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Università della Svizzera Italiana
Faculty of Communication Sciences
Digital technologies and visiting school groups:
A case study at the British Museum
Master’s Thesis of
Susanna Doll Student n°: 09-‐987-‐355
Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Paolo Paolini Thesis Co-‐supervisor: Shelley Mannion 2011-‐2012 Handing date: September 2012
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Table of Contents
1 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... 4 2 BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................... 5 2.1 OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................ 6 2.2 MUSEUM LEARNING: FROM PASSIVE TO PARTICIPATIVE ..................................................................... 9 2.3 LEARNING CONTEXT: SCHOOL VISITS TO MUSEUMS .......................................................................... 13 2.3.1 Bridging the gap .............................................................................................................................. 13 2.3.2 Learning as an individual ............................................................................................................ 16 2.3.3 The social context ............................................................................................................................ 21
2.4 LEARNING FROM MUSEUM OBJECTS ...................................................................................................... 24 2.5 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THE GALLERY EXPERIENCE ................................................................ 29 2.5.1 From content delivery to content construction .................................................................. 30 2.5.2 Mobile technologies and social interaction .......................................................................... 36 2.5.3 Technologies for guidance and structure ............................................................................. 38 2.5.4 Goals and requirements ................................................................................................................ 39
2.6 EVALUATING LEARNING OUTCOMES ..................................................................................................... 41 2.7 MULTIMEDIA MAGIC ............................................................................................................................... 43
3 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................... 47 3.1 CASE STUDY RESEARCH .......................................................................................................................... 47 3.2 MULTIPLE RESEARCH METHODS ........................................................................................................... 48 3.2.1 Content analysis of student-‐produced media ...................................................................... 48 3.2.2 Observations ...................................................................................................................................... 49 3.2.3 Interviews ............................................................................................................................................ 50
3.3 DATA COLLECTION ................................................................................................................................... 51 3.3.1 Student-‐produced media .............................................................................................................. 51 3.3.2 Observations ...................................................................................................................................... 51 3.3.3 Interviews ............................................................................................................................................ 52
3.4 DATA ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................... 56 3.4.1 Content analysis: Engagement .................................................................................................. 56 3.4.2 Interviews: Outcomes ..................................................................................................................... 58
3.5 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN ................................................................ 58 3.6 LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................................. 59
4 FINDINGS ...................................................................................................................................... 61 4.1 CONTENT ANALYSIS OF STUDENT-‐PRODUCED MEDIA ....................................................................... 61 4.1.1 A glance at the data: Quantitative overview ....................................................................... 61 4.1.2 Content analysis ............................................................................................................................... 63
4.2 OBSERVATION ........................................................................................................................................... 83 4.3 INTERVIEWS .............................................................................................................................................. 84 4.3.1 Personal views on the experience ............................................................................................. 84 4.3.2 Learning outcomes .......................................................................................................................... 91
4.4 CONCLUSIONS: CONNECTING PROCESS AND OUTCOME ................................................................... 103 5 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................... 107 5.1 OBJECTIVES: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ................................................................................................. 107 5.2 INSIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................... 109 5.3 FURTHER RESEARCH ............................................................................................................................. 113
6 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 114 7 APPENDIX A: INFO DOCUMENT SENT TO SCHOOL ....................................................... 121 8 APPENDIX B: BUDDHAS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM .................................................... 124 9 APPENDIX C: GALLERY OBSERVATION SHEET .............................................................. 125
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Figures Figure 1 -‐ Education Theories ............................................................................................................ 10 Figure 2 -‐ Needs, goals and constraints of schools and science centres .......................... 14 Figure 3 -‐ Scope of the study ............................................................................................................... 29 Figure 4 -‐ From content delivery to content construction ..................................................... 31 Figure 5 -‐ The five GLOs ........................................................................................................................ 42 Figure 6 -‐ Average performance of school groups .................................................................... 61 Figure 7 -‐ Number of pictures taken in different age groups ............................................... 62 Figure 8 -‐ Object interactions based on looking ......................................................................... 64 Figure 9 -‐ Descriptive object-‐related talk ...................................................................................... 64 Figure 10 -‐ Expressions ......................................................................................................................... 66 Figure 11 -‐ Features ................................................................................................................................ 66 Figure 12 -‐ Social interaction for learning .................................................................................... 73 Figure 13 -‐ Engagement in the gallery ......................................................................................... 103 Figure 14 -‐ GLOs of Multimedia Magic ......................................................................................... 104 Figure 15 -‐ Impact of engagements on learning outcomes ................................................. 105
Tables Table 1 -‐ Case study overview ............................................................................................................ 47 Table 2 -‐ Categories and types of data for analysis ................................................................... 56
Images Image 1 -‐ Students exploring the gallery ....................................................................................... 44 Image 2 -‐ Students creating a "glog" in the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre ........... 46 Image 3 -‐ Girl imitating Buddha ........................................................................................................ 69
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1 Abstract This study explores the potential of integrating digital technologies in educational
activities for visiting school groups in collection-‐based museums, analysing the case
of Multimedia Magic at the British Museum as an example. Through a combination of
research methods, both the process and the outcomes of the educational activity
were explored, in order to gain an understanding of the interrelation between the
engagement and behaviour during the visit and their cognitive and emotional
impact.
The process of the educational activity was analysed using content analysis of
student-‐produced media and observation. Post-‐visit interviews with 14
participating students were used to evaluate the learning outcomes of the visit,
which were categorized using Hooper Greenhill’s (2007) GLO framework.
The students showed intellectual, emotional, social and physical engagement during
the gallery activities. Intellectual, physical and social engagements proved to
influence the gain of knowledge, understanding and ICT skills, while the emotional
engagement impacted the students’ attitudes, enjoyment and behaviour. The digital
technologies used during the session showed relatively little influence on the
students’ knowledge gain, but they influenced their emotional, as well as their
physical and social engagement. The digital cameras evoked creative approaches to
task solving like role-‐playing and explorative behaviour. The emotional engagement
due to the use of digital technologies caused a high willingness for sharing the
experience and for repeat visits to the museum.
These findings are relevant for museum educators who are developing digital
activities for exploration and engagement. It serves as an example of the integration
of digital technologies into gallery activities without compromising the focus on the
artefacts.
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2 Background After an effort of the UK government to promote learning outside the classroom, in
2008, the independent Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and
Skills published a report that evaluates the practice of such learning. One of the key
findings was the following:
When planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development. (Ofsted, 2008, p. 5)
Museum visits being one example of learning outside the classroom, the motivation
for schools to organize regular day trips to local or regional educational institutions
should be in line with this report: Making a positive contribution to the students’
development by providing them an educational as well as enjoyable experience.
For museums, relationships with schools are equally important. Attracting school
groups to visit the museum always means connecting with a key audience – the
future audience. Especially primary school field trips can be an opportunity to
provide a new and memorable experience for children who may have never set foot
in a museum and who might return with their families and friends. As Michael Gove,
the British Secretary of State for Education puts it:
“The one chance that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have to go to the major museums and galleries is through schools and if there aren't school trips it doesn't happen for them. And yet school trips are the most effective way to get children learning; they become inspired.” (Boffey, 2011)
Following the laudable trend of becoming more visitor-‐centred, museum activities
are aiming more and more at including the students as active participants rather
than silent observers. In a participatory museum (Simon, 2010), visitors are
encouraged to add their story, to create content, to connect with the institution and
to share their experiences. School field trips are an opportunity for the museum to
let young visitors (and often first time visitors) know that they are welcome to
explore, to engage, to contribute.
Incorporating digital technologies into museum learning activities can contribute to
this mission of the active learner and they have a potential for engaging students in
ways that traditional learning material (i.e. worksheets) cannot. The mission of the
Samsung Digital Discovery Centre at the British Museum is to provide learning
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experiences that combine engagement with the museum’s artefacts with the playful
acquisition of ICT skills. This extends the educational relevance of the institution to
the 21st century, as there is more to learn at the museum than facts and numbers.
To ensure that an experience is both enjoyable and meaningful for the students,
evaluation is necessary. Museum educators benefit from experiences and insights
gained in other institutions as well as ones gained in their own. This study
contributes to the body of knowledge that drives the continuous improvement of
educational practice in museums.
2.1 Objectives and research questions The general interest behind this research is the following question: Which role can
digital technologies play in augmenting learning experiences in a cultural history
institution like the British Museum? The analysis of the Multimedia Magic case can
give an insight into the integration of cameras, tablets and computers in learning
experiences and how they can foster the interaction of the students with – in this
case religious – artefacts and the concepts that revolve around them. At the same
time, the evaluation of the educational program aims at exploring the impact on the
participants. This study is guided by the following four objectives:
1. Explore the engagement of the students with the museum artefacts
2. Explore the behaviours taking place during the gallery experience
3. Identify the learning outcomes of the session
4. Evaluate the role of the digital technologies for the learning process
Objectives 1 and 2 will be pursued by analysing the media produced by the students
during the Multimedia Magic sessions over the last two years and by formal
observation of one session. Objective 3 will be fulfilled by conducting semi-‐
structured interviews with the students of the same session. Objective 4 will be
pursued using all three data sets.
Following the objectives of this study, the research questions are the following:
Q1: How do students engage with the museum objects during the gallery exploration?
a. What do the students say about the artefacts in their recordings?
b. How do the students engage cognitively, physically or emotionally with the
artefacts?
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One of the goals of a school visit to a collection-‐based museum (like the British
Museum) is to get the students engaged with the artefacts. This set of questions is
aimed at finding out, which interactions with the objects take place during a digital
scavenger hunt like Multimedia Magic, in order to understand the potential of
certain technologies of engaging students in museum environments.
Q2: What is the students’ behaviour during the gallery exploration?
a. Which social interactions are taking place?
b. Which approaches are the students using to solve the tasks?
c. Are the students engaging in any creative, playful or unexpected behaviour?
Exploring the behaviour of students during the session is important in order to
understand contextual factors that influence the learning experience, like social
interactions. Also, finding out, how the students make use of the technologies and
how they approach their tasks can bring to light strong and weak points of the
design of the session, which leads to further improvement of practice.
Q3: What are the outcomes of this educational experience?
a. What is the students’ personal view of their visit?
b. What are the learning outcomes according to the GLO framework? (see chapter
2.6)
The third question set aims at understanding the impact of the session. After having
explored what the students do and how they behave during their visit, it is
important to know how this visit affected them and if their learning experience was
a success and why.
Q4: Which role do the digital technologies play in the learning process?
a. How do the students use the technologies to solve the tasks?
b. Do the technologies encourage or inhibit certain behaviours and interactions?
c. What influence do the technologies have on the learning outcomes?
d. How do the technologies influence the students’ views of the experience?
The fourth question set is aimed at finding out how the digital technologies actually
contribute to the success or failure of certain aspects of the experience. Using the
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findings of all the behavioural questions, this last set will critically evaluate to which
extent the supposed potential of the technologies can be confirmed.
These research questions are of exploratory nature and the goal is to gain an
understanding of the behaviours, interactions and impacts that are taking place in
order to inform practice and further research about the potentials of digital
technologies in museum learning.
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2.2 Museum learning: From passive to participative The purpose of the following section is to provide a theoretical background to this
study and to place its findings in a research context. Before analysing the specific
learning context of this study – school visits in museums – and exploring the
potentials of digital technologies in this context, this preliminary section will give a
short overview of the evolution of the concept of learning and how it influenced the
educational role and didactic practice of museums. This will provide the educational
groundwork and give insight into the concept of learning that the following chapters
are based on.
The conception of learning has changed significantly over the past century,
especially due to advances in research methods and new scientific opportunities
thanks to a rapid technological development. One main distinction between learning
theories and subject to endless debate is their epistemology. As can be seen in Hein’s
diagram (see Figure 1), two questions that determine the nature of learning theories
are: Does knowledge exist outside the learner? And how is knowledge acquired?
The notion that knowledge exists outside of a person’s mind leads to the assumption
that there is a generally valid truth independent from people’s personal conceptions.
This belief has implications for didactic approaches because it suggests that a
learning experience was successful only if a student acquired the “right” knowledge.
On the other end of the scale, knowledge is seen as something that can only exist
when constructed by a learner and is therefore dependent on this person’s personal
beliefs and existing cognitive concepts.
How knowledge is acquired determines the role of the learner. Traditional views
have assumed a passive role of learners who “learn by absorbing information that
has been transmitted to them.” (Hein, 1998, p. 21) Much of the conservative school
system seems to revolve around the idea of the transmission of knowledge that can
be “filled into” the learner’s empty brain. This educational approach usually leads to
a strong focus on memorization of facts and neglects the importance of
understanding (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
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Figure 1 -‐ Education Theories (Hein, 1998)
As early as in 1916, John Dewey criticized that although recognized as an active
process in the theories, learning was still treated as a passive procedure in most
schools.
Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so intrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of “telling” and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. (Dewey, 1916, p. 46)
The advances of psychology from a behaviourist to a cognitive science contributed
to a changed concept of the mind. While for behaviourists the mind was a “black
box”, whose internal processes could not be scientifically studied at the time,
cognitive scientists started to acknowledge and research its inner workings using
new methods and technologies. This progress in cognitive research backed theories
like constructivism, which see the learner as an active knowledge constructor:
[C]ognitive psychology saw the mind as active, as selecting information from the environment, relating it to prior knowledge, and acting on the results of such processing. (Friedenberg & Silverman, 2006, p. 96)
Museum educators adopted the constructivist idea and started to align their didactic
practice with the new theoretical understanding of mental processes. Hein (1998)
Learner constructs knowledge
All knowledge is constructed by the learner personally or socially
Knowledge exists outside the learner
Incremental learning, added bit by bit
Constructivism
Discovery Didactic, expository
Stimulus-‐Response
Learning Theory
Theo
ry of Kno
wledge
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listed the characteristics of a constructivist approach to exhibitions in his ground-‐
breaking book for museum education research: According to him, they:
• will have many entry points, no specific path and no beginning and end;
• will provide a wide range of active learning modes;
• will present a range of points of view;
• will enable visitors to connect with objects(and ideas) through a range of activities and experiences that utilize their life experiences;
• will provide experiences and materials that allow students in school programs to experiment, conjecture and draw conclusions. (p. 35)
A common misconception of the active knowledge construction in practice has been
that learning is most successful when students discover new knowledge by
experimenting or experiencing their environment without any direct guidance
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
This has evoked criticism by several researchers who pointed out the ineffectiveness
of minimal guidance during educational experiences (Mayer R. E., 2004; Kirschner,
2006). While this criticism is probably justified, it does not mean that the theoretical
concept of the active learner was wrong – but it was certainly misunderstood. The
active role of the students during knowledge construction should not lead to the
conclusion that the ideal didactic method is hands-‐on (rather than “minds-‐on” (Hein,
1998, p. 31)) experience without any direct instruction. It is not necessary for the
student to always be doing something in order for their mind to be active – “even
listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.”
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 11) The idea of the active learner does not
mean that instruction is obsolete; the role of instructors merely shifts from
transmitters of knowledge to facilitators of knowledge construction (Andresen, Boud,
& Cohen, 2000; Kisiel, 2006).
Hand in hand with the uprising of constructivist views, the educational approaches
of museums shifted. Aside from the fact that an active role was assigned to the
visitors, the authoritative voice of the institutions faded in favour of allowing
multiple views on their collections and acknowledging visitor generated content
(Tallon, 2008; Samis, 2008). Rather than imposing one valid truth on the visitors,
many institutions now encourage visitors to add their voice to the dialogue and they
acknowledge personal readings of “their” collections.
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As with every theory, there are diverse interpretations of these ideas and
researchers have taken different directions to further develop them. Especially
educators have incorporated some of the ideas to develop various didactic
strategies. Among these are theories like discovery, inquiry-‐based, problem-‐based
or experiential learning, which build on the premise of active learners who construct
their own knowledge. Even though terminology might differ and educational
theories do not accord in every detail, most contemporary museum education
researchers do agree on the core concept of the active role of the learner who
constructs new knowledge in his or her mind based on previous knowledge and
experience, which will also be a guiding principle for this study. Hein (1998) called
this the “inevitability of constructivism”:
If we accept modern theories of learning, then we inevitably need to accept the constructivist position on theory of knowledge at least to some degree. That people make their own meaning out of experience appears to be a phenomenon of nature (not just a theoretical construction). (p. 34)
Based on this assumption, the following section will now explore the most important
aspects of the educational experience of school groups in museums, highlighting the
personal and social context of the learners. Subsequently, the educational agenda in
collection-‐based museums will be discussed, describing the potentials of object-‐
based learning. Based on the issues raised in these chapters, this study will explore
the integration of portable digital technologies in this educational context.
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2.3 Learning context: School visits to museums The following section will explore the peculiarities of the specific learning context
studied in this work – school visits to cultural, collection-‐based museums – and
discuss the possibilities of object-‐based learning.
2.3.1 Bridging the gap This study is concerned with a specific learning context: the educational experience
of school groups in museums. Although both schools and museums are educational
institutions, they have always had quite a disparate role and didactic approach.
Typically, schools have been described as formal learning contexts. Although
learning can occur in any given context – and most learning occurs outside of school
(Cahill, Kuhn, Schmoll, Lo, McNally, & Quintana, 2011) – schools as institutions with
a clearly defined educational mission and a certain coercive nature are perceived as
the principal places of learning. The definition of a formal learning environment
includes factors like being compulsory, led by teachers, evaluation-‐based,
structured, with the motivation of the learners being mostly extrinsic (Eshach, 2007).
With schools being the embodiment of a formal learning environment, there is an
inclination of calling every context outside of school an informal learning
environment (Vadeboncoeur, 2006; Eshach, 2007).
A museum would therefore qualify as an informal learning context. Although a
museum visit might be less structured and evaluation-‐based than a lesson at school,
it is not true that learning at museums always happens completely incidental and
without any guidance. People could have an informal learning experience at a
museum, but this is usually not the case for school groups. Eshach (2007) suggests
that the term non-‐formal learning can bridge the gap between informal and formal
learning contexts. Non-‐formal learning occurs outside of the school environment but
in an institution with an educational intent. Instances of non-‐formal learning can
differ and they range from less structured (i.e. an individual or a family visiting a
museum in their leisure time without a learning agenda) to more structured
experiences. Class trips to museums are usually more on the structured side of the
scale. The place itself therefore, does not determine if a learning experience is formal
or not, but the whole learning context has to be considered. When school groups
visit a museum, this creates a complex scenario composed by the requirements,
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challenges and opportunities of two overlapping learning contexts, which are
usually perceived as being on the opposite ends of the formal-‐informal scale.
Figure 2 -‐ Needs, goals and constraints of schools and science centres (Schatz, 2004)
Although the benefits of school visits to museums seem manifold, there are certain
constraints that often make it difficult for teachers to realise them. Figure 2 shows
Schatz’ (2004) illustration of this issue. Even though his research focused on science
centres, the issues are transferable also to other museums. For one, there are
financial and logistic questions that have to be solved (i.e. transport, safety, number
of available supervising adults and supply teachers) and usually a day out of school
needs to be justified with an educational gain that the trip brings (Mortensen &
Smart, 2007; DeWitt & Storksdieck, 2008). Teachers often have concrete expectations
in terms of the learning agenda and the impact of a museum visit. Hooper-‐Greenhill
(2007) did a survey on the outcomes of museum visits and which ones teachers
valued most. It became evident that teachers rated “the opportunity for their pupils
to have an experience that is enjoyable and inspirational and which might lead to
creativity” (p. 111) most important. However, the majority of teachers were willing
to relate the museum visit to their curriculum and therefore, also highly valued
increased knowledge and understanding as a learning outcome.
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For museums to accomplish their educational mission and to provide successful
learning activities to schools, it is essential that they are aware of these needs and
constraints of their audience. School groups are very peculiar museum visitor types
that have specific needs and constraints, but at the same time lend themselves to
participating in structured educational activities.
There are several ways for teachers to organize field trips to a museum. They can
either be self-‐guided, in which case the teachers either prepare material to assign
tasks to the students during the visit (i.e. worksheets) or they can prepare a tour for
their students, in which they take over the role of the guide. In both cases, they need
to invest time to get acquainted with the content of the exhibitions and the museum
space to prepare the trip.
Another possibility is to rely on the expertise of the museum staff and book a tour
with a museum guide. This study, however, focuses on a third alternative:
Educational activities provided by the museum to schools that aim for – in contrast
to guided tours – an active involvement of the students during their visit. The
obvious advantage of trusting the museum with providing material and activities is
that teachers have to invest less time for the preparation of field trips and can
instead benefit from the expertise of the museum staff. Especially primary school
teachers prefer to rely on museum resources for their class visits because for the
teachers, the main goal of the trip is usually to provide an enjoyable experience for
the students, while in secondary schools the class trips are more learning and
curriculum focused (Ofsted, 2008; Hooper-Greenhill, 2007; Black, 2005).
The overlapping of two learning contexts does not only affect the design of activities
to combine the diverging needs and affordances in situ. Research has also shown
that “bridging the gap” with pre-‐ and post-‐visit activities is very beneficial for
learning (Vavoula, Sharples, Rudman, Meek, & Lonsdale, 2009; DeWitt & Storksdieck,
2008; Eshach, 2007; Falk & Dierking, 2000). Embedding museum experiences in the
school context has several benefits. Pre-‐visit sessions can serve as a thematic
introduction to the trip in order to familiarise the students with the things they will
see at the museum. However, the preparation session does not necessarily need to
include any factual information related to the topics of the museum visit in order to
have a positive influence on the museum experience. It has been shown in research
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that students who have been prepared well for a museum visit by their teacher, i.e.
who have been informed about the practical aspects of the visit and their schedule
for the day, are more at ease and more likely to focus on the educational experience
without being distracted by organizational questions (Kisiel, 2003). Post-‐visit
activities back at school reinforce the students’ learning and allow them to share
their experiences and gained knowledge with the teacher and their peers.
2.3.2 Learning as an individual In any context, learning is always a personal experience (Falk & Dierking, 2000).
Even if 30 students of the same age with similar social and cultural backgrounds are
attending the exact same lesson, the experience and learning outcomes will be
different for each one of them. Even though learning experiences can be
collaborative, the learning impact, the change of cognitive concepts, occurs on an
individual level (Hooper-‐Greenhill, 2007).
The problem with school groups in museums – as well as in the classroom – is that
the needs of the individual student can often not be considered. However, there are
ways to account for the individual differences of students in a museum environment
by providing them a certain freedom in their activity.
The school group is generally referred to and largely treated as a single entity rather than as a group of individuals and the group’s characteristics and needs are considered over the characteristics and needs of the individuals. Yet by providing students with some authority over their learning—giving them a clear agenda and choice in their learning and allowing them the same rights to learn in museums as we afford adults, we know that student learning can be facilitated (Griffin, 2004, p. S67).
