and museums. He has co-authored a paper which has promised to send me and I'll post the link. Eva also mentioned a good paper from the ICHIM conference that summarised what museums were doing in the areas of handheld technologies. I think it's this paper, although there are some other good papers on this website! Also met Eva who is working on this project, as well as Christine doing work on discussion kiosks and controversial topics; and Mika who is working on film and inferences. Mika isn't part of the museum component of the KMRC but I still think what she's doing has relevance for us.
It's interesting as they have a whole lab here where they can set up experiments using small exhibitions and testing out technological solutions to measuring what visitors learn from an exhibition. I tried out the i-tracker which was this cool set of glasses with built-in camera that records what the visitor is looking at. Used in conjunction with other tools, such as observation and interviews, is a potential way to do some evaluation. They have only tried it a few times however, and seems to me a neat idea but I'm unsure of the practicalities of it (let alone the cost).
Overall a really useful visit and hope to have more to do with these researchers (plus come back to the lovely city of Tubingen).
Came across a query about young people and museums through Facebook of all places! Have done quite a few studies with this group which are published here on my website. An interesting study we did several years ago now was with Indigenous young people and museums – that report can be downloaded here. One of the key outcomes from this for me was that young people wanted to engage with museums on deeper levels than just as visitors. They wanted to work with the collections, work in the public program areas developing and running programs for all audiences and even as meet and greet people! One of their major bugbears was not seeing people like them working in museums, therefore felt unwelcome and alienated.
I also conducted several studies with Professor Susan Groundwater-Smith called the Museum I'd like. Happy to send on any information to interested people. Now that I've thought of it again will experiment with positing examples of their work to Flickr at some point. We are repeating this exercise this year with students aged around 12-18 years and their use of digital technologies.
I also think we need to keep abreast of the kinds of studies happening around teens and the internet, as the ways they engage with content, their peers and "formal" institutions will radically change based on this new form of learning. The blog for the New Literacy, New Audiences project contains many posts on this topic. Demos also did an important paper on this issue which can be found here: Demos | Publications | Their Space. I think that report is essential reading.
I must admit though getting tired of the focus on young people when it is older audiences that are increasing and should be the focus in the future in my view! Here's the report of the Older audiences and museums study we did in 2002. I'm giving a paper on this very topic at the Lifelong Learning in Museums and Galleries conference at the National Gallery of Ireland next week. Watch this space as I post my impressions as well as the paper I'm giving.
This email just in from Jay Rounds:
Lynda,
Just got my copy of MUSEUM REVOLUTIONS, and the first thing I read was your article. Very interesting! Great idea to ask visitors about their own concepts of learning; the results proved very useful. I'm very intrigued by your question "do museums facilitate visitor learning despite themselves?" Have you developed that thought in more detail? My own take is that things make more sense when we move away from thinking of museums and visitors as if they were collaborating on a common task, and think of them having different jobs that intersect in ways that are very important, but strictly limited.
Jay
Lovely to hear from you Jay and glad you found the article useful. Since that paper I moved my thinking ahead quite substantially when I submitted my final thesis. Copies of various chapters and a more developed paper can be found on my wiki. Chapter 7 is probably the most useful summary of my work.
I found in my second stage that visitors played three different, yet simultaneous roles – museum expert, visit manager and learner facilitator. I think that's getting close to what you're asking? I do think that the emphasis on visitors as collaborators however is worthy of some further thought – certainly in my work around the virtual world that's one of the conclusions I'm coming to. I wonder if that will then manifest itself in the physical museum sense? I alluded to this in my thesis but am currently doing further research into these ideas. We had an initial discussion about this on the fresh+new(er) blog.
I also found that exhibitions impacted on visitors' learning identities in various ways, with some becoming even more convinced about how they did not want to learn in a museum after visiting a specific exhibition.
For those of you interested, more details about Museum Revolutions can be found on the University of Leicester website.
Thanks again Jay and love your work!
This question from Claire Baddeley a PhD student from University of Canberra:
I'm currently undertaking a PhD on the history, development, philosophy and management of 'Discovery Centres' at Australian museums. The project aims to investigate the role of 'Discovery Centres' in Australian museums, their purpose, and how they contribute (or don't contribute) to the visitor's museum 'experience'. The research aims to look at 'discovery centres' as a microcosm reflecting contemporary issues faced by museums (such as those regarding access, education/learning, use of collections & technology and operating as 'hybrid' organizations, combining not for profit and private sector roles). Given this, the main focus of the research is on 'discovery centres' as an aspect of the operation and role of museums in the 21st century.
I am writing to you to enquire as to whether you may be aware of any research or studies that have been undertaken on 'discovery centres' in museums (in relation to audiences)? There seems to be little written about what does and doesn't occur in 'discovery centres' in relation to audiences, why they are becoming increasingly popular in museums and how 'success' is measured in these centres (beyond visitor numbers, of course!). Any advice, suggestions or details of researchers/museum staff to contact that you could provide me would be much appreciated.
Claire, I know that Moya McFadyen from Museum Victoria did a world-wide tour of discovery centres. Her report is really worth reading (I'll give you her email details separately). At the Australian Museum I have done several studies of our popular search & discover which clearly demonstrates that visitors of all ages and type love these kinds of spaces and appreciate the role they have in learning. Regarding their popularity in museums, to me it is about museum staff finally responding to research and theoretical perspectives about how people learn. No longer do visitors want passive experiences where they are told stuff (actually they never really did!). Visitors consistently say they want choice and control over their visit experiences and discovery centre models meet these needs very well. Go here for some papers on museum learning and to this wiki for my thesis on museum visitors' learning.
Another place to talk to is CSIRO Discovery in Canberra. I was quite impressed with most of it when I visited in May this year and they may have undertaken some research during their planning.
There is also a Case study of The Discovery Room by Judith White at the Smithsonian on the ExhibitFiles website. Seeing this reminded me of a my favourite museum quote ever – too long to reproduce here so the reference is Skramstad, H. (1999). An Agenda for American Museums in the Twenty-First Century. Daedalus, 128(3) and look at pages 113-114.
Other ideas or leads anyone?
