Studying Artifacts of Visitor Learning

Evaluation of instructional materials, environments, and programs is an undertaking that is difficult to design and initiate due to its complexities. This paper seeks to offer guidance by presenting techniques that are gaining recognition within qualitative research. This is an area of study that characterizes learning by examining the products that learners create in response to instruction. These products are often referred to as “student work.” By using protocols that facilitate a study of student work, museums can learn much about their own attempts to meet their educational missions, in addition to getting to know their audiences better. This paper offers a brief overview of published resources for examining student work along with ideas for implementing them in museum settings, and outlines the procedures for using two specific protocols.     

Learning from Ruins: A Visitor Study at Uxmal

Few evaluations have been conducted at archeological parks. This study was undertaken to (1) test knowledge gain in visitors, (2) test epistemic curiosity arousal in visitors, (3) record general visitor information, and (4) assess visitor satisfaction. Comparisons between males, females, Spanish speakers, and English speakers were made. Results showed a significant increase in visitor knowledge (p<.05) and a significant difference between epistemic curiosity arousal in Spanish- and English-speaking visitors (p<.05). Latin-American Spanish speakers evidenced the greatest interest in learning more about the subject. This project also demonstrated the feasibility of conducting evaluations at archeological sites.     

Designing With Multiple Interactives: Five Common Pitfalls

Abstract Interactive museum exhibits are ubiquitous in science centers, and are becoming increasingly popular in art, history and cultural museums. At an interactive exhibit, visitors can act on the exhibit and the exhibit reacts. While there is much theoretical and empirical support for the idea that interactive features promote science learning, we believe that serious design problems can arise if an uncritical “more is better” approach is taken to interactivity. This article describes five common pitfalls of designing exhibits with high levels of interactivity or multiple interactive features: 1) multiple options with equal salience, 2) features allowing multiple users to interfere with one another, 3) options that encourage users to disrupt the phenomenon being displayed, 4) features that make the critical phenomenon difficult to find, and 5) secondary features that obscure the primary feature. Examples of each of the five problems are presented, and possible design solutions are offered.     

Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance

There are an estimated 17,500 museums in the United States. If people think these institutions are pretty much the same once you get inside or that the differences between them are unimportant, it might be hard to persuade them that all 17,500 are needed. Exhibitions can have great transformational power; why don’t they exercise that power more often? Have museums not fully understood exhibitions as a medium? Have we not devoted enough attention to the full repertoire of visitor feelings? Have visitors been telling us this and we have failed to listen? For many people, museums play many roles in their lives; for most others few or none. How can this be? “Museum‐adept” visitors seem to prize museums as theaters in which their own emotional and spiritual journeys can be staged, but what about the non‐museum‐adept? Can the museum‐adept teach us how to realize our medium’s full potential?     

Visitor Comments as Dialogue

Museum use is a process of ideological negotiation, and thus museum users are active agents, not empty vessels waiting to be filled with curatorial narrative. Ensuing dialogues argue over trivia as well as important ethical issues. Discussants take up topics that range over specific public programs, the object maker's motivations and intentions, the choice of a subject, the phrasing of a caption, or the selection of objects on display. These discussions are held in hushed conversations in crowded galleries, in casual conversations within museum hallways, or with animated gestures on the front steps. In the course of this dialogic social practice, each participant's cultural repertoire is enhanced and grows. Every dialogic event is part of a socio‐cultural continuum that will engender other events, with other participants. The comments made by visitors in a visitor comment book are therefore instances of the specificities and the universality of that discussion.     

基于观众对话的博物馆学习研究新视角——来自苏·艾伦研究成果的启发

观众在博物馆中如何学习、学习效果如何评量等问题长期受到研究者的关注。观众对话作为参观学习的体现,是探究博物馆学习过程的重要材料。基于此,苏·艾伦采用社会文化视角,透过参观过程中的观众对话寻找学习的证据。本文主要目的是介绍该研究的研究问题、研究发现、方法论框架、数据收集与分析等方面的内容,以期为国内博物馆观众研究领域提供一种新的视角。     

Hall of Mirrors: The Dilemmas of Presenting Information Technology Culture Through Information Technology Interactives and Artifacts

This paper examines how the problem of exhibiting computing artifacts was confronted by the development team of the Powerhouse Museum's new computing exhibition: Universal Machine. Universal Machine uses a mix of objects, activity trails and computer-based audiovisual and interactive technologies to take visitors on a journey through the origins, meaning and impact of contemporary information technology. It explores the interpretive partnerships developed between objects, new and traditional media, as well as the ways in which experience-based and multiple intelligence education theory informed design and content development.     

Visitor Meaning-Making in Museums for a New Age

The concept of meaning-making is generating excitement within the museum community, with good reason. Providing an approach to understanding visitor experiences, the paradigm illuminates the visitor's active role in creating meaning of a museum experience through the context he/she brings, influenced by the factors of self-identity, companions, and leisure motivations. As a result, visitors find personal significance within museums in a range of patterned ways that reflect basic human needs, such as the need for individualism and the need for community. The dynamics of visitor meaning-making indicate the importance of fashioning a better “fit” between people and museums in two critical areas: (1) between human meaning-making and museum methods and (2) between human needs and the purpose of museums in society. Each of these areas illuminates a promising direction for a new age of museums in which we actively support, facilitate, and enhance the many kinds of meaning possible in museums and explicitly incorporate human needs into exhibit goals and institutional missions. Examples of successful strategies are discussed.     

Comparing the Visitor Experience at Immersive and Tabletop Exhibits

Many museum professionals believe that immersive exhibits—those that surround visitors—provide more attractive, engaging and effective learning experiences than tabletop exhibits. We investigated this claim by comparing visitors’ experiences of the two exhibit types, using pairs of exhibits that differed in scale (immersive vs. tabletop), but shared the same content and similar visitor activity. We randomly selected, videotaped, interviewed, and sent follow‐up surveys to sixty families who experienced immersive exhibits and sixty families who experienced tabletop exhibits. We found that each design type had strengths. Learners at immersive exhibits more often returned to the exhibits mentioned the exhibits’ positive aspects, and saw themselves as part of the exhibits. Conversely, learners spent longer periods of time at tabletop exhibits, and engaged in more content‐related reasoning. Study results partially support the view that immersive exhibits may be more fun and engaging than tabletops. However, results also counter the expectations that being immersed in exhibit experiences will lead to greater physical and intellectual engagement.