In most educational contexts, it is not possible to design personalized learning
experiences for each individual student. However, it is crucial to consider certain
characteristics of the learners, to whom the educational activities are directed, like
age, language skills, cultural backgrounds, previous knowledge, etc. in order to
provide an experience that is suitable and possibly adaptable for as many different
individual learners as possible. The identity of the learner plays a crucial role in
making educational experiences relevant for them. Being able to relate any aspect of
an exhibit or a lesson to their own life will make the experience much more valuable
and memorable (Paris & Mercer, 2002).
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There are several aspects of the individual’s personal context that have a great
influence on their learning experience, like the learners’ developmental stage, their
motivation and previous knowledge.
Age is an especially critical factor when designing learning experiences for children.
Educational experience is required in order to be able to judge, which activities are
appropriate for a certain age group. Tasks that are too easy are just as demotivating
as tasks that are too challenging for a student of a certain age and cognitive
development (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
One ground-‐breaking concept that explored the characteristics of individual learners
and challenged the “one size fits all” model of education” (Samis, 2008, p. 4) was
Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences. He suggested that there are seven
intelligences (linguistic, musical, logical-‐mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic,
interpersonal, and intrapersonal) and that each mind has a unique intellectual
profile, which is shaped by genetic disposition as well as experience. Gardner
himself suggested that museums were ideal environments to implement educational
activities that account for different intelligences (Armstrong, 2009). The theory
caught the interest of educators and there has been extensive research on its
practical application in order to account for the different ways that students learn
and understand (Hawk & Shah, 2007). Recognizing that the mind is composed by
several kinds of intelligences has influenced the way that some educators approach
their lessons or design their curricula, in order to avoid an unbalanced education
and to recognize parts of the intellect that had so far been neglected in traditional
school education. Since a field trip to one particular museum is often a one-‐time (i.e.
once a year or less) experience for students, it is important to use this time frame –
which often lasts only a few hours – in a way that makes a positive impact on the
largest possible percentage of the attending students.
The museum environment lends itself to learning in many different ways. Embracing
the range of possibilities for learning, like “object handling, analysis of visual
displays, drawing, drama, group discussion, questioning, listening, team-‐work and
problem-‐solving” (Hooper-‐Greenhill, 2007, p. 185), can make students with diverse
intelligences and learning styles respond positively to the activities. The museum
experience is therefore a complement to the education in school, which mostly
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addresses logical and linguistic intelligences with a focus on memorisation of facts
(Gardner, 1983; Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009).
In addition to learning styles and aptitudes, each person brings with them a personal history, a psychobiography, and engages the museum within a social context, visiting alone, with friends or associates, or with family. (Samis, 2008, p. 4)
Part of this “personal history” of the learners is their previous knowledge, their
experiences and interests. According to the constructivist theory, new knowledge is
always based on existing knowledge and mental concepts. It is therefore, an
important contextual variable that influences learning. The prior knowledge of
students determines how they perceive a learning experience. It can have a positive
impact, if the learner already knows a few things about the subject matter or a
related field and he or she can recognize something during the museum visit. It
creates an instant interest and the satisfaction of having found something familiar,
on which to build new knowledge (Hein, 1998; Falk & Dierking, 2000). At the same
time, previous knowledge can be a challenge for learning if the students have
conceptions that conflict with the new knowledge to be acquired.
For the design of the activities it is good to be aware that reinforcing existing
knowledge is a substantial part of learning (Hooper-Greenhill, 2007). When students
are introduced to new information, repetition can be helpful to affirm the learning
process, especially when different approaches are used to transmit the information,
or it is presented from different angles.
When material is taught in multiple contexts, people are more likely to extract the relevant features of the concepts and develop a more flexible representation of knowledge that can be used more generally. (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 236)
When learners are facing a concept or object for the second time, they can recognize
it and instantly get a feeling of familiarity. They might approach it differently the
second time, as well, since the novelty factor is gone, and this can support
understanding.
For educators, it is difficult to know which interests and previous knowledge the
students bring to the museum and therefore, it is not possible to tailor the
experience to the specific profile that the students have. However, they should be
aware that the experiences of students at the museum could serve as a base for
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further learning. Even if the students do not feel like they learnt anything, they might
encounter a situation in the future that evokes memories of the visit and influences
the way they further develop their mental concepts. It is more likely that they will be
encouraged to deepen their knowledge in a topic if they have positive associations
with it. The responsibility of museum educators is to provide these enjoyable
experiences that serve as previous knowledge for future learning.
In Falk and Dierking’s Contextual Model of Learning (2000), one element of the
personal context is the learner’s motivation. The motivation and expectations of the
learners will highly influence the impact that the educational experience has on
them. Although children are regarded as keen motivated learners (Bransford, Brown,
& Cocking, 2000), on a school field trip to a museum the general motivation of all
students is an extrinsic one: The museum visit is part of the school curriculum.
On an individual level, however, the motivation certainly differs from student to
student and it depends on their previous experience with similar situations, which
shape their expectations and therefore their attitude towards the activities.
During the visit, the students’ motivation largely depends on the design of the
educational activities. Falk and Dierking (2000) state the important role of choice
and control for engaging learning experiences:
Learning is at its peak when individuals can exercise choice over what and when they learn and feel that they control their own learning. […] When museums try too hard to mimic compulsory education and force specific learning agendas on the public, they undermine their own success and value as learning institutions. (p. 138)
In a study about the use of worksheets in museums conducted by Mortensen &
Smart (2007), students preferred open-‐ended tasks that gave them the freedom to
answer in the way they preferred. Bamberger and Tal (2007) explored the
differences in learning when students were asked to complete tasks with no choice,
limited choice or free choice. While tasks with no choice often resulted in students
losing interest, free choice tasks were more enjoyable but not perceived as effective
learning. Limited choice tasks turned out to keep the students motivated “and
enhanced deeper involvement in the learning process, compared with no choice and
free choice activities.” (p. 91) While it seems to be a valid proposition that no choice
activities in museums neglect the valuable aspect of free exploration that the
museum environment has to offer, it is also true that school field trips are subject to
20
certain constraints. As mentioned previously, the trip needs to be justified by the
teacher and therefore “some sort of tangible measure of cognitive outcome is
required” (Mortensen & Smart, 2007, p. 1390). But this constraint is not the only
problem with completely free-‐choice discovery learning. Mayer (2004) and Kirschner
(2006) pointed out that pure discovery learning with no or minimal guidance has
proven ineffective in numerous studies. Like Bamberger and Tal suggested limited-‐
choice activities, Mayer proposes guided discovery learning as a successful didactic
strategy. He concludes:
Guidance, structure, and focused goals should not be ignored. This is the consistent and clear lesson of decade after decade of research on the effects of discovery methods. […] Pure discovery did not work in the 1960s, it did not work in the 1970s, and it did not work in the 1980s, so after these three strikes, there is little reason to believe that pure discovery will somehow work today. (pp. 17-‐18)
Finding the right balance between guidance and free choice is an essential challenge
to face when designing museum-‐learning activities for school groups.
The instructional design also guides the motivation of students to find out more.
Instruction that is self-‐contained without encouraging further discovery can appear
to the students as if they had learned all there is to know. Bonawitz and Shafto
(2011) studied this phenomenon with infants and suggested a “trade-‐off between
instruction and exploration […] teaching simultaneously confers advantages for
learning instructed information and disadvantages for learning untaught
information” (p. 8). Instruction and tasks direct the mind and motivation. When
asked to solve a certain task, to find an answer to a certain question, individuals tend
to overlook everything else that does not seem to fit into the scope of the question. It
is therefore important to keep in mind that the tasks should be open-‐ended in order
to give some freedom and control to the student.
Another important factor that influences the motivation of students to learn is
enjoyment. It seems almost too obvious to mention but as Paris, Yambor and Wai-‐
Ling Packard state: „When students attribute positive values and feelings to tasks,
they are likely to choose them and pursue them vigorously” (1998, p. 280). The
importance of emotions for learning processes has in fact been confirmed by
neuroscience (Giessen & Schweibenz, 2007). Positive associations with newly gained
information support the long-‐term storage of the acquired knowledge. Giessen and
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Schweibenz suggest evoking positive emotions in a museum environment through
participation, responding to the individual student and learning through
storytelling.
2.3.3 The social context Social interaction also plays an important role during museum visits. Students who
visit the museum with their class and teacher are in a familiar social setting, which
certainly influences their experience and can have a positive impact on their
learning. There is no question whether social interaction will take place when a
school group visits a museum. As Adams, Luke and Moussouri (2004) put it quite
frankly:
Most people visit museums in groups, either with family or friends. They clearly want to share, and will approach the museum as a social experience whether or not you plan for it. (p. 166)
The challenge is to facilitate meaningful interaction that revolves around the subject
matter. Encouraging students to collaborate with each other in the museum and
engaging them in conversation about what they are seeing makes the experience
more memorable and the learning process more valuable (Falk & Dierking, 2000).
One element of social interaction is conversation, which has been identified as a
powerful driver of learning in museum environments by several studies (Leinhardt &
Crowley, 2002; Walker, 2008). Explaining something to someone else or discussing an
object at the museum makes the experience more memorable. The sole verbalization
of thoughts seems to have an effect on the learning process because in order to put
them into words students need to organize their mental concepts (van Boxtel, 2000;
Saab, van, & A., 2005). It is therefore supportive of the learning process to engage
the students in discussions about the objects or the concepts to be learnt.
The objects displayed in a museum can become the heart of social interaction if
experiences are designed accordingly. Leinhardt and Crowley studied how
conversations around artefacts mediate learning and they suggested that the objects
“create nodes around which existing knowledge can be restructured and into which
new knowledge can be integrated.” (2002, p. 11)
Collaboration with their peers is not the only important aspect of the learning
experience, since students can also benefit from the interaction with museum staff
22
and teachers. The concept of the social quality of learning was established by
Vygotsky (1978) who pointed out that social mediation plays a crucial role when
constructing new knowledge: Through the interaction with a more knowledgeable
person, students learn to achieve things that they are not able to do individually yet.
Vygotsky’s concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’ was adopted by museum
educators and many researchers emphasised the important role of ‘scaffolding’ in
learning processes (Black, 2005). While social mediation certainly plays a role in
successful education, it is not so much a transmitting of knowledge with a passive
receiving learner, but more of a construction of new knowledge in dialogue with the
mediator. According to constructivist theories, it is not possible to transmit
someone’s ideas and concepts as isolated units of knowledge to someone else. The
learners will always build them into their pre-‐existing mental concepts and
therefore construct their own version of new knowledge – but the social interaction
supports this process.
Engaging with museum objects seems to be enriched through social interaction.
Packer and Ballantyne (2005) found that visitors who came in pairs “spent a greater
proportion of time actively engaged” (p. 183). They argue that people are more
likely to engage in certain behaviours if they have a companion. When giving
instructions for the interaction with artefacts, it is therefore advisable to have
students act in pairs or groups because they will be more comfortable and the social
interaction can elicit a more creative engagement.
Since not every artefact automatically provokes discussion among visitors, Simon
(2010) suggested that strategies should be employed to turn them into social
objects. According to her, this can be done in several ways. The following three are
very relevant for museum educators designing activities for school groups:
Asking visitors questions and prompting them to share their reactions to the objects on display [...]
Giving visitors clear instructions on how to engage with each other around the object […]
Offering visitors ways to share objects either physically or virtually by sending them to friends and family (p. 138)
Asking questions is a good way of giving the visitors something to ponder and a way
to connect with an object without burdening them with extensive accounts of factual
23
knowledge. It is not the museum’s authority to tell them what to think but they are
invited to add their voice to the conversation. Especially for children, who probably
do not have a lot of expert knowledge on the subject, it is important to ask them
questions that are not out of their reach. Simon suggests asking either personal
questions – because everyone can say something about themselves – or speculative
questions that challenge the imagination. In both cases, wrong answers do not exist,
so this encourages participation. Language is a powerful tool for thinking and
learning if it is used in the right way. Continuous talk certainly does not necessarily
mean acquisition of knowledge but evoking relevant discussions will support the
learning process and make experiences more memorable.
Simon (2010) mentions sharing as a powerful tool to enhance interaction and the
learning processes; “sharing content helps people learn.” (p. 173) In a museum-‐
learning context this is not only about sharing the experience with fellow students
by discussion, discovering things and pointing them out to a friend. It is also about
creating something during that experience that can be shared with someone else
who did not participate (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Looking at the
popularity of social media, it becomes apparent that people are passionate about
sharing their experiences, their thoughts, their accomplishments – their whole life –
with other people. Creating something to be shared at a museum gives a whole
second level of meaning to the activity: not only does the process have an impact on
the learners themselves, but it also adds a social component. Through sharing, the
individual learner can possibly contribute to the learning of others, and therefore to
a greater good, as well.
Learners of all ages are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to do something that has an impact on others—especially their local community. (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 61)
A physical outcome of a learning experience is therefore not only important to
teachers for evaluation purposes but also for students who are enthusiastic about
showing other people what they have done. Having physical evidence of a museum
experience helps extend the learning process beyond the museum context. It is an
object of memory that can help the students to reconstruct their cognitive processes
during their learning experience and manifest them by explaining to others. There
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are different ways of content creation during museum visits and digital technologies
can play a major role, which will be addressed in chapter 2.5.
Another social interaction relevant for school group museum visits is competition.
Many educational activities designed for class trips involve a game-‐like character,
where students or groups of students compete against each other. The games do not
need to be explicitly designed as a competition for the students to get a sense of
rivalry. While competition does influence the motivation of students to perform
better, this has shown to be more of a performance under pressure rather than of
intrinsic motivation and therefore produces less creative results (Apiola, Lattu, &
Pasanen, 2012). Especially if competitions are linked to time constraints, students
tend to rush through the exhibitions to complete all the tasks without taking the
time to explore and engage with artefacts.
2.4 Learning from museum objects As established in the previous chapters, schools and museums do not have the same
educational role; in fact, ideally, they take on complementary roles. Consequently,
one should not expect the same learning processes and outcomes in a museum
context. The question that needs to be answered then is: What exactly are students
supposed to take away from a museum visit and how are these impacts achieved?
The following section will explore the possibilities of object-‐centred learning and
discuss ways of guiding aesthetic experiences and interpretive behaviours in a
museum setting.
Framing a meaningful experience for students in art or cultural history museums is
not an easy task. In collection-‐based museums, the objects are the main assets that
drive learning experiences. While it seems fairly obvious that visitors go to a
museum with an art, ethnographic or cultural history collection in order to look at
the displayed objects, there has been a lot of debate about the role of the objects in
learning. What benefit can come from simply looking at different artefacts –
especially for young visitors who usually do not have any specific previous
knowledge to make sense of the objects?
Museums that exhibit cultural artefacts have the responsibility to preserve them,
which usually implies a “Please do not touch” policy and the displayed artefacts are
neither interactive nor easily accessible. The displays in a Science or Natural History
25
museum are usually more compelling for children, especially when they relate to
objects or animals that the students know from their personal lives. Children are
generally curious about the phenomena in their familiar environment but artworks
or ethnographic objects are usually not a part of their personal context. Thus, how
can students get “hooked” by paintings, sculptures or cultural artefacts and what can
they learn from them? Memorizing dates, names and classifications as they can often
be found on the object labels doesn’t seem to be a very fruitful approach. On the
contrary, Duke points out that if
people who have not spent much time looking at art and thinking about its meanings—are given art information, it tends not to be very useful to them. They may find it uninteresting and have trouble remembering it […] (p. 274).
A persistent conviction, especially in art museums, has been that museum objects
“speak for themselves”, meaning that interpretive material is more disruptive rather
than beneficial for the encounter with an authentic artefact. According to the
advocates of this standpoint, visitors are supposed to have unbiased aesthetic or
numinous experiences with the displayed objects, entering into a state of “flow”.
A changed perception of the museums’ educational role and the effort of becoming
more visitor-‐centred also brought the realisation that especially museum visitors
who have previous knowledge needed context information in order to understand
and connect with objects displayed in a gallery. Besides for wall texts and object
labels, other interpretive media like audio or multimedia guides, interactive kiosks,
etc. have become more common in the museum space. Critics of the wealth of
interpretive media say that visitors get overloaded with factual information, which
prevents them from actually directly engaging with the artefacts. Rather than just
providing information, educators suggest encouraging meaning making and the
active construction of knowledge and understanding by the visitors. This goes hand-‐
in-‐hand with a new understanding of learning, which in the last decades is being
regarded “as much more than the acquisition of a body of knowledge” and therefore
encourages “learning from objects rather than simply learning about them”
(Hawkey, 2004).
For Leinhardt and Crowley (2002), the potential of object-‐centred learning is to
regard artefacts as examples. Objects can illustrate a topic or a concept and evoke
immediate understanding for some aspects that verbal descriptions would not be
26
able to explain sufficiently. Seeing several examples of paintings of a certain period,
for example, gives a better understanding of the style, the themes or the colour
palette characteristic for this period than verbal explanations ever could. Learning
from these “examples” is particularly powerful if there is a range of objects to
explore, in order to discover differences and similarities.
Following the principles of constructivist learning theories, most museum educators
now agree that learning from artefacts should involve active meaning making,
training interpretive skills, inquiry learning or some other form of engagement that
requires the learners to actively construct knowledge from museum objects. These
constructivist learning theories are especially appropriate for practical application
in cultural museums. Cultural artefacts do not have one meaning, and they always
allow for more than one interpretation; therefore designing learning activities that
encourage students to construct their personal meaning of an object is very suitable
because it does not suggest that there is one truth “out there” that has to be
accepted.
Several educators suggest inquiry learning as a strategy to make learners “think
about and build on prior knowledge and construct new meanings” (Villeneuve &
Rowson Love, 2007, p. 202). In the best case, it stimulates social interaction as well
by arousing discussion about an artefact, which ultimately supports learning.
Inquiry learning is based on asking questions about artefacts in order to investigate
their meanings and context. Hubard (2011) distinguishes between factual and
interpretive inquiry, the former being concerned with the technical side of the
creation process and the latter with the interpretation of the meaning of an artefact.
This approach is in line with the postulate that the instructor should be a facilitator
of knowledge construction rather than an interpreter (Andresen, Boud, & Cohen,
2000; Kisiel, 2006). By asking questions the educator can direct the students’
attention and make them think about and formulate their own personal views on an
artefact. This way, in order to make artefacts accessible, rather than being told about
them, the students receive an impulse as to what to do with the object. Suggesting
ways of interaction, asking questions that make visitors look at and think about an
artefact, provokes more mental engagement.
27
It is not only the observation and interpretation skills that get trained by meaning
making activities. Aside from looking at objects, the students are required to express
their thoughts verbally. As established in previous chapters, conversation is a
powerful tool for learning. Talking about museum objects, describing their features,
trying to express their impressions by maybe using newly acquired terms helps
“students not only to develop their perception but also to develop their language for
talking about that perception” (Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison, 2011, p. 147).
One advocate of the standpoint that people can acquire crucial skills from the
interaction with artefacts is Abigail Housen (2002), whose theory of aesthetic
development, which was developed in the 1970s, gave way to the method of visual
thinking strategies (Visual Understanding in Education, 2012). According to Housen,
there are five stages of aesthetic development, which determine the way a person
interprets a work of art. While inexperienced viewers mostly draw connections to
their personal life and experience, in the second stage, they start to judge what is of
value based on their perception of reality, before they begin categorizing works in
the classifications of art historians in the third stage. More expert viewers start to
interpret and look for meaning in artworks, before they enter the fifth stage of
development, where they “know the ecology of a work—its time, its history, its
questions, its travels, its intricacies” (Housen, 2002, p. 127). According to this
theory, everyone who starts engaging with artworks has to go through all the stages
of aesthetic development before they can become an expert viewer, which doesn’t
mean that everyone necessarily will reach the forth or fifth stage. This explains why
inexperienced viewers are often not able to relate to the (art-‐) historical information
provided by the museum because they need to develop skills for looking at art first.
Housen also studied the transferability of critical thinking skills acquired through art
educational sessions based on her visual thinking strategies approach. In these
sessions, students are involved in group-‐discussions about a specific artwork. The
discussion is based on three simple successive questions: “‘What is going on here?’,
‘What do you see that makes you say that?’, and ‘What more can you find?’” (p. 100)
These questions make the students look at the artwork closely trying to understand
what it is about. No answer is wrong but for every statement they make, the
students have to look for supporting visual evidence in the object. Over the years of
28
research, Housen and other researchers have found evidence that these sessions
improve students’ interpretational and critical thinking skills.
Housen is not the only one who thinks that providing aesthetic experiences and
training the eye for looking at objects is a valuable agenda for cultural museums.
Luke and Knutson (2010) argue that through meaning making “life-‐based skills” like
“problem-‐solving and critical thinking” (p. 232) are gained. These skills are not only
required in the art field but observation and critical thinking can be successfully
transferred to any domain:
[T]he types of thinking people do when they look for meaning in art may be similar to the ways people think about complex, dense, and ambiguous ‘‘data sets’’ in a scientific domain. (Duke, 2010, p. 273)
One can never control exactly what and how children will learn during their
experience in the museum. Sometimes the actual learning might occur months after
the visit, triggered through a different experience that brings the things seen or
heard at the museum back to mind, putting them in a different light, causing a new
understanding or a new meaning. One can, however, try to design experiences in a
way that allow for many different people to learn many different things.
It is important to keep in mind that learning at the museum is not the same as
learning in school. The affordances of a museum are different and according to
research, “mirroring school-‐type behaviors” (Griffin, 1997, p. 765) can be harmful to
the learning experience. Over-‐structuring the visit and focusing too much on the
completion of tasks instead of on exploration and meaning making is perceived as
constraining by the students, and it hinders their curiosity for finding out more.
In school, the completing of tasks is usually linked to finding the right answers and
the evaluation is based on how many mistakes have been made. This paradigm is not
very suitable for learning in museums, especially in cultural museums, where
learning is more about interpretation and a critical approach towards the objects
and the concepts they represent, and not about finding one right answer. (Duke,
2010) As Duke (2010) puts it in the title of her article: “It’s an experience, not a
lesson” and the learning agenda should account for that.
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2.5 Digital technologies and the gallery experience Taking into consideration the previously discussed research this chapter will
explore the potential that digital technologies have in augmenting the experience of
school groups in cultural museums using examples of projects in this field.
Technologies have found their way into the museum world during the second half of
the 20th century and have since been used for a variety of tasks in this context. They
support the management of the museums’ collection and knowledge, drive forward
digitisation and the sharing of information online and more recently, they promote
the participation and engagement of the public both online and on site.
Figure 3 -‐ Scope of the study (adapted from Hawkey (2004))
As can be seen in Figure 3, the scope of this study is focused on technologies for
learning on site, more specifically, portable digital technologies that enhance the
gallery activities of visiting school groups. The focus on portable technologies
originates from the belief that an important aspect of school excursions to museums
(especially collection-‐based museums) is the exploration of the galleries and getting
in contact with original artefacts. While fixed interactive installations and didactic
terminals can have a valuable contribution to the learning process in many contexts,
they are less significant to the purpose of this study.
This study does not focus on one specific technology; so all digital tools that are
portable and can be used for educational activities in a gallery setting are relevant.
Decisive for the success of digital learning in museums is not the question, which
30
technology is used but rather, how it is being used. Portable or mobile technologies
in this context can be any digital device that can be carried around in the gallery by
the students. The role of the technology in the learning process can be diverse: They
can provide guidance, orientation, context information and tasks or they can be used
as a tool for documenting, sharing, communicating, creating content, etc.
The following section will summarize the most important themes relevant for
successful integration of digital technologies in a museum setting and illustrate
challenges and opportunities using example projects that have been implemented in
the past. Although this study is concerned with technologies in collection-‐based,
cultural museums, examples of projects in science or other museums will be
presented where appropriate and relevant (Schwabe, Göth, & Frohberg, 2005).
2.5.1 From content delivery to content construction The first portable technology for learning to find its way into museum galleries was
the audio guide, which is still popular with museum visitors today, because it
provides contextual information without distracting from the visual experience of
the artefacts (Samis, 2008). As the development of handheld technologies
progressed, museums started to integrate multimedia content in their tours and
more recently, they began offering mobile applications for visitors to download on
their own devices. In many cases, these technologies are used to provide contextual
and interpretive information to the audience. Although content delivery has become
increasingly more sophisticated over the years, involving wireless connections to
the museum’s database, context-‐aware systems or customized visitor profiling
(Rudman, Sharples, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Meek, 2008), the learners still keep their
passive role unless the tools are used for other activities as well.
Certainly, there are good examples of pure content delivery, however, in the context
of school visits to a museum, this is not the right approach. As established in
previous chapters, the educational gallery activities for school groups are supposed
to encourage the learners to be active, to engage in meaning making and interact
with the artefacts. Pure content delivery tools are not ideal for an experience like
that.
Frohberg, Göth and Schwabe (2009) created a scale from 1 to 5, in order to
categorize the use of digital technologies in mobile learning projects, in terms of how
31
they engage the learner (see Figure 4) On the low end of the scale is “content
delivery” without any active involvement of the learner. The other end is “content
construction”, where the learners are active and creative, which “leads to a deeper
understanding and knowledge becomes applicable”. (p. 315) Digital learning
projects that focus only on content delivery are valued quite poorly because they
ignore the potential of digital technologies to involve the learner actively.
Figure 4 -‐ From content delivery to content construction (adapted from Frohberg et al. (2009))
As can be seen in Figure 4, projects towards the high end of the scale become more
based on situated learning, meaning that the focus of the learners is directed to their
environment, i.e. the gallery and the objects rather than the device itself. The way
that learning activities are designed and how they make use of the tools’
functionalities plays a crucial role in determining how much engagement with the
objects actually takes place. Especially when mobile devices are only used to deliver
content, there is a danger that the focus of the students is directed away from the
artefacts. Instead, the functionalities of the devices should be used to connect the
learners with the objects and to evoke their active engagement.
Despite the critics of pure content delivery, Walker (2008) found that especially
visitors with little previous knowledge require at least some contextual information
about an artefact in order to be able to engage with it. Using tools for content
delivery therefore is not generally wrong, and combined with other activities, it can
actually be very beneficial for the learning experience.
Using the interactive features of mobile devices can help in the designing of
educational activities in the stimulus-‐response domain (Patten, Arnedillo Sánchez, &
32
Tangney, 2006). Letting users interact with the device and providing feedback elicits
a more motivating and enjoyable engagement than pure content delivery. However,
it keeps the focus of the learner on the device itself. This kind of learning activities
corresponds to category 2 on Frohberg et al.’s scale. The learner is more active than
with pure content delivery but learning is usually not situated, i.e. it does not elicit
engagement with the environment or the museum exhibits in this case.
Many mobile learning projects in the museum environment that fall in the categories
between 3-‐5 on Frohberg et al.’s scale, use the functionalities of devices for
bookmarking, collecting data or creating content.
The goal of bookmarking and collecting data in museums is mainly to record
information for revision after the visit. Different mobile devices offer different
possibilities for data collection, such as taking pictures, voice recording, QR code
reading, etc. Data collection activities for school groups often have a game-‐like
structure, where students have to collect certain objects or information about them.
For the success of educational collection activities, it is crucial that the students
actually engage with the objects or the collected content, which is not always the
case as the following example demonstrates:
O’Hara et al. (2007) studied a mobile activity in the London Zoo, where visitors
collect location-‐based content using camera phones and 2D barcodes. The gathered
content is both stored on the phone for review during the visit as well as in an online
collection. This kind of collecting activity seems to create a sense of ownership and
elicit competitive behaviours. The fact that the collection can be accessed online
after the visit extends the learning experience and the collected content can serve as
“a kind of souvenir” (p. 40). However, it is questionable how much the visitors
actively engage with the educational content of this activity. After they scanned the
barcode, they collected the item and their task was completed. In fact, O’Hara et al.
discovered that visitors engaged with significantly less content items than they
collected. Especially in a museum environment, where the interaction with artefacts
is desirable, this kind of activity design would probably not be very effective. The
activity should account for some kind of incentive to actually engage with the objects
and the content provided.
33
The following two examples MuseumScouts and MyArtSpace both incorporate an
incentive for the students to actually engage with the collected data by including
post-‐visit activities. Wishart and Triggs (2010) evaluated the outcomes of
MuseumScouts, a mobile learning project, where students have to research museum
objects by collecting data in the galleries, which they then use to create multimedia
presentations of their findings. The benefits of this activity turned out to be
manifold: Aside from gaining knowledge, the students showed and improved ability
to retrieve and organize data. Wishart and Triggs associated the positive outcomes
with “the authentic and purposeful nature of the tasks” (p. 676).
The same was found for the project MyArtSpace (Vavoula, Sharples, Rudman, Meek, &
Lonsdale, 2009). In an effort to bridge the gap between schools and museums, this
project has been introduced in three museums. The activity also focuses on the
collection of objects and content during the museum visit in order to answer a
general question that is posed to the students before the excursion. This project is
another example of an activity based on collecting, which also requires active
engagement with the content. The students are collecting items with the purpose of
answering a question, which means that they have to understand the object’s
meaning in order to know if it is relevant or not. They can take pictures, take notes
or record sound, all of which they can use in a post-‐visit session to create “galleries”,
using a simple presentation tool. The evaluation showed that this activity made
students engage with the objects and with their peers. For the full success of this
activity, however, the involvement of the teacher is crucial, in order to prepare the
students before the visit and to engage them in post-‐visit activities using their online
collections.
Both projects, MyArtSpace and MuseumScouts, allow not only for data collection but
also for content creation. In comparison to the London Zoo project, this seems to
elicit more engagement with the exhibits and the collected content and is, therefore,
more beneficial for learning purposes than is pure data collection.
The concern that digital technologies in a museum setting can be distracting from
the displayed objects has to be taken seriously. Even in projects that are very
complex and well thought through, the engagement with artefacts is a critical factor,
as shown in a study of the educational activity Mystery in the Museum designed for
34
the Museum of Dionysios Solomos. The activity involved handheld devices, which
were used to solve a mystery in the museum. The students had to collect clues in
different parts of the museum and collaborate with other groups in order to solve
the mystery. The concluding concern of the evaluation was the following:
A possible drawback of the proposed activity is related to the fact that we may be building a tour oriented to the PDA instead of the museum, so that it could be possible that visitors interact more with the handheld devices than with the exhibits. (Simarro Cabrera, et al., 2005, p. 318)
This shows that even if educational activities provoke active involvement of the
learners and integrate information about the exhibits, it does not mean that the
students will engage with the artefacts. In this case, it is probably because of the
complexity of the activity and the fact that the fulfilment of the tasks relies heavily
on the handheld device that it becomes the centre of attention. Especially when
technologies have a lot of functionalities, it is a challenge to keep educational
activities simple (Patten, Arnedillo Sánchez, & Tangney, 2006). Not everything that is
possible to do with a device is also educationally valuable.
In order to avoid the distractive nature of digital tools, Hall and Bannon (2006)
suggest to use the mobile devices in museum learning “as augmentation tool: the
technology should be easy to use and unobtrusive, effectively supporting
collaboration and interaction.” (p. 233)
Content creation can be applied successfully in cultural museums while pursuing the
goal of meaning making, training of interpretation and critical thinking in the sense
of Housen’s method mediated by digital technology. Giving the learners a voice for
“questioning, observation, association, speculation, evidential reasoning, and
conclusion forming” (Hubard, 2011, p. 176) outside of restricting right-‐or-‐wrong-‐
paradigms is an important aim for museum education. In addition, this can be
supported by digital technologies, as Hall and Bannon (2006) have shown. In their
ubiquitous computing project, they gave students the possibility to record videos
giving their personal view on the exhibition, which turned out to be a successful
approach to turn students into active interpreters. The aspect that Hall and Bannon
consider most important for digital learning in museums is the active role of the
learner: „[...] children should be actively interpreting material culture for
themselves, rather than passive and voiceless“ (2006, p. 233).
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With the progressing of mobile technologies the possibilities for both content
creation in situ and post-‐visit activities become more diverse as well (Rogers & Price,
2009). Collecting or creating a variety of content is particularly valuable for visits of
school groups because it has been shown in research that post-‐visit activities have a
positive effect on students’ learning (Anderson, Lucas, Ginns, & Dierking, 2000;
DeWitt & Storksdieck, 2008). The content created or collected at the museum can
drive these post-‐visit activities and therefore contribute to the educational value of
the museum visit.
However, digital technologies do not have to be complex in order to engage visitors
with the museum exhibits. Digital cameras, for example, are tools that are frequently
brought to the museums by visitors. Taking pictures is an activity that has often
been incorporated in digital museum learning and it has usually been very popular
with students (Vavoula, Sharples, Rudman, Meek, & Lonsdale, 2009; Collins, Joiner,
White, & Braidley, 2011). It invites them to be active, to take a closer look at an object
and it creates a souvenir of the experience that can be looked at, edited and shared
later on. However, for different reasons, the use of cameras is often discouraged by
museums. Encouraging the use of cameras in the galleries means encouraging
sharing, which “makes visitors feel greater ownership over the experience and feel
like the institution supports rather than hinders their enthusiasm about the content”
(Simon, 2010, p. 176).
Moving from mobile projects based on content delivery towards a more
participative approach goes hand in hand with a general paradigm shift in the
museum world:
This shift of focus from content delivery to social construction reflects a societal shift in digital media from centralized control to user-‐generated content and personalized learning. (Walker, 2008)
This trend, together with the constant evolution of digital technologies and a
growing experience with mobile learning allows for more meaningful educational
activities that focus on active and enjoyable learning supported by technologies
rather than on translating out-‐dated didactic approaches into the digital realm.
For a successful implementation, the designers of educational activities should resist
the temptation to use mobile devices for pure content delivery, but instead they
36
should use it for directing the learners’ eyes towards the artefacts and engaging the
students in active meaning making As mentioned before, the museum should let
visitors add their own voice to the dialogue instead of overloading the digital
learning activity with factual content and then evaluating them “on this basis: Did the
visitor get it?” (Spock, 2004, p. 370)
2.5.2 Mobile technologies and social interaction As previously established, social interactions play an important role in museum
learning (Falk & Dierking, 2000; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). The benefit of
social interaction in mobile learning is twofold: Collaborative learning can “make
more knowledge generation possible, and further encourage active participation in
the learning activity” (Ryu & Parsons, 2012, p. 708).
An early project on social mobile learning technology in a museum setting was
SottoVoce (Grinter, Aoki, Szymanski, Thornton, Woodruff, & Hurst, 2002), which
extended the traditional audio guide to a social experience. Pairs of visitors would
each get one PDA with headphones to play interpretive audio content. Whenever
one of the two visitors was not playing any content on their device, the PDA would
eavesdrop and automatically play the content the partner was currently listening to.
This was supposed to create a shared experience for the visitors, but since the
design of the activity is clearly pure content delivery, and therefore inhibits
conversation, the kind of social interaction taking place in the museum is not the
kind proven to be supportive of learning.
A major concern of integrating mobile devices into learning experiences is that they
inhibit interaction between students. In fact, research has shown that there is reason
for this concern. In their research on PDAs in galleries, vom Lehn and Heath (2003)
found that the “design of the PDA undermines the emergence of opportunities for
social interaction between visitors.” (p. 11) They argue that the small screen and the
use of headphones inhibit people to engage socially. It is arguable whether it is in
fact the design of the device that discourages interaction or the design of the activity,
as seen also in the SottoVoce project.
Hsi (2003) stated, for example, that in projects where one handheld device was given
to each participant, the students interacted more with the device in their hands than
with their peers. This does not mean, however, that the device itself is obstructive to
37
social interaction, but the way in which it is used: Activities, where several students
have to share one device are more successful in promoting collaborative behaviours
(Rogers & Price, 2009; Walker, 2008). When designing group activities however, it
seems to be also important to consider that the dynamics within the group have an
influence on the success of the learning experience. Schwabe et al. (2005) found that
students’ learning and enjoyment during mobile activities is stronger when there
are two or three children in one group than when there are more. Too many
students sharing one device is discouraging and causes more conflict than
constructive collaboration.
The potential of mobile technologies for encouraging collaborative and social
learning has been reported in several studies. Cahill, Kuhn, Schmoll, Lo, McNally and
Quintana (2011) designed a learning activity for the Natural History Museum of the
University of Michigan, where students used handheld devices to collect data in the
galleries in order to answer questions. In the evaluation of this activity, Cahill et al.
(2011) compared the use of worksheets to the use of mobile devices for this activity.
They found that the use of the handheld devices evoked significantly more social
interaction than the use of worksheets, both in terms of discussion and sharing of
data and interpretations.
Social interaction is not limited to conversation and collaboration in the galleries,
since sharing also contributes to the value of a mobile learning experience. The
trend towards content creation in museums discussed in the previous chapter opens
up new ways for the visitors to share their experiences as well. In times of social
media and content sharing sites, this is almost a must-‐have feature of mobile
activities (Rudman, Sharples, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Meek, 2008; Tallon, 2008).
Especially when students can share self-‐created content with their friends or
families, this has been found to elicit “feelings of accomplishment and self-‐
confidence.” (Paris, Yambor, & Wai-‐Ling Packard, 1998, p. 271)
Through digital devices, it is possible to create these ‘souvenirs’ of the experience
that can extend the learning process to the classroom or to the students’ homes. A
filled-‐out worksheet is not the kind of physical outcome of an excursion that
students would look at or show to their parents after their visit. Photographs,
38
videos, presentations or similar digital content however, are more appealing and
more likely to encourage sharing.
2.5.3 Technologies for guidance and structure Another function of mobile technologies for school visits in museums is the
structuring and guiding of educational activities. While some research stresses that
free-‐choice and control is an important aspect of museum learning (Falk & Dierking,
2000), many studies have shown that some structure and constraints can actually be
beneficial for the learning experience and outcomes (Mortensen & Smart, 2007;
Bamberger & Tal, 2007; Walker, 2008; Schatz, 2004) In line with this research, Smith
and Tinio (2008) have shown that museum visitors “desire both freedom and
structure” (p. 65) and recommend that educational activities should combine both
elements.
School groups in particular, require activities that are focused and usually have
some kind of physical outcome as well. It is also easier to impose certain structures
on school groups, since they are embedded in a more formal context than
individuals who visit the museum in their free time. While for individual visitors,
complex and structured activities are often too constraining and are usually not
followed in the way they are intended, for school groups the situation is different.
Well thought-‐out activities with clear instructions are appreciated by schools and
participation is less of a concern because students “can be told what to do” (Walker,
2008, p. 120).
The traditional solution for structuring school museum visits is having the students
complete worksheets. These however are often perceived as constraining. They
inhibit free exploration and having to write down the answers to questions on a
worksheet provokes short responses and it inhibits the students to notice things in
their environment (Mortensen & Smart, 2007; Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison, 2011).
Handheld devices can provide the necessary structure to a class visit in a way that
allows engagement with exhibits and peers and is more enjoyable for students. The
digital tools can add structure by guiding students in the physical space, by
delivering tasks, directing their attention or allowing them to create content and to
collect data.
39
Walker (2010) suggests technology-‐supported gallery trails as a way of structuring
learning experiences both physically and conceptually. By leading visitors to a
sequence of objects that might be physically dispersed but conceptually linked,
portable technologies allow the users to make connections between artefacts and to
understand “a bigger picture” behind them. Taking the pressure off visitors to look
at everything in a gallery, but suggesting only a selection of artefacts is often
appreciated. It has been shown that it is more beneficial for the learners if they
deeply engage with fewer objects rather than if they browse through all of them. The
handheld tools can therefore support the guided exploration of the galleries,
bridging the gap between completely free exploration and a guided tour.
Treasure or scavenger hunts have long been a popular way of engaging children in
an activity. Adding mobile technologies to the experience opens up new possibilities
for this format. By taking photographs of recording videos, students can actually
collect proof of the found “treasures”, which is more rewarding than just ticking
them off on a list.
Walker (2008) noted that certain constraints that are imposed on the visitors
enhance their learning. He found that during the MyArtProject, students who only
had 15 seconds for their audio recordings planned ahead more carefully and
produced better results than students without a time limit. This shows that technical
constraints are not necessarily a problem but can actually serve as an opportunity to
shape the learning experience.
2.5.4 Goals and requirements Digital technologies can serve as mediators between the students and the artefacts –
something to touch and interact with, while exploring the exhibits in the museum.
However, careful considerations for the design of the activities are necessary in
order to ensure that the technology is used as a tool to enhance learning, not as an
object in itself.
Integrating technologies into the museum learning experience can also serve
another important goal: The acquisition of ICT skills. Often, children who visit
museums with their schools do not have access to certain digital technologies at
home or at school and they can learn valuable lessons in handling these devices. It
40
also creates a feeling of empowerment if the students are entrusted to handle the
equipment independently (Naismith & Corlett, 2006).
Summarizing the key points of the previous chapters, the successful integration of
digital tools into gallery activities should meet the following requirements in order
to design activities appropriate for school groups and to support their learning:
The digital activities should:
• Encourage active and versatile engagement with the artefacts
• Integrate the technology without becoming the focus of the activity but a
means for interaction
• Account for physical outcomes in order to extended the experience and
promote sharing
• Use content delivery only as a complement to other activities like data
collection or creation
• Balance the structure and guidance to keep the learners focused with
freedom, choice and control
• Allow and encourage meaningful social interactions
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2.6 Evaluating learning outcomes This chapter will address the issue of evaluating educational programs in light of the
role of school museum visits discussed in the first two sections.
For a long time, researchers questioned the educational value of museums because
according to their assessments, visitors did not learn as much as expected during
visits. This however, was due to a too narrow understanding of learning in museums
and therefore misleading evaluation techniques. Hubard (2008) criticised this one-‐
dimensional approach for evaluation:
In an era where only that which can be quantified counts as learning, reflecting about encounters with art from the perspective of human significance may seem to some an inconsequential exercise. How, after all, can one objectively assess student gains from this perspective? […] The acknowledgement of the human dimensions of encounters with art calls for creative thinking about new, compelling forms of qualitative assessment. (pp. 178-‐179)
Parallel to the paradigm shift in the educational role of museums, the evaluation
criteria for learning outcomes were reassessed as well (Hubard, 2011). Researchers
extended their definition of learning outcomes and recognized positive impacts of
museum visits, which were not explicit knowledge gain, like changes in attitude, self-‐
confidence or the previously mentioned critical thinking and observation skills.
Hooper-‐Greenhill (2007) did extensive research on measuring learning outcomes for
the ‘Inspiring Learning for all’ initiative of the UK Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council. A framework was developed that is being used by many museum
practitioners as a guideline of their evaluation projects. She distinguishes the terms
‘outcome’ as referring to individuals and ‘impact’ as a broader, long-‐term effect on a
society or organisation. Following this definition, in this study the outcomes of the
experience are analysed, and based on these, a prognosis for the general impact can
be given.
Hooper-‐Greenhill’s framework defines five Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs),
which serve as classifications for individual observed results of learning in
museums. Knowledge and Understanding comprises the knowledge gains, which
were usually measured with traditional evaluation. Skills refer to an increase in
practical knowledge, “knowing how to do something.” (p. 54)
42
Measuring a change in the Attitudes and Values means that the mind-‐set or feelings
of the learner have changed (i.e. an increased self-‐esteem). Enjoyment, Inspiration
and Creativity are an important learning outcome because they are a motivational
factor for the learner. Activity, Behaviour and Progression refer to the learner
adopting a certain behaviour or activity as a result of their learning experience.
The GLOs do not claim to be exhaustive.
They are meant to be a
recommendation, which can be adjusted
and extended for the purpose of each
study. The original intent of the
framework was to be open to extension,
“as new data would be collected and
new categories would start emerging”
(Monaco & Moussouri, 2009, p. 320).
The term ‘measuring’ learning outcomes
is not very appropriate for this kind of
research. Monaco and Moussouri
discuss this issue and come to the conclusion that for evaluating museum learning
experiences “documenting” and “describing” (p. 323) are more suitable than
quantifying outcomes like enjoyment or attitudes.
However, assessing learning outcomes is not the only way to evaluate educational
programs. Especially in the non-‐formal context of museum visits, it is also important
to analyse the processes that are going on during the visit. This view is also put
forward by advocates of socio-‐cultural discourse analysis, which is used for
educational evaluation, and takes into account the impact of the social and cultural
context on learning (Mercer, 2004). Focusing both on process and outcomes of
educational activities means that the question asked is not only what is learnt but
also how it is learnt, which is important for continuously improving didactic practice.
There is a shift towards thinking of the experience as well as the impact, since the
two are so closely interconnected. Therefore, assessment methods are required that
not only “measure” impacts after the experience but ones that also monitor what is
going on during the experience s(Andresen, Boud, & Cohen, 2000).
Figure 5 -‐ The five GLOs (from MLA website)
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2.7 Multimedia Magic Multimedia Magic is an educational experience provided to schools by the Samsung
Digital Discovery Centre at the British Museum. It is designed for children between
the ages of 8-‐12 and aims at familiarizing the students with Buddhist concepts and
artefacts, while helping the students to acquire ICT skills by using digital cameras,
touch screen tablets and computers. Schools usually book this session as a part of
their Religious Studies subject, which usually has a more flexible curriculum than
other core subjects do. In general, the students have relatively low specific previous
knowledge about the subject. The information document for teachers, which is
available on the museum website, describes the activities of the session as follows
(British Museum, 2009):
The design of this session incorporates several of the themes discussed in the
previous chapters, which – according to research – are factors that contribute to the
success of educational activities in museums. The following section will describe the
main concepts.
Gallery exploration with mobile technologies
Mobile technologies are used for structured gallery exploration, while the tablet
computer serves as the ‘guidance tool’, which – by means of a Prezi presentation –
Session outline
The session begins by taking children to the Ancient India gallery (Room 33).
They receive a brief introduction to the day and then break up into groups of 2-‐3
to complete an activity trail with a tablet computer and digital camera.
Children complete five different activities on the trail by taking photos, making
voice recordings and videos. They interview each other about topics inspired by
the artworks and record answers to questions about their favourite artwork.
After completing the trail children have a 30 minute lunch break.
After lunch children proceed to the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre where they
participate in a group discussion and debate.
Then children are shown how to use the computer software to create a
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provides the students with the tasks that they have to complete as well as short
pieces of content about the Buddhist religion and Buddha’s life. (See Appendix B for
a full transcript of the tasks.) The camera is used to mediate the engagement with
the objects and it allows the students to produce content in the form of photographs,
video and audio recordings. As the groups tour the gallery independently, the
students have the chance to take over control in the way that they solve the tasks. All
the activities are designed in a way that allows for the active involvement of all
members of the teams.
Image 1 -‐ Students exploring the gallery
Interaction with the artefacts
On their trail through the Ancient India gallery, the students have to complete
several tasks, which encourage their active engagement with the displayed objects.
For every task, the students have to find the objects, are displayed on the screen of
their tablet computer. They have to compare objects in the gallery to the picture on
their screen, which forces them to examine the artefacts around them. For each
object they find, they have to complete a related task:
• taking pictures of the objects
• taking pictures of their partner imitating the object
• making voice recordings discussing their favourite object
• making video recordings while interacting with an object
• making video interviews with their partner
Integration of several learning strategies
Multimedia Magic integrates different didactic elements. Before the students start
their gallery exploration trail, they get a short introduction from the museum
45
educator who familiarises them with a few basic terms and concepts of Buddhism
and gives them orientation clues so they find their way around the gallery.
In the afternoon session, students are engaged in a group discussion about objects
and concepts that they have seen in the gallery and that have been introduced to
them by the museum educator. Before they start creating their multimedia
presentations with the pictures, audio and video recordings that they collected in
the gallery, the students receive a briefing on how to use the presentation tool
Glogster. All parts of this experience encourage the active engagement of students,
by asking them questions, involving them in debate or having them volunteer to
demonstrate the use of the presentation tool.
Repetition of knowledge in several stages of experience
Throughout the course of the activity, new knowledge is being reaffirmed in
different contexts. The objects that the students are supposed to find in the galleries
are shown to them on the display of the tablet computer, then they engage with the
original artefact and in the afternoon session they are displayed on a big screen,
while they receive a few explanations about their meanings. In the end, they build
the presentations using the pictures they took in the gallery (or pictures provided by
the museum, in case the group did not manage to complete the task or the picture
quality is not sufficient). This repetition in different contexts is supposed to help the
students become familiar with the new information. The second time they see the
objects, they can already recognize them and have a sense of familiarity.
Encouraging sharing and social interaction
As mentioned before, the creation of content (pictures, videos, presentations)
promotes sharing. The element of sharing is already incorporated into the session,
since 2-‐3 teams have to present their multimedia poster to the other students. But
the students can also access their presentations online after the visit and they get a
printed-‐out version as well.
46
Having this “souvenir” of the
excursion can reaffirm the learning
experience after the visit, when
students show the outcomes of their
activities to their parents, other
teachers or friends. Ideally, the
participating teachers organize a
recap-‐session at school, where all
the teams get to show their
presentations.
Social interaction between the students is also encouraged by the design of the
session because the students have to solve tasks collaboratively in teams. The tasks
instruct the students to interact with each other when taking pictures of each other
or making video interviews. They also have to share the equipment, which means
that they have to arrange themselves with a certain role allocation during the
experience.
Teaching ICT skills
An important aspect of the Multimedia Magic experience is the hands-‐on approach
to acquiring ICT skills. The students are trusted to handle the digital equipment
autonomously. In the gallery, they receive a simple instruction sheet that explains
the main functionalities of the digital cameras. If the students follow all the tasks,
they will practice how to record audio and video, become familiar with the tablet
computer and acquaint themselves with the process of creating a multimedia
presentation on a PC.
When designing a session, it is certainly necessary to be informed by the theory and
by the experience of other projects. However, it is not a guarantee for success.
Certainly, the students are active during the session – but are they engaging with the
objects? They might enjoy the experience – but does it arouse their interest to find
out more? What are the learning outcomes and what role does the technology play?
In order to find out if the theory is successfully put into practice with this
educational museum experience, evaluation is necessary.
Image 2 -‐ Students creating a "glog" in the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre
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3 Methodology The case study will contain several methods in order to answer the research
questions. While each part of the case study can contribute to answering each of the
questions, the following table shows the main focus of the different research
methods employed:
CASE STUDY: MULTIMEDIA MAGIC RESEARCH METHOD Content Analysis Observation Interview Analysis
RESEARCH QUESTION
Q1, Q2, Q4 Q1, Q2, Q4 Q3, Q4
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Engagement during the session
Engagement during the session
Outcomes after the session
DATA ANALYSED
Video recordings, audio recordings, digital photos produced by students during the sessions
Observation during the activities in the gallery
Interviews at the museum and at the school one week after the visit
Table 1 -‐ Case study overview
Q1: How do students engage with the museum objects during the gallery exploration?
Q2: What is the students’ behaviour during the gallery exploration?
Q3: What are the outcomes of this educational experience?
Q4: Which role do the digital technologies play in the learning process?
3.1 Case Study Research A common criticism of the case study as a research method is the doubt about their
generalizability. Since only one case is analysed, there is a concern that conclusions
cannot be drawn for other cases. As Flyvbjerg (2004) points out, however,
generalisations are not the only way to generate knowledge from research. The main
goal of evaluation in education is the improvement of practice. The findings of
research serve as feedback to the practitioners in order to identify strengths and
weaknesses of a program. It is not the goal of this study to build a universal theory.
The goal is to understand how the educational experience impacts students and to
contribute to the quality of the program and its evaluation. Evaluation is an on-‐going
48
process where each case contributes to the accumulation of experiential knowledge
(Willis, 2008).
Punch (2009) points out “knowledge […] in a professional field such as education,
usually progresses through the accumulation of evidence across many studies,
rather than because of one large-‐scale definitive project” (p. 43). Even though
universally valid conclusions cannot necessarily be drawn from this one case study,
it is still instrumental rather than intrinsic, in the sense that it “helps us pursue the
external interest” (Stake, 2005, p. 445) of improving the educational practice.
3.2 Multiple research methods This case study involves two sets of interviews, gallery observation and the analysis
of media produced by students during the session. This triangulation of methods can
help to paint a more complete picture of the case because the accounts of the
interviewed children can be put into relation with the observations during the
gallery experience and the media they produced.
Combining research methods that investigate both the process of the museum
experience (analysis of student-‐produced media, observation) as well as the
outcomes of the experience after the visit (interviews), allows for the gaining of a
more comprehensive picture. Learning is an on-‐going process without a clearly
defined end, so only testing the outcomes at one point in time after the museum visit
does not necessarily reflect the whole impact of the experience. According to Perry
(2012), “looking exclusively at outcomes gives us only a partial view of what’s
important to the visitor experience.” (p. 58) In her opinion, “both process and
product, both engagement and outcomes, are essential and intertwined components
of museum visits.” (p. 60) This study is in line with Perry’s conception of the
museum experience: The combination of methods aims at investigating both the
engagement of the students during and the outcomes after their visit.
3.2.1 Content analysis of student-‐produced media The nature of the Multimedia Magic session allows for a convenient and suitable
method to find out about the students’ behaviour during their gallery experience.
Since their task is to ‘document’ their interaction with the objects in the gallery, the
photographs, audio and video data that they produce can help getting an
49
understanding of their engagement and interpretive approaches, which covers the
first and second sets of research questions. These files allow peeking into the
behaviour of the students in the gallery without having to interrupt their activities.
The media that the students create during the session are a valuable source for
evaluation and should not be neglected. The videos, voice recordings and pictures
are instances of the students’ encounter with the artefacts as well as of their use of
the technology. Devito (2005) emphasises the evaluation of students’ work because it
“has real-‐world significance and can reveal implications for future instruction and
the implicit value of the educational experience in ways that other methods do not.”
(p. 196) The artefacts produced by the students are analysed as documents of their
behaviour rather than learning outcomes of the activities.
The content analysis of the video and audio data allows to get an understanding of
the first two research questions, which are concerned with the engagement of the
students during the sessions: How do the students make use of the technology
during their gallery exploration – more specifically, do the activities involving video
or audio recordings encourage them to engage with the objects in the galleries and
do they make use of the opportunity for free and spontaneous interpretive
behaviour? Besides the object interaction, the content analysis will also give an
insight into the general behaviour of students during these activities – social
interaction, attitudes, handling of the technology, etc.
3.2.2 Observations As a complement to the content analysis of the student-‐produced media, observation
is conducted to gain a better understanding of the students’ behaviour during the
gallery experience. The observations can be seen as a “test run” for further
evaluation research. They are conducted on a small number of students, but they do
contribute to the understanding of the dynamics during the gallery session. The
insights gained from observation help in understanding students’ behaviours
between their recordings and the general dynamics of the session, which adds a
context to the content analysis. Since the same school group is observed and
interviewed, the data retrieved from the observation can also be matched with the
responses gathered from the interviews, which adds to the understanding of the
students’ subjective views and perspectives.
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3.2.3 Interviews The interviews are aimed at answering the third set of research questions, which
covers the outcomes of the learning experience. Interviews were the most
appropriate way of gathering in-‐depth information about the impact of the
experience on the students. Other evaluation methods, like surveys, would not have
allowed for the students to describe their experiences and learning processes in
detail. Any research method based on text could have been problematic especially
for younger children or students who speak English as a second language. Since the
research does not aim at only measuring the gain in knowledge of the students,
“testing” them with a text-‐based assessment would not have been a suitable
approach. Interviews, however, allow for an unstrained conversation, where the
students can express themselves freely and the researcher has the opportunity to
gain a profound understanding of the attitudes and perspectives of the respondents.
This way, the students can give their full view of the experience and its outcomes.
According to Rennie and Johnston (2004) this involvement of the learners in the
evaluation is crucial:
Visitors must be involved in the research process, not simply observed from a distance, because there is a sizable inferential gap between observing and interpreting. Seeing through the eyes of the visitor means that, at some stage, data must be collected from the visitor and this requires self-‐report data, or recording what visitors both say and do. (p. S8)
This quote emphasises the importance of gaining an insight into the visitors’
perspective, which is also important for this study. The interviews are therefore
aimed at letting the students talk freely about their experience without constraining
them with a question agenda that is too rigid.
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3.3 Data collection Three different sets of data were collected for this study: The student-‐produced
media, observations and interview data. The following section will describe the
methods of collecting all three data sets.
3.3.1 Student-‐produced media The media produced by the students during the gallery sessions were provided for
analysis by the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre. The content analysis covers data
of 15 Multimedia Magic sessions that took place at the British Museum over a period
of two years, from March 2010 until April 2012. In order to have a representative
data set, the records of home-‐schooled groups have been excluded from analysis.
For seven sessions of 2010 and early 2011, there was no complete data set available,
as only the best media produced by students had been saved. In order to avoid bias,
the files from these sessions have also been excluded from analysis. In total, the
analysis covers almost four hours of video and audio data, as well as around 1800
digital photographs. Ten of the 15 school groups were in year 6 (10-‐11 year olds) at
the time of their visit, three in year 4 (8-‐9 year olds), and each one in year 3 (7-‐8
year olds) and 5 (9-‐10 year olds). The activities of the sessions have not changed
over the course of these two years and each of the participating school groups
received the same instructions, the same materials and equipment. All video and
audio data was transcribed for analysis.
3.3.2 Observations The observation was conducted during one of the Multimedia Magic sessions by 3
researchers. Each observer followed one group for the duration of the gallery
activities. This turned out to be the right approach, since it allowed for the in depth
observing the dynamics of one group. At first, it was considered to station each
observer at one specific point of the gallery trail in order to observe several groups
completing the same task. This however, turned out to be unfeasible, since it was
very difficult to keep an overview of which students belong to which group during
the gallery session. Also, there was usually more than one group working on the
same task at the same time and it would have been difficult to observe all of them
separately.
52
An observation sheet was prepared beforehand in order to formalize the process.
(see Appendix C). Every observer had one copy of the first (framed) part of the
observation sheet and several copies of the second part. On the first part of the
sheet, each observer recorded the names of their observed team and comments
about the group dynamics, overheard conversations, general impressions or
observations. For each activity that the students completed, the observers filled out
one copy of the second part of the sheet, recording the name of the activity, the time
spent on it, the engagement with the objects, the students’ attitudes and any
potential problems that occurred.
After the gallery session insights, impressions and observations were exchanged in a
short discussion and noted down for later analysis.
3.3.3 Interviews The first set of interviews was conducted at the museum during the afternoon
activities. While the students were working in groups on their multimedia
presentations in the Samsung Centre, I set up a table in the hallway, where I
conducted individual interviews. One week later, I conducted the second set of
interviews at the students’ school, where I could use a separate little space away
from the classroom. Having a quiet room for the interviews proved to be very
valuable. In the museum, students were frequently passing through the hallway
when they needed to go to the bathrooms, which was distracting to the children
being interviewed.
On both days, the students were very curious about what I was doing. I paid
attention not to select only students who were volunteering or even obtrusively
begging to be interviewed but to have a mix of characters, among them more quiet
and reserved students. I selected an even number of boys and girls and tried to
interview students from as many different teams as possible.
My previous concerns that the students might be shy and not communicative during
the interviews turned out to be wrong and in most cases the challenge was not to get
the students to talk but to get them to talk about the right things. Some of them had
the tendency to digress during the conversation and I had to steer them back to the
subject.
53
I paid attention to formulating my questions in a way that does not suggest a certain
answer and I did notice during the interviews that this was necessary; the students
were very easily influenced by the way I asked my questions. When I realized that
they answered in a way that was only repeating my question or just saying
something to “please me”, I reformulated my question and usually got a different,
more sincere answer.
Before I started an interview, I explained that I was doing research, that the
interview was not a test and that there were no wrong answers. I also told the
students that the interview was being recorded and assured them that nobody
would hear the recording apart from me. At the end of each interview I gave them
the opportunity to ask questions or add any comments.
The interviews were semi-‐structured, which means that I did prepare a list of
questions for the students to answer but would adapt them or add follow-‐up
questions depending on the course of the interview. For the first set of short
interviews that were conducted at the British Museum the questions were the
following:
Questions 1-‐3 of the first set were designed to get an idea of the students’ context,
their previous museum experiences, their expectations and how prepared they felt
for the visit. Questions 4-‐5 were asked to get an idea of the students’ initial
impression about their visit, what they did, learnt and liked about their trip.
1. Is this your first time at the British Museum?
2. Did your teacher prepare you for this visit? Tell me about it.
3. What did you expect from your visit?
4. How was your day here? Tell me about it. Did it meet your expectations?
5. Tell me about the topic you learnt about today. What do you think of it?
6. Do you have the feeling that you learnt something new? What?
7. Was there anything you didn’t like?
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These are the questions for the second set of longer interviews conducted at the
school one week after the visit:
The second round of interviews was set up to gain a more in-‐depth understanding of
the students’ views of the experience, their memories, what they learnt and their
attitude towards the museum after the visit. The questions loosely followed the
categories of learning outcomes defined by the GLO framework (see chapter 0),
meaning that some questions were aimed at finding out about the students’
1. Tell me about your day at the British Museum. What did you do?
2. What was your favourite part of the day?
3. Was there anything you didn’t like?
4. Describe your experience in the galleries. Do you remember any of the objects? Could you describe them? Which object was your favourite?
5. Tell me about the topic that you learnt about on your visit. What did you think of it? (Did you find it interesting? Would you like to learn more about it?) Did you learn anything more about it since then?
6. Do you have the feeling that you learnt anything new? What?
7. How was working with your team? Did you have any trouble agreeing on something? Did you take turns in handling the camera, tablet and the PC?
8. How was working with the tablets, the cameras and the PCs? Did you have any trouble using them? Did you know how to use them before?
9. Describe how you created your presentation. Are you happy with the result?
10. Have you thought about the visit after you left? If yes, what made you think of it?
11. Did you tell anyone about your visit? What did you tell them?
12. Did you get to present your results at the museum? (Would you have liked to present them?) Did you show your presentation to anyone after the visit?
13. Is there anything you would have liked to do or see at the museum but couldn’t?
14. Would you like to go back to the museum? With your school or with someone else? What would you like to do there?
15. Is there anything else you would like to add?
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knowledge gains, and some were aimed at understanding the students’ attitudes or
behaviours after the session.
The original intent was to interview the same students at the museum and at school
to see how their impressions evolved over the course of one week. However,
unfortunately, time was very tight at the museum and I could only interview 6
students instead of the intended 10-‐12. One week later, at their school, two of the
students I interviewed at the museum were not present, which meant that only four
students could actually take part in both interviews and 10 students only in one of
the two. This, however, turned out not to be a major problem, since the longer
interviews at school allowed for more in depth inquiry and the answers of the
students who have been interviewed twice did not reveal any major change of
perception over this one-‐week period.
Since the opportunity offered itself, I also conducted a short unstructured interview
with the teacher at the museum to understand the motivation and the context of
their class visit. This proved to be very valuable because it allowed for another
triangulation of data, where I could compare the teacher’s impressions and opinions
to those of the students’.
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3.4 Data analysis framework The following section describes the decisions taken for analysing the collected data
in order to focus the research along the line of the objectives. For the purpose of
analysis, the student-‐produced video and audio files as well as the interviews were
transcribed and coded after having been read through several times. During the
process of transcribing, categories of content and behaviour already became
apparent and being familiar with the data made it easier to define and group the
codes.
3.4.1 Content analysis: Engagement The analysis distinguishes the verbal transcript from the action and behaviour that
can be observed in the videos or deduced from the audio recordings. These are the
three levels of analysis:
1. Talk (“What are the students saying?”)
2. Action (“What are the students doing?”)
3. Attitude/Behaviour (“How are the students saying/doing it?”)
Not every item of data provides evidence of all three levels for analysis. While the
talk of students can be analysed only using transcripts of audio and video data,
information about the students’ actions can potentially be drawn from all three data
sources. Since the voice recordings only provide audio data, the actions that can be
derived from them are based on the analysis of the students’ talk. Only here, the
focus of analysis is not on the content, the meaning of the talk, but rather, it is on the
interactions that are taking place. Evidence of attitudes and behaviours, again, are
only gathered from the audio and video material – not from photographs.
Talk Action Attitude/Behaviour
• Voice recordings
• Video
• Voice recordings
• Video
• Pictures
• Voice recordings
• Videos
Table 2 -‐ Categories and types of data for analysis
The following example will help to show the distinction between the three
categories:
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According to the objectives, the data for the content analysis was grouped into the
following themes:
1. Engagement with the artefacts
2. Behaviour in the gallery
3. Use of technology
All three themes are analysed on all three levels, talk, actions and attitudes. Perry’s
(2012) categorization of engagements is used to group the findings of this study. The
term engagement as defined by Perry includes four elements: Physical, emotional,
intellectual and social engagement. While the analysis of the talk is aimed at
exploring the intellectual and emotional side of the students’ engagement, i.e. the
verbalisation of their observations, conversations and thoughts, the actions give
insight into their physical engagement. Examining the attitudes and behaviours of
A girl is using the video function of the camera to explore the gallery and
comment on the object that she sees.
On screen: several showcases with different objects
Voice: “Here are some of the statues in the museum, I like this one because it’s
got loads of detail.”
TALK: The content of the girl’s talk is related to the artefacts, she describes the
features of one of the statues and explains why she likes it.
(Example code: talk>object-‐related>description>features)
ACTION: The girl walks around the gallery and explores the artefacts. She uses
the camera to capture the objects and comments on what she sees.
(Example code: action>gallery_exploration)
BEHAVIOUR/ATTITUDE: Looking at the whole video and its transcript, it
becomes apparent that the girl is talking to an imaginative audience. She adopts
the communication style of a TV reporter or an expert demonstrating the
objects.
(Example code: attitude>expert)
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the students adds another important layer of meaning to all aspects of the analysis.
Identifying facets of communication, like irony, humour or impersonations helps
putting the analysis of the verbal transcript and the actions into perspective and
leads to a better understanding of the data.
3.4.2 Interviews: Outcomes The interviews were transcribed and coded. Emerging themes were subsequently
identified in order to report the findings concerning the students’ personal
perceptions of the museum visit. To identify the learning outcomes, the GLO
framework (see chapter 0) was used as a categorisation. Initially, the framework
was used as an orientation rather than a rigid structure. However, during the course
of the analysis, the findings turned out to match the framework without having to
add more categories. This is probably due to the broad and open definition of the
categories, which were derived from a large amount of data and tested in several
studies.
In this study, the interview questions were loosely based on this GLO framework
and the students’ responses were analysed according to these categories. The
framework is not considered to be exhaustive or restrictive, i.e. in case any
additional category emerges from the data, it would be added to the report of
findings.
3.5 Ethical considerations: Research with children Children and their behaviour and cognitive gain are the subject of this analysis.
Gathering data directly from children and focusing on their perspective is a research
trend that has only developed in the last 15-‐20 years (Bell, 2007; Punch, 2009). This
research accounts for children as autonomous actors who make meaning in their
social environment.
One consequence of this change has been a concern with children’s perceptions,
attitudes, beliefs, views and opinions. A second consequence has been a direct
research focus on children’s experience itself – how children interpret and negotiate
their worlds, and the way in which their construction of experience shapes their
perceptions and views (Punch, 2009, p. 46).
59
According to Hill (2005) children differ from adults in terms of competence, power
and vulnerability. The linguistic competence of children is more limited than the one
of adults and (depending on their age) they can have difficulties in expressing or
understanding complex ideas. The concept of power is linked to the authority that
adults have over children, which can make the interaction between them
unbalanced. The authoritative status of adults can easily influence the behaviour of
children who might be trying to please or to provoke the adult researcher. This
vulnerability can cause distorted data and needs to be taken into account when
conducting interviews with children, for example.
When doing qualitative research – especially with children, it is important to be
aware of some ethical considerations; “while all social research intrudes to some
extent into people’s lives, qualitative research often intrudes more.” (Punch, 2009, p.
50)
This study complies with the ethical guidelines published by the British Educational
Research Association (2011). The students and their parents were informed
beforehand that I was going to conduct research during their visit to the British
Museum. (See appendix) My contact details were made available to them in case
they had questions or concerns regarding my research practice. All the interviewees
participated in the research process voluntarily and they were “granted the right to
express their views freely in all matters affecting them, commensurate with their age
and maturity.” (p. 6) Before the interviews, I explained the purpose of my research
to the participants and that they should express their opinions freely without
worrying about wrong answers.
For the content analysis of the data resulting from previous school visits, it was not
possible to get the consent of the students in retrospect, however the photographs,
video and audio data of the participants will not be published and is treated
confidentially and anonymously in all steps of this research.
3.6 Limitations Due to logistic constraints, it was only possible to conduct the fieldwork during a
short confined time frame rather than continually over a longer period of time. This
means that the observations and interviews could only be conducted with one group
of students. To extend the scope of the study and to gain a wider understanding of
60
the impact of Multimedia Magic in different age groups as well, it would be
necessary to conduct research with more schools.
In order to evaluate the long-‐term impact of this session, another set of interviews
should be conducted at least 2 months after the museum visit. This however, was
out of the scope of this study.
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4 Findings The following section will present the main findings relevant for understanding the
complex processes during and outcomes after the Multimedia Magic experience. The
findings will be subdivided by the three research methods used for this study: The
content analysis of the student-‐produced media, which gives insight into the
behaviours and processes during the gallery activities, the observations, which add
to the understanding of the general dynamics in the gallery and the students’
behaviour in between tasks and the interviews, which help identify the different
outcomes of the educational experience.
4.1 Content Analysis of student-‐produced media The first part of the findings highlights the results of the content analysis of the
media produced by the students in the gallery. After a short overview of the
analysed data, the findings will cover the engagement of the students with the
artefacts, their social interactions, creative and explorative behaviour and the way
they make use of the digital technologies during the activities.
4.1.1 A glance at the data: Quantitative overview If the students complete all the tasks of the trail, they should have taken at least nine
photographs, made two videos and one voice recording.
Figure 6 -‐ Average performance of school groups
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
St John's Upper Holloway (Grade 3) St Elizabeth RC Primary (Grade 4) St Elizabeth RC Primary (Grade 4) Copenhagen Primary (Grade 4) Servite RC Primary (Grade 5)
Wormholt Park School (Grade 6) Wormholt Park School (Grade 6)
Stoneydown Park Primary (Grade 6) St John's R.C Primary (Grade 6) Holmleigh Primary (Grade 6)
Howard Junior School (Grade 6) Archbishop's Sumner (Grade 6) Servite RC Primary (Grade 6)
St John's RC Primary (Grade 6) Holmleigh Primary (Grade 6)
Average Score
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To get an overview over the behaviour and performance of the student groups, I
defined a measurement scale from 0-‐15, where 15 is a full score, i.e. the group
completed all tasks as instructed. During the analysis of the data, it became apparent
that only a handful of all the groups completed the whole trail. Figure 6 shows the
average score students achieved during the different sessions. The varying
performance of the students cannot necessarily be linked to their different age
groups. It is true that the highest scores have been achieved by groups of Year 6
students – but so has the lowest score. At the same time there were above average
performances by younger groups as well.
Age is certainly not the only factor that influences the performance, however,
looking at the data, different behaviours do emerge for different year groups.
Students of Year 3 and Year 4 (age range 7-‐9) tend to take more pictures during the
gallery activities than older students. Especially taking pictures that are not directly
task-‐related is much more common among younger students than among students
of grades 5 and 6.
Figure 7 -‐ Number of pictures taken in different age groups
Looking at the data produced during the lowest achieving sessions, it becomes
apparent that in three cases, the students completed fewer of the tasks than other
groups, but the students engaged in more activities that were not directly task
related. They took pictures of objects that were not covered in the trail, recorded
their voices while describing objects or reading the labels, or made videos while
exploring the gallery. The score, therefore, does not necessarily reflect how
meaningful the students’ experience was or how much they learnt. Interestingly, two
groups from the same school had below average results, although they did not
0
5
10
15
Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6
Pictures taken in the gallery
Average number of Pictures (Per group)
Average number of task-‐unrelated pictures (Per group)
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produce a lot of non-‐activity related content. However, in comparison with other
groups, their videos and voice recordings are more planned and organized. This
shows that they probably dedicated more time to the preparation of each task than
other groups did, which is why they did not have enough time to complete the whole
trail.
This shows that the quantitative measures of performance – or checking if the
students did what they were “supposed to do” – is too limited of an approach to
evaluate the learning processes taking place during a museum session like this. It
does not do justice to the complexity of the issue. In order to gain a more meaningful
understanding of the students’ behaviours, interactions and the circumstantial
factors that play a role during these learning activities, qualitative methods are
necessary.
4.1.2 Content analysis In the following account I will not report all the findings of the categories talk,
actions and attitudes separately, as they are too intertwined and each one is relevant
to understanding the two others. Instead, I will summarize the findings into the
main themes that emerged from analysing the data on all three levels.
4.1.2.1 Engagement with the artefacts One of the main points of this study concerns the interaction of students with the
artefacts in the museum. The question is if the students actually engage with the
objects during the gallery trail and how the technologies integrated in the activities
enable this interaction.
The students’ contact with the artefacts manifests itself both in their actions and
their talk. Actions like looking and pointing at the objects, walking around them or
imitating them can be commonly observed, and often they are accompanied by
object-‐related talk. Looking at the artefacts is the most basic interaction, which,
however, cannot be taken for granted. Observation is required for more complex
interaction and engagement with the artefacts like meaning making, interpretation
or imitation. Figure 8 shows seven categories of object interactions derived from the
data, which are all based on the students looking at the object closely and becoming
aware of what they see.
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Figure 8 -‐ Object interactions based on looking
Description Most occurrences of object-‐related talk are descriptions of the artefacts. Figure 9
shows the frequencies in which the students use the different descriptive categories.
The four main categories reflect this task, in which the students are asked to
describe their favourite Buddha statue:
• What does your favourite Buddha look like? Is he standing or sitting down? What colour is he? Is he happy or sad?
• Why did you choose him as your favourite? Give at least two reasons.
Figure 9 -‐ Descriptive object-‐related talk
Looking at the object
Description
Interpretation
Comparison Imitation
Imagination
Effect
Valuation
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Most answers follow the scheme that is provided by the question. As requested in
the task, the students classify the posture of the statues as either sitting down or
standing. Some provide more detail to the answer by stating what the statues are
sitting or standing on, or by describing the position of their legs and arms. Some
students actually apply their previous knowledge and identify the posture of the
statue as the lotus position.
The majority of the descriptions of the statues’ expressions fall into the happy/sad
category: Some students tend to only repeat the question in their answer, which
results in statements like “he is happy and sad”.
In some cases, the students reflect on the question and since they cannot find
evidence for neither a happy nor a sad expression in the statue’s face, they struggle
to give an answer. In these cases, the choice that the question gives the students
might restrict them because it suggests that there is only one right answer here,
much like a multiple-‐choice test.1 The Buddha is either happy or sad, many students
do not elaborate on the description of the expression. This becomes particularly
apparent in one episode, where one of the museum educators assists a group with
the recording:
EDUCATOR: Next question. Is he…happy or sad?
STUDENT: Um, he is happy.
EDUCATOR: Can you tell looking at it?
STUDENT: Oh, yeah, yeah, sad, sad!
EDUCATOR: No, what do you think?
STUDENT: Sad.
When the educator challenges the student’s answer, he immediately switches to the
other option. He is so concerned about giving the right answer, and this prevents
him from actually looking at the object and giving his own opinion. This shows that
the formulation of the tasks or questions has a strong influence on the students’
answers. Especially in a session designed to train observational skills, it might be
more fruitful to ask more open questions. Some guidance and direction is certainly
needed in the instructions, especially for the younger students. However, giving 1 The same is true for the question “Is he standing or sitting down?”, which generates most of the comments in the posture category. However, in this case there are actually only these two options for the selected objects. All Buddha statues are either standing or sitting down.
66
them two choices for their answer might prevent the students from actually
properly looking at the artefacts. One of the goals of student-‐object interactions in
galleries is to have them understand that every artefact has numerous
interpretations, none of which is necessarily wrong or right. This kind of “multiple
choice might not be the right approach. The students are used to this question type
from school and it might suggest to them that one of the two options is right, and
one is wrong.
Outside of the happy/sad dimension, most descriptions depict the Buddhas as
peaceful, calm and relaxed. Some students see the Buddha as being serious or even
angry.
Figure 10 -‐ Expressions
Figure 11 -‐ Features
The descriptions that fall into the features category are more varied, partly because
the category itself is more general and includes any detail of the artefacts described
67
by the students. While the task gives the students specific choices to describe the
posture or the expression, they are not prompted to name specific features of the
statues. The most common features described can be seen in Figure 11. Compared to
the descriptions of the facial expressions (Figure 10), there is more variation and
none of the features dominates as clearly as the description “happy” does. The most
frequently mentioned feature is the “detail” of the artefacts. Along with “patterns”
and “designs”, this is a very general description of the object and in the large
majority of the cases, the students do not specify it. They state that they like “the
designs” or “the patterns” but do not further describe what these designs or patterns
look like. Apart from these three examples, the students tend to point out specific
features and describe them, like the “long ears”, “spiky hair”, “green rock” or the
“fiery throne”. These descriptions of specific features indicate a close observation of
the artefacts, where the students are not influenced by the formulation of the
question but freely explore the details of an object.
Interpretation As mentioned before, many students simply repeat the adjectives already provided
by the formulated question without actually trying to understand the facial
expression of the Buddha statues. In some cases, however, they justify their answer
by stating the evidence they found by looking at the statues, in order to identify the
expression as being happy or sad. (“And he is really happy – he is happy and he has a
big smile on his face.”) This is the behaviour desired by educators like Housen (2002):
Students should look at the artefacts and make meaning from the evidence they find
– moving from a descriptive to an interpretive behaviour. Much like the previous
example, this behaviour can be observed in quite a few of the student groups. They
observe, for example, that the Buddha’s eyes are closed and infer that he is sleeping.
Or they claim that an artefact is ancient and justify it by pointing out broken parts.
Others describe the posture of the statues and suggest interpretations. One student,
for example, described a standing Buddha with a raised hand and explains: “[…] he’s
like, calming someone down after they’ve been angry. “ Another student interprets the
same statue in a different way: “It looks like, and it looks like it’s waving to us.” And
yet another group thinks that the same Buddha “looks like he’s standing and guarding
something.” For the seated Buddhas, most of the interpretations are relatively
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unanimous: They look like “no one is bothering” them or like they “don’t have stress
or anything”. One student actually dug a little deeper into the question about the
Buddha’s facial expression and explains: “[…] he looks sad but he isn’t… He looks like
that ‘cause he’s concentrating.” Other artefacts are interpreted by the students as
“doing yoga”, “balancing” or doing a “special exercise”. As diverse as the different
interpretations might be, they all show a deeper engagement with the displayed
objects and the students’ interest to establish their meanings.
Comparison Another way for the students to connect with the artefacts is to put them in relation
to something else. Some compare the artefacts to a common object or something
they are familiar with, others compare them to other statues in the gallery. The
students mostly use the comparisons with common objects to illustrate the
artefact’s appearance: One statue has “a hat like a jar”, another one has a “head as
big as a melon” and one is sitting on a shrine that looks “like a flower that’s opened
up”. The students recognize certain features of the statues that remind them of
something they already know. In this way they are getting in touch with the
unfamiliar artefacts and find a way of talking about them without having to know
any expert language.
The comparisons with other objects in the gallery usually occur when the students
are answering the question why they chose one particular Buddha as their favourite.
Here, they have to justify why they like one statue more than the others, which
results in the students trying to identify specific differences between the objects.
Some groups only state that the object looks different or better than all the others or
that it “stood out”. Others, however, identify certain characteristics that distinguish
the objects from one another, usually the size or the posture, and in some cases, the
expression. Comparisons of the objects in the gallery also occur unrelated to the task
of the favourite Buddha. There are some groups that record spontaneous videos
while touring the gallery, commenting on the objects they see, like a group of girls
who are comparing three artefacts in one showcase: “And he has…and this head
doesn’t have a pointy head like the one that we had seen before.” Certain features of an
artefact only stand out in comparison with other objects. Giving the students the
opportunity to browse around the gallery allows them to get an idea of the diversity
69
of the objects and makes them notice things they might not realise by only looking at
one statue.
In some cases, the children actually put the artefacts in reference to themselves. One
boy, for example, explains why he chose one particular Buddha statue as his
favourite: “I like this one because […] it’s the tallest, like me.” This kind of self-‐
comparison connects the children to the object on a personal level; in this case,
finding a similarity between the artefact and the self causes instant affection
towards it.
Imitation One of the physical object interactions that the students are asked for during the
session is the imitation of certain objects. To fulfil this task, the students have to
closely observe the statues’ posture and facial expression and then try to realise the
same pose with their own bodies. This imitation exercise requires a more accurate
way of looking at the objects. In order to be able to copy the statue’s posture, the
students need to pay a lot of attention to details.
However, the students’ preconceptions
often interfere with their perception of the
object. In one of the tasks, they are asked to
imitate the way one of the Buddha statues
is sitting in meditation. Image 3 shows a girl
imitating the statue behind her – but clearly
her concept of a “typical” meditating
position got in the way of her noticing the
actual position of the Buddha’s hands. The
girl’s hand position is very common among
the students trying to copy the Buddha’s
meditation posture, which suggests that
this is a general concept of what meditating
“is supposed to look like”. Interestingly, the
youngest school group (Year 3) showed the
best observation skills in this task, since all
Image 3 -‐ Girl imitating Buddha
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of the group members imitated the hand position correctly. It is likely, however, that
this is due to a more intensive assistance by the teachers.
Often, the children imitate the objects more or less unconsciously while describing
them. In some of the videos it can be observed that one student is presenting an
object and when mentioning a certain aspect of the posture, they adopt the same
posture for a second.
In general, taking pictures of each other while imitating the objects seems to be a
poplar activity. There are quite a few groups who did this with more objects than
they were asked to do it with.
Imagination After having described a statue, some students theorise about handling the object or
project them into different scenarios. In one case, a girl describes her favourite
Buddha and states that it is very delicate. Her partner interjects: “Yeah, so if you drop
it, it would break.” This girl analyses the implications of her partner’s description of
the object and imagines a scenario, in which the fragility of the artefact becomes
relevant. The same thing happens in another group, where a girl describes an object
as follows: “[…] he is small […] and…and he is easy to carry around in your pocket.”
Here, the characteristic of being small is being interpreted as something practical –
as it is often done with common objects like cell phones or the like.
The third example is a fairly typical reaction of (especially inexperienced) art
viewers: Imagining what an artwork would look like in their homes: “[…] he looks
pretty and…if it was on your furniture it would just like…it would outstand on the
furniture”. Here, the students focus only on the decorative aspect of the object rather
than on the meanings behind it. By imagining the artefact in their homes, the
students link the artefacts to their private environment and make it more personally
relevant for themselves.
Effect Another indicator of the students’ engagement with the artefact is their comments
on how an object affects them. The effects derived from the data are curiosity,
amusement, fascination, and inspiration. Curiosity is raised when the students
notice something about the objects that they do not understand, but find to be
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intriguing and they would like to know more about it. In one of the recordings, a boy
is trying to identify a part of an object and points out: “[…] ’cause, you know, when
you don’t know what it is, it makes it more interesting, it might be a baby, might be—I
don’t know.” Csikszentmihalyi and Hermanson (1999) identify curiosity as “the first
step in the process of intrinsically motivated learning” (p. 153) and therefore an
integral part of a successful educational experience and a very desirable outcome of
the engagement with the artefacts. Amusement, fascination and inspiration are
effects on an emotional level, which is a crucial factor for learning as well.
Valuations The students also voice their opinions about the artefacts in the recordings. They
mostly describe the statues as “nice”, “pretty”, “beautiful” or they simply state that
they like them. In his research about gallery trails, Walker (2008) found the same
kind of “unreflective” opinions voiced by visitors, and suggested that especially
people with little previous knowledge needed more guidance or some kind of
initiation to be able to formulate more sophisticated opinions or thoughts. Some
students are more enthusiastic and state that they are “really great” or “really cool”.
Usually, their valuations are based on the statue’s appearance, its colour, its size or
certain features and details. Many students value a certain object because it has a
distinguishing feature that makes it “special” or “unique”. Another reason to
appreciate a statue is because it looks “realistic”. This is in line with Housen’s (2002)
description of how constructive viewers2 value art.
If the work does not look the way it is “supposed to”[…] then these viewers judge the work to be “weird,” lacking, or of no value. Their sense of what is realistic is the standard often applied to determine value. (p. 126)
In fact, there are several students who describe the objects as “weird” because their
hair does not look natural or their expression and posture seems abnormal to them.
A very common judgement of the objects is that they look “interesting”. Most of the
times the students do not give an explanation why the statue looks interesting to
them, except in a few cases, where they mention certain intriguing features of the
object, like “the long ears make it really interesting” or “it’s interesting because he’s 2 According to Housen’s five Stages of Aesthetic Development, constructive viewers are in stage 2. Stage 1=Accountive viewers, Stage 2=Constructive viewers, Stage 3=Classifying viewers, Stage 4=Interpretive viewers, Stage 5=Re-‐creative viewers. For a more extensive description see http://www.vtshome.org/research/aesthetic-‐development
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only got four fingers”. In the analysed data, there was only one case, where a student
gives a negative opinion about an object. One girl says that an object is boring,
although her statement is not very consistent: “It is very, very dull, but very
interesting as well. So that’s why we like the Buddha.”
The students’ comments show that the gallery experience encourages them to voice
their opinion about the artefacts. Other than during guided tours, the students do
not have to listen to an authority with more expertise talking about the objects but
they can value them in their own terms.
4.1.2.2 Social Interactions Since the students are embedded in a familiar social setting during their field trip,
interactions with their classmates and their teachers play an important role. In the
analysed media, both intra-‐group as well as inter-‐group exchanges can be observed.
Within their groups, the students usually adopt a collaborative behaviour while
solving the tasks. In some cases, there are clear roles for each student: one is filming,
the other one is describing an object, or one is interviewing and the other one is
answering the questions. Sometimes it seems like the students do not assign the
roles in an ideal way. Often, the student who is in front of the camera does not really
know what to say, while the student holding the camera is trying to whisper
prompts for the partner to repeat. In one case, a girl actually complains to her
partner about the role allocation:
GIRL: And the colour is grey and and, um, and, uh…and…Oh I don’t know what I was gonna say!
BOY: [prompting] And how it meditates!
GIRL: And how it meditates… I said that already!
BOY: [stutters] Uh…I…I…
GIRL: Oh I don’t wanna do this! ‘Cause I don’t know it!
BOY: You can say he looks happy.
GIRL: I don’t wanna do it. I don’t know how to do this!
Even though the boy had a clear idea of what to say in the video, he did not want to
swap roles and be the one in front of the camera. Other disputes within the groups
are usually related to disagreements about the way the task should be completed.
Some students are not happy with their partner’s response or the fact that they are
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not focusing on the activities. There are also quarrels about taking turns in handling
the camera and the tablets.
Other, more constructive, interactions are more common between the students. In
many groups collaborative behaviour can be observed, students discuss with their
partners and peer teaching occurs frequently. The students collaborate when they
plan their recordings and often also while recording their responses. In groups
where the students do not assign clear roles among each other, it is very common
that they alternate while describing an object, for example:
BOY: We like the third eye because it can see the other things that we can’t see with two eyes. And the…and…
GIRL: His long ears represent that he’s a prince. ‘Cause he used to wear heavy earrings.
BOY: And, and, and that gave him long ears. ‘Cause they were so heavy. He also…he also, um, he also, um meditates in a position called the lotus position.
In the groups without role allocation, the students usually make spontaneous
recordings without a lot of planning and they tend to argue less because everyone is
free to contribute whatever they want. In groups where the roles are clearly
assigned (e.g. one student is filming, the other one talking) and more planning is
involved, the students tend to get more upset when their partner is not performing
the way they agreed according to their expectations.
According to Mayer (Mayer M. , 2007), the kind of social interaction that supports
learning should be “real” interaction (see Figure 12), meaning that students do not
only talk with each other, but actually have a dialogue, processing what the other
person said and responding to it.
At the same time, the interactions
should focus on the learning topic, in
this case Buddhism, the artefacts or
even the technologies, which they
are supposed to use.
Often, in the observed social
interactions, both parameters are
not fulfilled. Many of the students’ Figure 12 -‐ Social interaction for learning
Real interaction
Topic-‐focused
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discussions are either off-‐topic or they only consist of statements without any
dialogue. This is not entirely surprising, since the discussions are occurring between
children, none of whom usually have the knowledge or the skills to lead a
meaningful and interpretive conversation about the artefacts. The value of these
conversations among the students lies more in the pointing out of details, sharing
the experience of exploration and noticing things together.
In some of the tasks, the students are encouraged to interview their partners. There
are three different ways the students approach this task. (1) Most of the interviews
that the students conduct between each other follow exactly the wording of the task:
The interviewer reads the questions displayed on the tablet computer and usually
does not respond to the answer given by their partner. In this case, the students are
talking about topics relevant to their learning, but real interaction does not take
place. (2) In few cases, they stick to the given questions but do also ask follow-‐up
questions referring to the response of the interviewee. In these cases, both
requirements for successful learning interaction are fulfilled. (3) Some students
start to interview their classmates without paying attention to the tasks at all. They
ask them about the museum, about their opinion of a certain artefacts and
sometimes interview students of other teams. These kinds of spontaneous
interviews usually involve a real dialogue but do not always revolve around relevant
topics for learning.
Although according to Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the ‘Zone of proximal
development’ the interaction with more knowledgeable or skilful peers is crucial for
learning, this study shows that discrepancies in competences can also hinder a
fruitful interaction. In one case, for example, a boy is trying to interview his partner
about an episode in her life when she was generous. He is asking insightful questions
and tries to follow-‐up on the girl’s answers. The girl, however, is very monosyllabic,
hardly responds to the questions and only makes very general statements. After a
while, the boy gives up and ends the interview. With an equally interested and
competent peer, this could have developed into a dynamic discussion but without
any feedback from his partner the boy’s motivation ebbed away. Often, pairing up
strong students with weaker classmates is thought to be beneficial, since the more
competent ones can influence and motivate their partners. However, in an activity
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like this, the stronger student might get frustrated with a non-‐responsive partner,
which can impact their general enjoyment of the experience.
The group dynamics are influenced by the composition of the teams. In some cases,
the teams were clearly arranged by the teacher in a way that is supposed to keep the
students focused. In one case for example, each boy was teamed up with a girl. In
fact, the students of this session did not get as distracted as some other groups and
their score was above average, too. Creative and explorative behaviour, however,
did not occur during this session. Packer and Ballantyne’s (2005) assumption that
museum visitors are more likely “to engage in risky or adventurous behaviour when
they have a companion” (p. 184) might apply here. When students are in a team with
their friends, they feel more comfortable to engage in non-‐task related behaviour, to
explore or to fool about but also to employ creative ways of solving the tasks, like
role-‐playing.
Peer learning often occurs when students explain to their partners how to use the
technology. Students who already know how to make a voice recording or a video
pass this knowledge on to their partners during the activities, like in these examples:
GIRL: Talk like that because the microphone is there!
BOY: And press the shutter button when you finish!
It is also commonly observed that students point out certain objects or certain
details of objects to their classmates.
The inter-‐group interactions are usually not task-‐related and often include
disruptive behaviour. Several groups of students often clash in front of a certain
object that both groups are supposed to be recording. It can get crowded in some
corners of the gallery, which results in arguments between the groups, when
students walk in front of the camera of a different group or disturb another group’s
recording by being noisy. There are however, also inter-‐group interactions as well,
where students assist each other with the technologies or explain the tasks to their
peers.
Modelling of behaviours and repeating of spoken words happens very frequently
during this gallery exploration. The modelling of someone else’s behaviour does not
only happen within groups but also across several teams. Behaviours that are not
task-‐related (like recording gallery tours or imitating objects that are not included in
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the trail) seem to spread once one group starts it. There are several sessions where
this non-‐task-‐related behaviour does not occur at all. But it is also very rare that only
one of the teams adopts this behaviour. Once it is done by one group, usually the
other ones follow. The influence between the groups can be observed in one of the
videos, where a boy completes the task of walking around an object while filming it.
There is a second group working on the same task, which describes and comments
on the object while filming it. This is not demanded by the instructions but when the
boy hears the other group’s recording, he starts adding comments to his video as
well.
Teacher mediation also plays quite an important role during the gallery activities.
Both the class teachers as well as museum educators are present and assist the
students with the technologies, help them find the objects, etc. In some cases, the
students involve teachers and educators in the activities by taking pictures of them
with the objects or recording their voice. Not surprisingly, teacher mediation is most
common in younger school groups, where the teachers not only help with the
technology and with fulfilling the tasks, but they also admonish the students when
they are not behaving correctly, i.e. when they are touching the artefacts or
disturbing each other while recording.
4.1.2.3 Creativity and explorative behaviour Even though all students have to solve the same tasks during the gallery experience,
different groups show different approaches to doing so. While some groups follow
the instructions exactly, others employ more creative approaches to complete the
tasks. Instead of simply answering a question, some students engage in role-‐playing
with their partner in order to demonstrate a certain idea.
Even though the tasks of the gallery trail are fairly clear and structured and do not
leave a lot of room for interpreting them in different ways, the students engage in a
lot of self-‐directed behaviour. Aside from the role-‐playing, it is not the case that the
given tasks are solved in a large variety of ways. Either the students do more of
something that they are instructed to do, for example taking pictures of more
objects, imitating more artefacts, etc., or they ignore the instructions altogether and
explore the gallery on their own terms, taking spontaneous pictures and recording
videos as they go along.
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Several students of different school groups recorded “gallery tours”, where they
carry the camera with them while exploring the gallery and describing what they
see. Since this behaviour is not asked for in the instructions and it occurred in many
of the sessions, it seems to be “natural” for the students to explore their
environment with a camera. In general, students tend to prefer videos to audio
recordings, since most of the media recorded unrelated to any of the tasks are
videos. Especially for their tour of the gallery, the students usually choose the video
function, which allows them to record the visual aspects of their gallery exploration.
Their commentary in these videos is usually reduced to pointing out objects and
describing them in very basic categories, like big or small. From the verbal
transcript, in this case, not much can be inferred about the actual learning that is
taking place, but the students are certainly seeing a variety of objects and noticing
differences between them, even if only on a basic level.
This material that the students produce in an unguided manner gives insights into
their object preferences. The artefacts they choose to engage with uninfluenced by
the instructions seem to be the same ones in different school groups. A showcase full
of different swords and staggers, for example, seems to have an enormous appeal to
the students; they take pictures of the swords and make videos where they comment
on how “cool” they are. In one case, a group of boys actually recorded a video that
was significantly longer than any of the others, where they describe the different
swords on display. One of the boys seems to have some “expert” knowledge on the
subject and his enthusiasm clearly spills over to his partners who also start
elaborating on the different weapons and their features. Another popular object is a
golden crown with rich decorations; in this case it is likely the assumed value that
makes this artefact intriguing to the students. Another pattern that emerged was
that students are attracted by either very large or very small displays. In their study
about object-‐centred learning, Leinhardt and Crowley (2002) identified both scale
and value to be features of objects that museums visitors typically respond to. One
girl, who is recording a video tour of the gallery, films a lot of objects very hastily
until she suddenly stops at a horse statue and says: “This one is pretty interesting!”
Here, the trigger for the girl’s curiosity could have been a previous interest in horses
or the dynamic and figurative quality of the object caught her eye. Once she is
“hooked” by the artefact she actually stops to read the label. This example provides
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evidence for the fact that even if the students seem to be running aimlessly through
the galleries without focusing on the tasks, object interactions do take place.
4.1.2.4 Using the technologies The technologies used in this activity are tablet computers and digital cameras. The
functionalities of the tablet are very limited for this session; it only provides content
and is not used as an interactive tool. The use of the camera is more varied, since it is
at the same time a mediator between the students and their environment and a tool
for content creation.
The tablet computer basically serves the students in two ways: It is a guide and it
provides information. To use it as a guide and information tool, all the students have
to do is read the text and look at the displayed pictures of relevant objects in the
gallery. In many cases, it is evident that the students do not read the instructions on
the tablet properly and therefore fail to complete the task as they were supposed to.
Often, they run off to look for the objects and once they found the allegedly right
object, they just take a picture of it and assume the task is done without paying
attention to the instructions. In quite a few cases this can probably be attributed to a
lack of reading skills, in other cases it is just hastiness. Sometimes finding the right
object can pose a challenge too. Especially when there are several similar objects,
many students fail to find the right one. In these cases the students do not compare
the artefacts to the pictures on the tablet carefully enough and they overlook the
differences. However, not finding exactly the right object does not necessarily cause
a problem, since the tasks can generally be fulfilled using any object.
As an information tool, the tablet is mostly used by the students to read out loud and
record the displayed texts. When they are using the tablet in this way, there is no
interaction with the objects noticeable and they are not including any reasoning
about the read facts in their recordings. Therefore, it is questionable if they are
actually aware of what they are reading and if they will remember any of it later on.
There are, however, also cases where the students recount the facts they had read
before on camera, without reading them word-‐by-‐word from the tablet. There, the
role of the tablet as an information tool is more meaningful because the students are
remembering and putting the provided facts into their own words.
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The digital camera is more versatile as a tool. The three functionalities available
(photo, voice recording, video) are used by the students in numerous ways. I
identified the following five roles of the camera for the learning experience:
• Recording tool
• Presentation tool
• Documentation tool
• Social tool
• Play tool
The fact that the students use the camera as a recording tool is fairly obvious
because the tasks they are supposed to complete in the gallery ask for this
behaviour. Recording the answers to questions with a camera does give other
opportunities to the students than writing them down on a worksheet. Filling out
worksheets in a museum can be a cumbersome activity, since there is usually no
place to properly write down answers (Black, 2005). The camera gives the students
the opportunity to capture their “getting in contact” with the artefacts and to answer
questions extensively without having to worry about writing and spelling. Especially
for younger students or students who speak English as a second language, text-‐
based activities could be a barrier to getting in touch with the artefacts. Walker
(2008) also emphasises this “value of the voice” (p. 115), which according to his
research is a faster and easier way for the learners to record their mental processes,
which is beneficial for gallery experiences. The data shows that the students
approach their recordings in different ways: The behaviour ranges from planning
ahead exactly what they are going to say to completely spontaneous recordings that
do not have any agenda at all (and are usually not related to any of the tasks). In
between, there are recordings, where the students have an idea of what they want to
talk about but their wording is not planned and spontaneous observations or
interpretations are perceivable.
Every piece of content that the students produce is recorded. However, as will be
demonstrated in the following paragraphs, the ways in which the students make use
of the camera go beyond those of a simple recording tool.
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Apart from simply recording their answers, the students also use the camera as a
presentation tool – for the objects and themselves. It is noticeable in some recordings
that they address an imaginative audience and they use the camera to show the
artefacts in the gallery to this audience. Often, they adopt the attitude of a reporter
or an expert on TV. This sometimes prompts them to include “expert talk” in their
recording, which consists of facts that they remember, make up or read on the
labels. The following is an example of this behaviour:
“Hello, I’m reporting to you, my name is Mohamed […] We are reporting you because we have found a most famous statue from the ancient Asian country […] India. There has been a statue of the famous Buddha, the Sarnath Uttar Pradesh about 5th or 6th century AD. He is our favourite because he is very bold and […] very detailed. Thank you for listening to us!”
This boy is pretending to be talking to a radio or TV audience. He reads the object
label out loud in order to demonstrate specialist knowledge in his report. Another
boy is presenting an object to his imaginative viewers without including any specific
facts but by praising its appearance:
This is a very ancient artefact. It is so pretty! And the designs are terrific! [Filming small details of the object] And they’re so microscopic. Just look at the detail of this amazing, terrific thing! It’s…it’s so ancient! […] Now, this is the end of the program!
The boy’s tone of voice almost shows an exaggerated exhilaration as he walks
around the object, capturing its features on camera. Here, the focus is not only on the
artefact that the boy is presenting – at the same time he is playing a role and
presenting himself to his imaginative audience as well.
Some students use the recording functionalities as a documentation tool. They film
or voice record the occurrences in the gallery, while their group is trying to find the
objects, while they plan the actual recording or just in between activities. The
“documenter” follows their group with the camera and some of them actually
comment on the happenings in the gallery. Other than in the gallery tour videos that
some groups make, the student handling the camera for documentation does not
actively engage in finding objects or describing them, they simply record their
classmates’ actions. In some cases, this behaviour probably occurs because the
students do not read the instructions properly. They only know that they have to
make videos or recordings, without paying attention to any of the further
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instructions, like in the following episode, where a boy films his two partners while
they are looking for the right showcases:
BOY 1: It’s not there; it’s not there! Are you taking a video of us?
BOY 2 [holding camera]: Yeah. We have to tape video.
BOY 1: OK, um, yeah. So this is…
BOY 2 [holding camera]: I’m doing a video.
BOY 3: Why?
BOY 2 [holding camera]: Because we’re supposed to. And take pictures.
The camera is a social tool, because it provokes interaction between the students.
Usually, the students take on different roles and take turns when using the camera
for making videos (or taking pictures). One is filming and the others are being
recorded. The student operating the camera often takes on the role of the
interviewer and asks questions, while the other ones have to answer. But the
interaction is not only evoked because the students are instructed to interview each
other. In many videos, which are not related to any particular task, the students are
going around the gallery trying to film their classmates and to get them to interact.
Sometimes this behaviour creates friction between the students because some
children do not want to appear in the videos. In some cases, this seems to be a
motivation for the student operating the camera to keep filming in order to tease
their classmates. This phenomenon was also found by Sharples (2003), who studied
the photographic behaviours of children at different ages.
Despite these conflicts, the camera is a tool that engages more than one person at
the same time and builds a connection between the students who use it to create
something together. While analysing the photographs, it becomes apparent that
there is a difference in the way students take pictures of their classmates at different
ages. Younger children (Grades 3 and 4) take more photographs of their partners
posing than children of the ages 10-‐11. The photographs of older children are more
focused on the objects. This also supports the findings of Sharples (2003) who
discovered that 11-‐year olds tend to take fewer posed pictures and in general fewer
pictures of people than children at the age of 7.
As a play tool, the camera is used by the students to have fun. They take pictures of
themselves and their classmates pulling faces or posing with museum objects or
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they simply play with the functionalities of the camera. “Playing” with the cameras
occurs both while the students are completing tasks and when they are engaging in
non-‐task-‐related behaviour. Sometimes this playing with the equipment actually
supports the students’ acquisition of ICT skills because they discover certain
functionalities of the cameras or tablets.
While some students clearly enjoy filming themselves and play roles on camera,
there are also students who do not want to be recorded. In some of the videos it is
obvious that the child on screen does not feel comfortable. They mumble something
– often hastily – and then jump out of the frame or tell their partners to stop the
recording right after they said their text.
One of the common concerns is that technologies in the museum take the focus off
the artefacts. This is definitely not the case in the Multimedia Magic experience. The
camera is a not a tool that attracts a lot of attention to itself, like a computer or a cell
phone for example. Rather, it provokes an activity. There is nothing to do with a
camera but taking pictures or record videos or audio. When the students receive the
camera, they automatically scan their surroundings for something to take pictures of
or to record. Even if they are not following the instructed tasks, they show
explorative behaviour, when they make videos of the gallery or when they are taking
pictures of objects that caught their attention. The objects in a cultural history
museum are usually not interactive, like for example the displays in a science
museum. The camera gives the students something to do, a way to engage with the
objects and at the same time allows them to produce content and collect souvenirs.
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4.2 Observation Although the observation was conducted on a very small scale, it allowed for gaining
an understanding of the different dynamics of the gallery activities and it also helped
identify a few issues that play a role in the learning process. Moreover, it confirmed
some findings from the previous analysis of the students’ media.
There are two main problems with the students’ activities in the gallery, which had
already been identified in the student-‐produced media: Firstly, they tend to not read
the instructions properly and secondly, they spend too much time on each task to
complete the whole trail. For most of the activities, the students spent longer than 5
minutes, often even more than 10 minutes, so that two of the three observed groups
did not complete the whole gallery trail.
The students of this school group required a lot of assistance with the technical
equipment even though they all had an instruction sheet at hand. This shows again
that at least the younger students do not read carefully and they rather go and ask
one of the educators than follow the instructions of the manual.
Since not a lot of information can be gained about the behaviour in between the
tasks from the students’ videos and audio recordings, the observation was valuable
for gaining insight about the dynamics while the students try to find the objects of
the gallery trail. The fact that they have to find the objects, which are displayed on
the tablet computer encourages the exploration of the gallery and elicits
conversations between the students about the different objects. They are comparing
the different artefacts to the picture on screen and therefore notice certain features
of the artefacts on display. Overheard conversations included sentences like “They’re
not sitting, it’s this one!”, where one of the students points out the right object to
their partner who had previously failed to find it. Finding the artefacts alone
therefore trains the students’ observational skills and they realize that there any
many different ways to depict a meditating Buddha, for example.
Different group dynamics could also be identified during the observation. As already
established in chapter 4.1.2.4, some students are not comfortable acting in front of
the camera. This was confirmed during the observation, when one boy refused to
swap roles with his partner because he did not want to be filmed.
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Explorative behaviour could also be observed during the session. While trying to
find the right objects in the gallery, the students often get distracted by other objects
that they find on the way. This adds to the fact that the students run out of time
before finishing their tasks.
The excitement about the digital cameras and the tablet computers was evident.
Many students asked if they could keep the equipment and they were clearly
disappointed when they had to give it back. This excitement led to the fact that in
one of the observed groups a student was initially more interested in playing with
the camera than actually completing the tasks.
4.3 Interviews The following section will highlight the most important findings from the conducted
interviews. It will first highlight the most relevant issues raised during the interview
with the teacher and then describe the students’ accounts of the museum
experience. Subsequently, the learning outcomes emerged during the interviews will
be summarized.
4.3.1 Personal views on the experience The interviews allowed the participants to tell their personal views of the
experience at the British Museum. The following section will describe the main
topics discussed from the teacher’s and the students’ perspectives.
4.3.1.1 Teacher’s voice To provide a context to the students’ interview I will first summarize the main
points raised by the teacher during the interview.
Overall, she was very pleased with the Multimedia Magic experience. In fact, the
activities exceeded her expectations since – in her opinion – the information
material provided online does not do justice to the quality and appeal of the session.
Although she had participated in sessions at the British Museum before, and
regularly organizes trips to other institutions as well, her attitude towards class
visits to museums is ambivalent:
Usually I’m quite apprehensive about bringing children to the museum because containing them and finding things to keep them engaged is quite difficult, especially with the younger children. So for me this is an ideal opportunity, or, ideal way to bring the children to the museum and let them interact with the artefacts. Not just
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going round and me telling them what they are. Them actually having the resources to go round and notice things for themselves, um, I think is amazing in this session.
Coincidently, she had studied Buddhism with her class earlier in the term, when she
found out that the session at the museum would be revolving around the same topic.
She found this to be a major advantage because it made the activities more
meaningful for the students and helped keep them motivated as well. She concluded
that if she were going to book the same session again in the future, she would
certainly treat the subject in class beforehand.
Apart from the fact that the students learnt about Buddhism and had the
opportunity to engage with the artefacts on their own terms, she stressed that the
acquisition of ICT skills was also a large asset of the session:
There were two areas of learning: Recapping and learning more about the Buddhist faith and the second bit of learning was using, obviously, these ICT equipments as well. Because at school we probably have about two cameras. That’s not enough for the children to use in this way.
Since for schools it is usually too expensive to acquire enough equipment, she
thought that the session at the British Museum was a good opportunity for the
students to get familiar with these technologies. Despite her concerns before the
session that the students might struggle with the camera or the computers, she
found that the instructions provided throughout the session enabled them to use
them to good effect.
As a follow up to the visit she had already planned for the students to share their
presentations and experiences from the museum at a school assembly about a
month after the visit. They will also have to write about their visit into their learning
logs, reflecting on what they did and what they learnt at the British Museum.
This interview – as short as it was – adds important contextual understanding to the
visit. The motivation and engagement of the teacher greatly influences the students’
learning experience and in this case, the teacher was clearly concerned about
making the trip as meaningful and enjoyable for the students as possible. The fact
that Buddhism had already been discussed in class also has an influence on how to
interpret the replies in the student interviews. Since the students already had
previous knowledge on the subject, a difference has to be made between this
knowledge being reinforced and new knowledge being acquired at the museum.
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4.3.1.2 Students’ voices
Preparations and expectations Even though the students all attended the same class, they perceived the way they
were prepared for the museum visit quite differently. When asked if their teacher
prepared them for the trip, most of the students’ first answer concerned practical
issues, like having a consent letter signed by the parents and bringing a packed
lunch. The responses to the question, if their teacher told them what they were going
to do at the museum however, varied. Some students remembered that the teacher
told them they would learn about Buddhism, others recalled being told that they
would use digital cameras and computers at the museum. And some of them did not
recall any preparation regarding the activities.
It proved difficult to get an answer about their expectations. This seems to be a
question better asked in an interview before the visit, since most of the children
either did not know what to answer or they were simply recounting what they
actually did at the museum. The recollections of their expectations in retrospect
were highly influenced by the experience they had just had. The ones who actually
did answer this question gave quite general responses and said they were expecting
to learn and play.
Some of the students shared their general conceptions of museum; one girl states,
“British Museums have to be quiet and calm”. The impression that museums should
be quiet places is shared by another boy, who says that their class was too noisy for
the museum. Another boy described museums as places with statues and ropes that
prevent the visitors from getting too close to the statues and as a place where “they
can’t sit down anywhere.”
Even though the students had trouble remembering what their expectations were,
some of them recalled being surprised about certain things at the museum. One boy
had expected that there would only be pictures in the museum and was surprised to
see a gallery full of statues. The other surprises were usually linked to the
technologies and the fact that they were allowed to handle the cameras and tablets
autonomously.
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Personal contexts and identity During the interviews, it became apparent that the personality, the interests and the
motivation of the students often impacted their learning experience, both positively
and negatively.
One of the girls was quite a smart and assiduous student, who cared about
completing all the tasks correctly. Being used to the clearly structured school
environment, she did not dare to engage in behaviour that was not asked for in the
instructions on the tablet. This girl had her eyes set on the popular golden crown
(see chapter 4.1.2.3) and she would have liked to take a picture of it:
SD: Is there anything that you would have liked to do or to see at the museum but you couldn’t? […]
GIRL: Mh, to take picture of the big crown, the golden crown, but we couldn’t because it didn’t say on the tablet computer and we didn’t quite finish.
Her aptitude to comply with the rules inhibited her from engaging with an artefact
that she would have liked to take a closer look at and to take a photograph. This
phenomenon was already mentioned in a previous chapter: Some of the students
feel restricted by the tasks and this hinders them from engaging with an artefact.
One boy had the opposite profile of the girl: While she seemed very keen and
interested, he had the opposite attitude, answering most questions with “no” and
stating that he didn’t like museums. In every school group, there are certainly
students who are not motivated to participate in any activities and it is a difficult
task to encourage them to engage. In this case, even though the boy displayed a very
disinterested attitude, he stated that he did enjoy looking for the showcases with the
right objects. Also this student’s profile is very common: In every school there are
children, who for some reason are not motivated to learn and have a disapproving
attitude towards everything that seems educational. This example shows that
despite a very negative attitude, the boy found an enjoyable part of the activity.
Providing diverse ways of engaging with the artefacts is therefore very important in
order to include learners with different personalities and attitudes.
Another observation derived from the analysis of the student-‐produced media was
that some students feel too shy to be “performing” for the camera. This assumption
was confirmed by some of the interviews. One boy stated that his favourite part of
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the day was using the digital camera to take pictures and record videos. However, he
was too shy to be filmed himself and therefore only operated the camera, while his
partner had to pose for the pictures and take over the active part in front of the
camera. He admitted that his partner did not know what to say and he had to help
her, but the fact that he could have done a better job at the task than his partner, did
not lead to his willingness to swap roles.
Social interaction The students viewed their visit to the museum as a social experience and the
interactions with their classmates played a major role for all of them. For one boy,
being with his friends was one of the main reasons for his enjoyment, and during the
interview he told many little episodes of how he interacted with his team and how
much fun they had together. Much of the fun he mentioned was unrelated to the
tasks that they were supposed to be completing during the session:
Boy: I was playing with my friends, like, they—I was making funny things and they kept laughing.
However, the social interaction with friends was not only distracting for the
students, but in many cases it actually supported or caused the learning processes.
The same boy remembered that he found out how to use the tablet computer and
subsequently showed other students how it worked:
Boy: Then I told my friend, then he’s like “Oh, I’m gonna try on mine” then he…it worked on everyone’s and then he was happy ‘cause I showed him.
Another student remembered a fact that her partner had told her about one of the
statues during the gallery experience:
Girl: It was meditating, a big bump on his head and it had flames, it was sitting over the…it was sitting behind the flames and Simeon said that the flames represent wisdom.
This shows that social interactions during the activities do lead to learning, either
through conversations about the objects, by students pointing out things to their
partners or by showing them how to use the equipment. The recollection of learnt
facts often seems to be very closely linked to the interactions taking place during the
learning process. The students do not only remember what they learnt, but they
remember the conversations with their partner or educator when they acquired the
knowledge.
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The social aspect of the learning experience does not end as soon as the students
leave the museum. One of the boys, for example, stated in the interview that he
discussed the visit with his friend on the way home, sharing their experiences during
the visit.
Technology as a driver of learning One common theme emerged during all the interviews: The students are thrilled
about the technology. For almost all of them, their favourite part of the day was
linked to the cameras, the tablets or the computers. Some of them however had
ambivalent opinions about the tablet and the digital cameras. When asked, which
one of the two they preferred, most students said they preferred the tablet
computer. But when asked about their favourite part of the day, many of them
answered that they liked taking pictures most.
Boy: The best part of the tablet computers when…you got to take pictures of the statues and videos of yourself.
This boy is looking to explain what he enjoyed most about the tablet computer but
ends up talking about the things he could do with the digital camera. Although the
tablet is the first thing on his mind, it is the camera that allowed him to do the things
he enjoyed most. Other students also struggled to explain why they enjoyed using
the tablet computer and simply stated that they liked that “you can touch it”. The
tablet seems to be fascinating and have more of an appeal as a device itself, but in
terms of functionalities the camera offers more variety. The one unmotivated
student mentioned in the previous chapter, liked using the tablet but did not like
using the camera because he “didn’t know what to say”. For him, using the tablet was
an attractive activity because it did not require any mental engagement.
The digital camera allows the students to do fun activities – taking pictures,
recording videos, etc., while the tablet only provides instructions and information.
The technology allows the students to explore the gallery on their own terms
without having to follow a teacher or tour guide. The teacher mentioned this in the
interview factor as well (see page 85). Also, one of the students stated that she liked
being independent in the gallery:
Girl: I enjoy doing about the little laptops and computers, doing our own things. I enjoyed about that.
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As previously established, the camera is a tool that facilitates a wide range of
interactions between the students and the artefacts and between the students and
their peers. These interactions support the memorability of the experience and are
often the triggers for the students in helping them remember details or learnt facts
about the artefacts.
The cameras and the tablet computers are certainly the main drivers of excitement
during the Multimedia Magic session and this excitement can spill over to other
parts of the experience as well. The fact that the technologies are used as a tool to do
something meaningful or to create content involving the artefacts, prevents the
devices from becoming the sole object of attention.
Creating content in the galleries is a good way of extending the learning experience.
It is important however, that the students get to keep at least a part of the things
they created.
Girl: And my favourite one was taking pictures because I love taking pictures, like, I thought me and my partner, we can keep it, and I thought we can keep it forever
SD: The pictures?
Girl: Yeah, because I’m a good drawer with looking at the pictures and tracing…but I can’t do it without the picture, so I love pictures. It’s quite…it was quite exciting for me.
Several students mentioned the fact that they enjoyed having the opportunity to see
the pictures they took in the galleries during the afternoon session. This boy, for
example, described the process of creating the glog and seeing the pictures they had
taken of themselves before amused him:
Boy: Yeah, my friend, they picked me as a picture meditating! And I was laughing ‘cause I’ve seen the picture. And they put another Buddha that’s meditating next to my picture.
Three factors contribute to the successful integration of the technologies in this
session: They create enjoyment, they encourage a variety of interactions and they
allow the students to capture these interactions and to create content, which they
can access later on. All these factors contribute to the motivation of the students and
to the memorability of the experience.
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Technical difficulties, however, can be discouraging for the students and some of
them actually mentioned that they were trying to accomplish something but it did
not work properly.
Girl 1: And we tried to take a picture of that but every time we took a picture of it, it came out blurry.
Girl 2: And we had trouble making the video with the digital camera because every time we tried to use the microphone we still couldn’t hear it.
Boy 2: We had two videos but one we had to delete. There was a problem with the second one to try. So we kept the one that, just a short one. That was our best choice.
The blurriness of the picture is a common problem, since the galleries are not very
well lit and the flash has to be disabled to take pictures of objects in showcases.
Especially for the younger children, it is a challenge to hold the camera very still to
take a good picture. Problems with voice recordings and videos are disappointing
for the students, too. In the cases mentioned above, the problems were solved by
having the students record their voices again, in a quiet room during the afternoon
session. However, if these technical difficulties are not single cases but related to the
quality of the equipment, this would not be possible. This means that it is important
to provide equipment that works reliably in most of the cases, otherwise the
disappointment over poor results can impair the positive experiences had in the
museum.
4.3.2 Learning outcomes Finding out if children learnt something during a museum visit is quite a challenging
task. The main problem is that often the learners themselves do not realise what or
how much they learnt. Consequently, asking the question “What did you learn?”
often evokes an awkward silence instead of a clear answer. This, however, does not
mean that learning does not take place. During the course of the interviews, the
students often revealed a gain in knowledge without being asked about their
learning and sometimes without even realising it. Analysing the interview
transcripts, it became apparent that besides a gain of factual knowledge, the
museum experience had impacts on other levels, too. The GLO framework developed
by Hooper-‐Greenhill (2007) presented previously turned out to be a suitable way of
grouping some of these impacts. The following discussion will follow this framework
to structure the findings.
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Knowledge and understanding A key goal of the Multimedia Magic session is to give the students the opportunity to
experience and engage with the artefacts in the gallery. An important question was
therefore, whether the students remembered any of the objects they had seen in the
museum. Several of the students started talking about the objects right away at the
beginning of the interview when I asked them to tell me about their day at the
British Museum:
Girl 1: I liked the British Museum, when we were looking at […] the five Buddhas. My favourite Buddha was the one from Java. Cause, I liked it ‘cause the thing that it’s sitting on, it looked nice ‘cause it had flames around it. And it looked pretty.
Girl 2: I liked going to the museum and learning new things about the Buddha. I liked looking at all the statues and the Buddha’s heads and I saw a statue of the Buddha that was sitting on a throne and there was fire and there was flames behind him. I liked that one and it was kind of small.
While for most students, the gallery experience was the first thing that came to mind
when I asked them to describe their visit, usually they started talking about the
cameras and the tablet computers first. These two girls went straight to describing
the artefacts that they saw. However, even if it was not the first thing on their mind,
all of the other students also remembered and could describe at least one of the
artefacts. Even one boy who claimed that he did not remember anything about the
visit and who stated that he did not like museums, was able to describe several
objects and even remembered some of their case numbers. Although he did not like
taking pictures or making the recordings because he “didn’t know what to say about
it”, he did enjoy going around and finding the artefacts in the gallery, which is
probably why he recalled the case numbers. This is one example of how the
memorability of the artefacts is closely linked to certain interactions or episodes
that the students connect to it. In this case, the interaction that caused the boy to
remember the objects was searching for them in the gallery. In order to find the
right artefact, he had to examine the picture displayed on the tablet and compare it
to objects in the showcases. Other interactions include taking pictures, making
videos or imitating the statues. When I asked the students if they remembered any
of the objects in the gallery, sometimes they were struggling to give an answer at
first. In these cases, I rephrased the question, asking them if they remembered any of
the objects they took pictures or made videos of. This always prompted the children
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to remember and describe – often several – artefacts they had seen. The following
example illustrates this phenomenon:
SD3: Do you remember any of the objects that you saw in the galleries?
Boy: Mh, no.
SD: When you were recording the favourite, do you know which object was your favourite?
Boy: Um, the one what had, like, fires behind it. And that’s what me and my partner picked ‘cause she says she liked that and I liked it.
SD: Can you describe it a little bit?
Boy: She said, um, she liked it because it had flames around it and I said the same thing, as well.
In this case, it was not only the recording itself that made the boy remember the
object, but also the interaction with his partner when they were trying to pick a
favourite object. The students’ memories are very context-‐bound and little episodes
like this one make the actual learning more memorable.
Many of the students remembered things through episodes that had taken place in
the museum; conversation with others, physical engagement with artefacts or
activities like taking pictures or recording a video. This is evidence for the episodic
memory (Friedenberg & Silverman, 2006) playing a major role for museum visits. The
students are not simply told certain facts, like often the case in a classroom
environment, but they get to be involved in an experience. The learning that takes
place is situated and the new knowledge is tied to the context of acquisition. In their
study about episodic memory, Herbert and Burt (2004) emphasize therefore the
importance of meaningful and memorable experiences in order to support students’
learning.
Several students also mentioned how they were imitating the objects in the gallery
and they recalled specific details about the artefacts, which they had to keep in mind
while copying them.
Boy: There was this statue where you had to […] close your eyes and copy what it was doing without smiling.
SD: Do you remember what they looked like?
3 Susanna Doll
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Boy: There was one what didn’t smile, one what smiled. And had a little hat on it. And you weren’t allowed to open your eyes or you have to do it again.
Trying to close one’s eyes like the Buddha statues or to sit like them creates a
connection between the artefact and one’s own body, which sometimes causes a
different understanding of the object than just looking at it does.
When the students described what they learnt at the museum, a lot of them referred
to information they received in the educator-‐led seminar sessions before and after
the gallery exploration. Most students recalled that the Buddhist statues contained
symbols and many also remembered correctly what those symbols stand for.
Buddhist symbols are, in fact, among the main points on the learning agenda of the
session.
Girl: Third eye meant that, um, that it could see other things that we can’t see. And its long ears represent that he was a prince and he wore heavy earrings that were—they were heavy earrings that pulled his ears so much that, um, they turned really long.
Boy 1: […] it protects itself from, thing, evil. It— his hand is in the front, that’s a, thing, a symbol of the Buddha.
Boy 2: When he was meditating, the fire represented wisdom.
Others recalled that they learnt about Buddhist symbols but they couldn’t remember
their meaning.
The beginning of the afternoon session in the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre is
dedicated to a presentation, where the students get to see the objects from the
gallery again and receive some explanations about them. Widely fascinating seems
to be the revelation that the feet of an Indian Buddha statue actually belonged to a
different artefact and had only been displayed with this statue to demonstrate what
it originally looked like. As can be seen in the following examples, mostly the girls
recall this little narrative (without being prompted), and all of them seem to be
captivated by this fact and the question, to which statue the feet actually belonged.
Girl 1: […] they were feet from a different Buddha. And so that they were taken and…and they put them at the bottom just ‘cause they looked a bit like, um, the feet from the actual, from the Buddha that was standing.
Girl 2: […] and it was so old that the feet—[…] on the poster, it showed the feet but on the statue it had a different—it had different feet.
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Girl 3: […] there’s, um, well first of all when I saw a Buddha, it didn’t have its feet and, um, Shelley told us it’s—it doesn’t belong to the Buddha. It belongs to another. But I’m interested which Buddha.
Finding out a curious fact about a statue that they had seen in the gallery made the
object so intriguing to these students that a week after the visit they were still
pondering about it.
The majority of the students were recalling the objects originating from different
countries as well. Many of them specified the object they were talking about by
mentioning where it was from, without being asked for this information during the
interview:
Girl: […] my favourite Buddha was the one from Java.
Boy: […] and, um, another one that was, from Sri Lanka […] and one was from Thailand.
The information about the artefacts’ countries of origin are available both in the
presentation on the tablet computer, which guides the students in the gallery and
mentioned again in the afternoon seminar session. Judging by the students’
responses and recollections, the information about the countries was both
interesting and relevant for them and they mentally connected their visual memory
of the object with the geographical background facts. In one case, learning about the
country actually raised a boy’s interest in an artefact:
Boy: It was quite hard to choose our favourite statue but when I found out that it was from Thailand, I got interested […] ’cause I knew that my favourite animal was in Thailand and then I started to listen […] how they worship the Buddha.
This example demonstrates how previous interest and knowledge greatly influence
learning processes and in this case, the interaction with an artefact. Providing some
basic information about the objects – like their country of origin – can serve as an
“access point” for the students to engage with them.
Not only did many of the students remember where their favourite objects came
from, but they also recalled the countries they went past as they entered the Ancient
India gallery. This is in fact, the first question the students are supposed to answer
when gathering in the gallery in the morning. Possibly, this entry question has the
effect that the students pay more attention to the geographical locations during the
visit.
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Although the museum educator’s presentations seemed to be the main source of
factual learning, some students mentioned that they read and learnt something from
the provided factsheets, posters or object labels. Like this girl talking about the
Buddha’s third eye:
Girl: I thought that was his hair just curled up. But I didn’t know it was the third eye but when I looked on the posters it said the third eye. I think it represents wisdom.
It turns out that all the different parts of the experience played a role in the students’
learning. The seminar sessions as well as the exploration of the galleries and the
learning material provided all contributed in an increased knowledge or
understanding for at least one of the students.
Attitudes and Values Besides gaining specific knowledge about the artefacts and Buddhism in general, the
experience had an influence on the students’ attitudes and values as well.
The gallery exploration is a source of learning. The contact with the artefacts
provoked little learning of specific facts but it allowed the students to get to know
original Buddhist statues and understand their diversity. Having the opportunity to
browse the galleries and experience a wide range of Buddhist statues gave the
students a sense of how different cultures have different traditions and styles for
depicting their statues. Several students mentioned that realisation:
Boy 1: I was looking for so many Buddhas, different kind of Buddhas.
Boy 2: Buddhas, they meditate whilst they’re walking and they sit down and they meditate, there’s different kind of meditating.
Girl: There’s more than one Buddha. […] In the British Museum. Because I thought there was only Siddhartha but there’s actually loads.
Boy 3: I thought all the Buddhas had the long hair but I found out not all of them did.
The students understood that Buddhist statues varied from country to country and
grasped the idea of cultural diversity.
In some cases, the attitude towards the objects actually changed during the visit as
well. One boy recalled that he failed to sit cross-‐legged like the Buddha statue, and
this fact created a certain admiration for the object. By trying to imitate it, the boy
realised how challenging it was to hold a position like this, which made him
appreciate the object more. This shows how physical and playful interactions, like
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the imitation task, do have an impact on the students’ learning even if it does not
increase their factual knowledge. This kind of engagement creates a personal
emotional connection rather than an intellectual one.
Not only were the attitudes towards the artefacts impacted, but several students
stated a change in their attitude towards the museum as well.
Girl 1: I thought it was more fun than ever because… I mean, like, this place is so cool!
Girl 2: I found everything interesting. It was…it was a nice British Museum. And it—and it’s my favourite now.
Learning experiences can also have an influence on the students on an emotional
level.
SD: Have you thought about the visit after you left? Was there anything that made you think of the day at the British Museum?
Boy: It made me feel happy
If an experience is enjoyable, it has a positive effect on the students’ feelings, as
shown in the previous example. A positive emotional connection with their visit at
the museum is a very valuable outcome for the institution.
Activity, Behaviour and Progression The previously described change in attitude towards the museum also affected the
students’ behaviour and their intended actions. Except for one, all of the students
wanted to go back to the museum in the future and most of them answered the
question with a lot of enthusiasm, like this girl:
SD: Would you like to go back to the museum?
Girl: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna stay there!
Some of the children actually said they wanted to come to the museum again before I
even asked about it, which shows that it was an actual intention and not prompted
by my question. The following, for example, was the end of one of the interviews:
SD: Is there anything else that you would like to add?
Girl: Just one thing. When are we gonna go back?
The gallery experience is restricted by space and time. It takes place in a small
section of the museum and lasts only for about 30 minutes. Upon entering and
exiting the Ancient India gallery, many of the students get a glimpse of the objects in
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other galleries, which seems to raise their curiosity and willingness to explore. When
I asked the students if there was something they wanted to do at the museum but
couldn’t, or what they would like to do in the museum when they go back, many of
them answered that they wanted to explore other areas of the museum. Some
children just wanted to “search around” or see the whole museum, while others had
specific objects or galleries in mind that they would like to see. Several students
mentioned the temporary Hadj exhibition and said that they would like to come back
and visit it.
Many of the students wanted to go back to the museum with their class and do “fun
activities” like the Multimedia Magic session. Others stated that they would like to
bring their families to the museum:
Boy: I wanna show them around—and I hope we don’t get lost.
SD: […] And what would you like to do there?
Boy: I would like to show them how to work the digital cameras and the tablets and to show them how to make a glogster.
Sharing is another important behavioural outcome of learning experiences. The
students had an exciting experience in the museum and they would like to show
what they did and learnt to their friends and families. Almost all the students said
they told their families about their museum visit after they came home.
Girl: And I’m telling my Mum what I did and…
SD: You did tell your Mum?
Girl: Yeah. And she learnt.
SD: What did you tell her?
Girl: I told her about the—the Buddhas’ faces one. It was my favourite.
This girl told her mother about the artefacts she saw and liked at the museums and
she had the feeling that she passed on her newly gained knowledge to her. Most
other children told their parents about the equipment they got to use, the tablet
computers and the digital cameras especially.
SD: Have you thought about the visit after you left?
Girl: Yeah. That it was quite fun and I was boasting about it with my family.
SD: What did you tell them?
Girl: I told them that we had—that we used a tablet computer and that we used digital cameras.
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This statement shows that the girl was excited about having used the tablets and
cameras and proudly told her family about it at home. This “boasting” provoked
some of the parents to consider taking their children to the museum again on the
weekends.
Girl: Yeah, I told my Mum and she said she might take me there again.
Boy: I told them about the tablet computers and the digital cameras and my father said we could go there all together.
These statements provide evidence that the impact of the learning activity can draw
wider circles than just the participating students. The fact that they get excited about
the experience and tell their parents about it can be the reason for the whole family
to visit the museum again in the future. Like this, the students can have a feeling of
familiarity and sense of ownership when they “show them around” in the institution
that they already know.
The willingness to share also became evident when I asked the students about their
multimedia presentations. Only two of the students actually did get to present their
glogs at the museum but the majority would have liked to present theirs if there had
been time.
One girl actually enjoyed creating the presentations so much that she made her own
glog at home:
My favourite part was the glogster part, where you make your own glogster and I went on it at home and I actually made my own one. […] But when I went home, it was hard to put the website on, so I tried to make my own account and then I got to make a poster on my holiday.
After learning how to create a glog in the Discovery Centre, this girl felt confident
enough to make her own at home. Another boy actually suggested incorporating
glogster into the school curriculum. He clearly liked the learning experience at the
museum and thought that glogster could also be a suitable and enjoyable tool for
creating presentations at school:
Boy: Maybe we can do our own glog, then show it to the class every week.
These examples show how the museum experience influenced the students’
behaviour and their intentions. It encouraged them to visit the museum again, to
share their experiences with friends and family and to become active and use the
tools that were introduced to them in their own time.
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Enjoyment, Inspiration and Creativity The fact that the students enjoyed the museum visit became very apparent during
the interviews. Except one student, all of them mentioned that they had fun and
enjoyed the activities. Although I am referring to it as one of Hooper-‐Greenhill’s
(2007) learning outcomes, I see enjoyment more as a driver for learning and action
rather than an outcome itself. It was certainly enjoyment that caused the students to
tell their parents about their visit in the way they did and their willingness to come
back to the museum surely highly depends on the amount of fun they had there.
Enjoyment is also a motivational factor and therefore drives the way that students
approach tasks during the session, which again affects the learning process.
The contact with the objects was also inspirational for the students. Seeing original
artefacts creates a certain sensation and several students stated that they had never
seen the Buddha statues before and therefore, enjoyed having the opportunity to
explore the galleries. Some of the students revealed that their contact with the
objects provoked certain thoughts and ideas.
Boy: My favourite object was the one from Sri Lanka and I really liked it because it would be very cool if you had a third eye.
This boy learnt about the symbolic third eye of the Buddha statue, which prompted
him to imagine how it would be to have one himself. Another girl said that she
thought about the statues a lot after the visit:
Girl: Yeah, I couldn’t get the Buddhas out of my mind.
SD: What were you thinking about?
Girl: I was think—I was keeping on thinking about the flames and the throne and the closed eye in the Buddha’s heads. And the one that was serious and saying stop. The heads just, like, they were, like, smiling a tiny bit but not quite and their eyes were closed and then…they looked kind of happy. And I couldn’t get the third eye out of my mind, too.
According to Hooper-‐Greenhill (2007), inspiration occurs when learners get an
opportunity for explorative behaviour. This seems to be the case here, because the
girl claimed that she could not stop thinking about the different objects she had seen
when browsing the gallery. However, the artefacts were not the only source of
inspiration – most students were also captivated by the technology:
Girl: Yeah. The big screen is magic. You can…’cause our screen is like that but you can’t use your finger.
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Apart from inspiration, new thoughts and ideas, the experience also generated
curiosity. In the course of the interview, several students raised questions about the
museum, the artefacts or the technologies that they had been pondering about.
Girl 1: What else is in the museum? Instead of Buddhism?
Girl 2: What was on the other side of the—circle? Uh, what—what was that big circle in the middle of the floor?
Boy: How did you get the big statue into the museum?
The two girls were wondering about what else there was to see at the museum apart
from the gallery they had visited. In addition, the boy remembered the size of some
of the objects and became curious about the practical issues behind the installation
of the exhibits.
Another girl recalled that there were several objects with broken or missing parts,
and she was trying to understand the reasoning behind the restorers’ practices.
Girl: You know, first of all when we sat on the floor, when we came and the Buddha’s hand wasn’t there, why didn’t you—why didn’t they do it again? The Buddha’s hand? Again? Because…
SD: What do you mean?
Girl: You know, first of all we—we went down, we sat on the floor and we looked at the Buddha and […] And then one of the hands came off and we couldn’t see the hand how was it. But I am sure that—I’m sure they will, they will do it again. I am sure. I can’t—I am sure they are going to do that hand again.
SD: You mean they are going to fix it?
Girl: Yeah. And why did… why did they, um, got the different Buddha’s feet when it was standing and the feet didn’t belong to that Buddha?
Curiosity, like enjoyment, is a motivator for learning. If the students are curious
about something they are determined to find an answer, which results in learning.
Curiosity also influenced their intended behaviour, since they were willing to find
out more about the museum’s contents, they said they were planning on coming
back to the museum to explore beyond the Ancient India gallery.
Skills Multimedia Magic is designed to teach ICT skills by allowing the students to handle
the equipment independently. Many students said that they had never used some of
the technologies before and even the ones who did had the feeling that they acquired
new skills for more complex functionalities, like voice recordings.
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Girl: I learnt loads of stuff how…how to use a digital camera and how to use a glog. And putting pictures on the posters and putting videos and sound effects on it.
None of the students was familiar with the presentation tool, glogster, prior to the
session, but they were all able to describe in detail how they created their
presentations using the media they had produced in the galleries. Aside from
learning how to record videos and audio on the digital cameras, the students also
gained some basic photography skills. Since they had to take pictures in the gallery,
where a lot of the objects are in glass showcases, they were prompted to turn off the
flash.
Girl: And then Simeon took a picture but we had to take off our flash or else, if it goes on flash you take a picture, it will bounce back and you won’t see anything.
While the teacher had the impression that the children were able to use all the
equipment without major problems, most of the students said during the interviews
that they had technical difficulties and had to look for help from the teacher or the
museum staff. Although every group is handed a simple instruction manual on how
to switch on the video or voice recording mode, most groups were struggling with
this task.
Boy: And, the problem was that I, even though the instructions were there, I couldn’t put on video. Our helper Lucy put it on for me.
Despite the struggle with the equipment, the students felt like they improved their
ICT skills during the museum visit. Especially for younger students, it is probably
inevitable to have teachers and museum staff or volunteers present in the gallery
who help with the technical issues and facilitate the acquisition of new skills.
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4.4 Conclusions: Connecting process and outcome The engagements observed during the Multimedia Magic sessions are categorized
following Perry’s (2012) framework in Figure 13. It is likely that the students engage
in more ways than the ones listed here, but these are the interactions derived from
the available data.
Figure 13 -‐ Engagement in the gallery
For a well-‐balanced museum experience, it is important that the students have the
possibility to engage in diverse ways. The different categories of engagement
complement each other and allow for students with diverse learning profiles to be
involved in the experience. Not every student engages in all four ways equally, there
are some who are more physically than intellectually engaged, and some are more
emotionally than physically engaged, but overall, all ways of engaging can and will
occur during this session.
Figure 14 summarizes the learning outcomes according to the GLO framework
identified during the research. The interviews with the students revealed a variety
of impacts that the Multimedia Magic session has not only on the students’
enjoyment but also on the students’ knowledge, their skills, attitudes and their
behaviour.
Physical
• Exploration • Observation • Handling technologies
Emotional
• Curiosity • Inspiration • Amusement • Excitement
Intellectual
• Description • Interpretation • Comparison • Imagination
Social
• Interviewing • Peer-‐learning • Discussion • Collaboration • Teacher mediation
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Figure 14 -‐ GLOs of Multimedia Magic
Having described the process and the outcome of the Multimedia Magic experience,
Figure 15 now illustrates how the two are connected. Clearly, the way that students
engage during an educational activity determines the learning outcomes. Of course,
it is not possible to match each engagement with a specific learning outcome,
especially because the experience as a whole is too complex to isolate the different
engagements that way. However, the arrows in the graphic show the connections
that could be identified in this study. The list is not exhaustive and other connections
are very likely to exist, but they were not revealed during the course of this research.
It is fairly obvious that intellectual engagement is required for the acquisition of
knowledge. Several students talked about the seminar sessions and the things they
learnt there, which is one example of gaining knowledge through intellectual
engagement. Also, for the development of skills, intellectual engagement is
necessary, although for the gaining of ICT skills during this session, physical
engagement also plays a role. By handling the technology and trying out their
functionalities the students probably gain more skills than by simply listening to
Knowlegde and Understanding Knowing artefacts
and their countries of origin
Buddhist symbols Story of Buddha
Skills ICT Skills
Photography techniques
Attitudes and Values
Cultural diversity Positive attitude
towards the museum Sense of ownership
Enjoyment, Inspiration and Creativity
Fun and excitement Curiosity Emotional connection
Activity, Behaviour and Progression
Using tools at home/at school
Willingness to visit again Sharing
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explanations.
Figure 15 -‐ Impact of engagements on learning outcomes
Physical engagement also produced knowledge and understanding: By moving
around the gallery and exploring the different artefacts, several students developed
a sense for the diversity of Buddhist culture. In many cases, the emotional side of the
students’ experience was dominated by excitement over the technologies. This
excitement obviously led them to enjoy the activities, to share their experience with
their families at home and to develop a positive attitude towards the museum that
made them want to repeat their visit. Some students were even motivated enough to
use their newly acquired technical skills at home to create their own multimedia
poster. The students’ social engagement led to the acquisition of knowledge and
skills in those cases where peer teaching took place. Aside from that, the social
interactions with their friends contributed to the students’ enjoyment of the
experience and in some cases to creative approaches for solving the tasks.
A remaining question is, what role do the technologies play in this engagement-‐
outcome-‐relation. Especially the integration of cameras in the gallery experience,
influences the students’ behaviour and engagement, although interactions like
imitation, interviewing, role-‐playing and interpretive behaviour etc. would be
possible without the camera, too. However, I am convinced that the fact that these
Knowledge and Understanding
Skills
Attitudes and Values
Enjoyment, Inspiration and Creativity
Activity, Behaviour and Progression
Intellectual Engagement
Physical Engagement
Emotional Engagement
Social Engagement
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interactions were recorded has a major influence on the students’ intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation to complete the tasks. The same logic applies to the more
traditional approach of distributing worksheets for the students to complete: The
students could also complete tasks and answer questions without writing down
anything, but if there is no way to prove that and how they did their work, it is very
questionable if they would. The fact of having a physical outcome of their efforts (in
this case in form of photographs, videos, etc.) is both rewarding to the students and
even if the teachers does not “control” the work, the fact that they could, pushes the
students to produce something. Consequently, the camera itself does not enable the
interactions with the artefacts themselves, but it allows for turning them into a
structured educational activity by recording them and producing visual and audio
material that can be used for sharing and for meaningful activities later on.
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5 Conclusions 5.1 Objectives: Summary of findings
Engagement with the artefacts The engagement with the artefacts occurs on an intellectual, physical and emotional
level. The intellectual engagement of the students can be derived from the way the
students talk about the artefacts: Aside from describing them as instructed by the
tasks, the students also demonstrate typical interpretive approaches of beginner art
viewers (compare Housen’s (2002) stages of aesthetic development). The students
do not possess expert knowledge or scientific jargon, but they still manage to talk
about the artefacts, by comparing the features of different objects, by employing
their imagination, describing the effect that an artefact has on them or by stating an
opinion about the artefact’s appearance or quality and value.
By describing how an artefact affects them, the students sometimes reveal their
emotional engagement as well. They get inspired, amused or they are scared of
certain aspects of the objects or they discover personal connections to their own
body, their interests or experience.
The possibilities for physical engagement with the artefacts are fairly limited. In
contrast to displays in science museums, where visitors can push buttons or engage
in other hands-‐on activities, the objects in the British Museum are not to be touched.
Accordingly, most of the students’ physical interactions are limited to walking
around the objects or getting close to them for examination or for pointing out
details. The physical engagement that proved to be supportive for the students’
learning process is the imitation of the artefacts. Re-‐enacting the posture of statues
with their own bodies can lead to a deeper understanding and personal appreciation
of the objects.
The fact that this variety of interactions is taking place during the gallery experience
suggests that the technologies used during the session are not distracting from the
artefacts, but rather, they are encouraging an active engagement.
Behaviour in the gallery The students’ behaviour in the gallery is marked by their social interactions with
their peers. Complex fruitful social interactions, i.e. conversations among the
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students that involve an exchange of ideas concerning the learning topics are
relatively rare. Peer teaching, however does occur, even though on a simpler level,
for example by students showing their peers how to use the camera or pointing out
certain features of artefacts to their classmates. Modelling of behaviours is also a
very common phenomenon, both within the group and across different groups.
Conflicts usually occur when the groups are unbalanced, i.e. when one student is
trying to take over control or if one student does not participate or contribute
anything. In general, the students solve their tasks collaboratively, they tend to share
the equipment and they usually enjoy the fact that they can work with their friends.
Other notable behaviours are the approaches of the students to solve tasks and how
they make use of the technologies in order to do so. Especially the digital camera
provokes certain behaviours, like role-‐play, pretending to be a TV or radio reporter,
interviewing classmates, etc. Especially when students are engaging in behaviour
that is not asked for in the instructions, their natural conduct and intuitions become
apparent. They tend to explore the galleries while spending little time with each
individual artefact but getting a sense of the diversity of the objects on display.
Often, the students get hooked by one of the displays, which causes them to read the
label and spend more time looking at it.
Learning outcomes The learning outcomes of the Multimedia Magic session cover all five categories of
Hooper-‐Greenhill’s (2007) framework. Factual knowledge about the artefacts and the
meaning of Buddhist symbols was mainly acquired during the afternoon seminar
session. The gallery exploration, however, gave the students an understanding of the
diversity of Buddhist culture and its artefacts. The students did gain technical skills
as well: For many of them, it was the first time using a tablet computer or digital
camera for recordings, and although most groups required help with the equipment,
they felt confident that they learnt how to use it. None of them had ever used the
glogster tool for multimedia presentations before, and after the session they could
all describe how it worked, and some of them were even able to use it on their own
at home. The emotional outcomes of the experience are generally very positive, with
all of the students being very excited about the technologies. This also created
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favourable opinions of the British Museum and a willingness to share the
experiences with friends and family and to go back for another visit in the future.
The role of the technologies Aside from the fact that the students gained ICT skills by handling the equipment
during the session, the digital technologies also contributed to other aspects of the
students’ learning process. They played a role both in the way the students engaged
during the session and they contributed to the impact of the educational experience.
While the tablet computer contributed relatively little to the students’ engagement
with the artefacts, the camera allowed for numerous interactions and creative
approaches to solving the tasks.
Concerning the learning outcomes, the main contribution of the technologies was
not the acquisition of factual knowledge, which was mostly gained during the
educator-‐led seminar sessions. However, the digital devices contributed greatly to
the students’ enjoyment of the activities and also raised the memorability of the
experience. Being active in the gallery taking pictures and making videos of objects
certainly influenced the way the students remembered certain artefacts.
The presence of the digital technologies did not inhibit authentic experiences with
the artefacts but they augmented them by suggesting various ways of interaction.
The strength of the digital camera as a learning tool is the fact that it is not used for
content delivery but for content creation, which puts the students in an active rather
than a passive, receiving role. The produced content can then be used for an
extended experience and further educational activities and they both serve the
students as a souvenir and enable them to share their experience.
5.2 Insights and recommendations
Complementing digital with analogue and excitement with quiet Even though the technologies used in the museum session are not the “latest
gadgets”, they bring a huge appeal to the experience. The exploration of the gallery is
crucial in order to give the students the opportunity to experience a variety of
artefacts. This part of the educational session, however, is not a suitable moment for
imparting factual knowledge. The students are excited about moving in the gallery,
finding the objects – being active – and they are not very perceptive for any
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information. During the Multimedia Magic session, the students barely read the
instructions on the tablet computer properly, much less would they be willing to
read longer texts about Buddhism. Most students remembered more of the things
that educator told them in the afternoon session than what they read on the tablets
or the object labels. This suggests that using digital technologies for content
delivery, as described by Frohberg et al. (2009) is not very effective, at least not for
this age group.
In order to transmit knowledge with the students being focused and attentive, it is
advisable to include quieter parts in the session in a place with fewer distractions
where the students can sit down, relax and listen. These seminar sessions, however,
are not only important to increase the students’ factual knowledge. They also have
an influence on the students’ engagement with the artefacts. Learning intriguing
facts about an object increases the children’s interest and curiosity noticeably, which
makes them more memorable.
The two parts of the experience seem to complement each other well: The gallery
trail causes excitement, fun, inspiration and playful engagement with objects. It
allows the students to be active, to be independent and to experience the objects
more than learning about them. The seminar sessions affirm the things that the
students saw in the gallery and back the gained impressions with relevant
information and factual knowledge to make them meaningful and memorable.
Accounting for exploration time Giving the students enough time for the tasks in the gallery allows them to have a
look around and discover things they like. Several of the students mentioned that
they would have liked to see or do something more, but they didn’t have the time.
Running around exploring the gallery and getting acquainted with the environment
is a very commonly observed behaviour among the students and in order for them
to be able to complete all of the tasks it is advisable to account for some extra time.
As can be seen in the students’ videos, the free exploration also resulted in object
engagement, and during the interviews several students mentioned that they liked
artefacts that were not included in the gallery trail. Even though free exploration is
desired by the students and does evoke engagement with the exhibits, a time
constraint is still advisable. Kisiel (2006) found that
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Short explorations found most kids engaged most of the time. However, as the engagement continued, student exploration behavior sometimes decayed into less productive behaviors. (p. 443)
Balancing guidance and free-‐choice The quality of experiences in museums is certainly dependent on the design of the
educational activities. The use of technologies alone is not the reason for a more
successful learning experience. However, the technologies allow for new ways of
interacting with artefacts, creating content and sharing the experience. These
potentials have to be embraced by museum educators in order to make digital
activities meaningful.
In the instructional design, it is important to think about the amount of free choice
that the students are supposed to have. Especially for younger students, clear
instructions and guidance is indispensable for keeping them focused and for
encouraging them to engage with the artefacts and the subject matter. On the flip
side, it is also important not to restrict them too much or to suggest that there is only
one way of solving a task correctly. A museum is a more open and unstructured
learning environment than a school and the activities can reflect this without having
to give total control to the students. When the students are supposed to engage
cognitively with an artefact to train their interpretive behaviour and critical
thinking, questions asked should not suggest that there is one right (one-‐word)
answer.
Keeping it simple One strength of the Multimedia Magic experience is the simplicity of the tasks in the
gallery. Completing the trail does not require complex interactions with the digital
tools, which prevents the students from getting distracted and focusing all of their
attention on the devices. As Patten et al. (2006) already stated in their review of
educational handheld applications,
there is no correlation between a complex solution and an appropriate educational solution; the most interesting applications to date facilitate learners to look away from their screen in order to engage with their surroundings and peers; these applications are particularly suited for learning. (p. 299)
Even though technology becomes increasingly more powerful and multifunctional,
this rule still holds true. It is not about the complexity of the functionalities of the
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device, but about whether it allows for meaningful interactions with the context. The
case of Multimedia Magic shows that activities like taking pictures and recording
videos with simple digital cameras can successfully drive learning and create an
exciting and enjoyable experience.
Evaluating process and outcomes Emphasising both the process of the activities and their outcomes is a valuable
approach to gain a full understanding of an educational program. It allows for the
identification of the drivers of certain learning outcomes and does not only indicate
the success or failure of a program, but can also give insight into the reasons of said
failure or success. For a deeper understanding, this evaluation should be carried on
over a longer period of time, actually matching the process and outcomes of several
sessions in order to conduct a comparative study.
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5.3 Further research As it is usually the case in research, this study opened up many directions for further
investigations.
The question of the level of choice could be further investigated. Experimenting with
the question design could give interesting insights as to whether more open tasks
evoke more creative solutions or rather create perplexity among the students.
Especially comparative studies that highlight the appropriate level of choice for
different age groups could be a worthwhile approach to deepen this topic of
research.
Since the interviews in this study were only conducted with one school group, more
extensive research could be conducted on the fascination of the technology. Students
from different social backgrounds and different age groups might react more or less
enthusiastic about using the technology at the museum and it would be interesting
to find out how much this factor influences the learning experiences.
Another issue to investigate is the pre-‐visit preparation and the post-‐visit activities
that participating teachers organize for their class and how these activities affect the
learning of the students. Since Multimedia Magic accounts for the physical outcome
(glogster), which can be used for sharing and presenting results during a recap
session after the visit, it would be interesting to find out how this potential is
actually used by the teachers.
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7 Appendix A: Info document sent to school BACKGROUND As part of my final dissertation to obtain a Master’s degree in Communication for Cultural Heritage at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, I am conducting research on digital technologies in museum learning contexts. In collaboration with the Samsung Digital Learning Centre at the British Museum I hope to collect data that will allow a better understanding of the benefits and challenges of using digital technologies for educational purposes. My research focuses on the ‘Multimedia Magic’ learning sessions for school groups, which are carried out by the Samsung Digital Learning Centre.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. How does the use of digital technologies support successful learning experiences?
ü Does it encourage meaningful interaction with the museum objects? ü Does it foster fruitful social interaction? ü Does it create an attitude of motivation and enjoyment? ü Does it encourage a creative approach towards educational tasks?
2. What are the learning outcomes* of the educational experience using digital technologies?
ü Does the learning experience generate new knowledge or understanding? ü Do participants acquire new skills (i.e. IT skills)? ü Does the learning experience create a certain attitude towards the museum? ü Do technologies encourage the sharing of the experience?
METHODOLOGY For this research I will be collecting data during several stages of the students’ educational experience.
1. OBSERVATION in the Ancient India Gallery
While the students are completing the activity trail in the gallery, I will be observing the
ü general attitude towards the activities and the learning environment
ü social interaction while completing the tasks
ü role allocation within the teams
ü interaction with the objects in the gallery
ü way the students handle and make use of the technology
During this part of the session I will be taking photographs to support and facilitate the analysis of my observations.
*The analysis of the generic learning outcomes (GLOs) will partly be based on a learning framework that was developed by the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council to improve the evaluation methods and performance of educational institutions. For more info: http://www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk/
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2. INTERVIEWS on site
While the students are preparing their multimedia presentations, I will be conducting short (approximately 5 minutes) semi-‐structured interviews with 10 selected students. I will aim to interview an equal number of girls and boys; besides that the students will be selected randomly. The interviews will be voice recorded and transcribed for my research purposes.
Interview Questions 1. Is this your first time at the British Museum?
2. What did you expect from your visit? Were you looking forward to it?
3. Did your teacher prepare you for this visit? How?
4. Did you enjoy your visit? What was your favourite part of the day?
5. Was it different from other museum visits? How?
6. What was the topic that you learnt about today? What do you think of it? Did you
find it interesting? Would you like to learn more about it?
7. Have you ever heard about it before? Where?
8. Do you have the feeling that you learnt anything new? What?
9. Was there anything you didn’t like?
3. INTERVIEWS 7-‐10 days after the museum visit
One week after the museum visit I will be conducting semi-‐structured interviews (about 15 minutes) with the same students back at school. Again, these interviews will be voice recorded and transcribed.
Interview Questions 1. Tell me about your day at the British Museum. What did you do?
2. Did you enjoy your visit? What was your favourite part of the day?
3. Was there anything you didn’t like?
4. Describe your experience in the galleries. Do you remember any of the objects?
Could you describe them? Which object was your favourite?
5. What was the topic that you learnt about on your visit? What did you think of it? Did
you find it interesting? Would you like to learn more about it? Did you learn anything
more about it since then?
6. Do you have the feeling that you learnt anything new? What?
7. Did you enjoy working with your team? Did you have any trouble agreeing on
something? Did you take turns in handling the camera, tablet and the PC?
8. How was working with the tablets, the cameras and the PCs? Did you enjoy it? Did
you have any trouble using them? Did you know how to use them before?
9. Describe how you created your presentation. Are you happy with the result?
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10. Have you thought about the visit after you left? If yes, what made you think of it?
11. Did you tell anyone about your visit? What did you tell them?
12. Did you get to present your results at the museum? (Would you have liked to
present them?) Did you show your presentation to anyone after the visit?
13. Is there anything you would have liked to do or see at the museum but couldn’t?
14. Would you like to go back to the museum? With your school or with someone else?
What would you like to do there?
15. Is there anything else you would like to add?
DECLARATION All data collected during my research will be treated confidentially and names will not be used in any of my reports. Pictures and recordings of participants will not be published.
Contact details I am happy to answer any questions or report the results of my research. Susanna Doll Via Fola 1 CH-‐6963 Pregassona
[email protected] +41 78 848 99 78
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8 Appendix B: Buddhas at the British Museum Buddhas from around the world Millions of people around the world follow Buddhism, the religion founded by the Buddha. Buddhism began around 490-‐410 BC. Even though different countries have different traditions, all of them honour the Buddha and make statues of him.
Ä Press the forward arrow and find the five Buddhas shown in the pictures. Take a photo of each one.
Ä Your favourite Buddha Which Buddha was your favourite? Find him again and make a voice recording on your camera. Your recording should include:
• What does your favourite Buddha looks like. Is he standing or sitting down? What colour is he? Is he happy or sad?
• Why did you choose him as your favourite? Give at least two reasons.
Buddhas life & your life Buddha had an interesting life. His father was a rich king in India, but Buddha did not want to become a king. Instead, he left his home searching for happiness that would last forever. After a long time, he found his happiness. He called it Enlightenment.
Can you find this picture in case 13?
It shows a scene from Buddha’s life. He is offering some dust with his hands to show that even someone without any money can be generous. What matters is that you give freely from your heart.
Ä Being generous Think of a time when you were generous to someone else. Make a video interview with your partner about what kind of gift you gave, or wish you could give to someone.
The Buddha’s gaze In statues of Buddha, the face is very important. Artists try to make his face show peace and calm. When we feel peaceful, it is easier to get along well with others – even people we don’t like.
Ä Find the three large heads of Buddha in case 49. What feelings do their faces show? Stand in front of the heads and take pictures of each other trying to smile like the Buddha.
Symbolic Stupas Stupas are Buddhist monuments. Their shape is like the Buddha’s body when he sits cross-‐legged in meditation. The different parts of a Stupa are symbols. Tiny Stupas are put on Buddhist shrines.
Can you find the Stupa near case 28?
Ä Buddhists always go around the Stupa in a clockwise direction – the same way as the hands of your watch go. Make a video of the Stupa as you walk in a circle around it. Zoom in to show more detail.
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9 Appendix C: Gallery observation sheet [Part 1] Observer Initials:
Observed group Number of group members
# girls
# boys
Students’ first names:
General comments/notes/overheard conversations:
[Part 2] Observed activity
5 Buddha pictures Favourite Buddha Stupa Sit like Buddha Buddha’s gaze Being generous none
Approximate time spent on the activity less than 2 minutes 2-‐5 minutes more than 5 minutes
Did the students pay attention to the object(s)? yes no
Did they… look at it closely read the label comment on the object
take pictures make a video discuss the object with other students
other:
Did the conversations involve… descriptions of the objects’ appearance judgement about the objects interpretations/explanations of the objects links to the students’ personal life
other:
How was the students’ attitude? positive negative neutral bored
other:
Did the students have any technical problems? yes (Specify:
) no