A model for museum outreach based on shared interactive spaces
Carol Strohecker1995, Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in …
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
Just as museum professionals and visitors are becoming more accustomed to preparing, seeing, and using computers in exhibits, the possibilities for interactivity are mushrooming with the expansion of computer networks. Researchers are beginning to develop environments in which many people can be "present" simultaneously. The current contexts typically include meeting places and some type of game-playing, but the milieus present possibilities for serious learning as well. In this paper I describe some of the history of networked multiuser spaces, sketch aspects of a learning environment and online community, and explain how this example suggests a model for museum outreach.
Related papers
Crowdsourcing and Pedagogy Some Reflections on the Museum as Collaborative Learning Space
Book of abstracts of the 5th international conference on qualitative and quantitative methods in libraries, QQML2013, 2013
Recent years have seen the relatively staid and conservative environment of the museum access the potential that is the new wave of new technologies incorporating Web 2.0, the Social Web, Netknowing and Net Collaborative Practices for collaboration and ubiquitous learning. Some – only a few, as of yet - have embraced the use of 3D game technologies for the purpose of developing affordable, easy-to-use and more pleasing virtual environments, a process some have termed “edutainment” and which incorporates great potential for both formal i.e. mediated learning and informal and group/peer-based learning outcomes. Virtual reality technologies contain enormous potential for the provision of more vivid or enhanced aesthetic experiences on the part of new museum visitors, whether these visitors are physically-present or engaging with the exhibits within the virtual world. On the face of it the task of creating and replicating museum exhibits and spaces within the virtual environment sometimes appears complex or costly in terms of time, effort and resources expended. In this paper we propose a more collaborative approach to the design of the virtual museum space, one which can provide a solution to the need for affordable and engaging amalgam of exhibits and information and one which can overcome many of the traditional limits which museums have traditionally faced. In this paper we propose an outline model for engaging an online community in the continuous development and improvement of a museum space with the potential for collaborative and net-based learning. The model proposed in this paper is based on observations within communities and museum spaces in the 3D online world Second Life and on our own experiences with a community students collaborating on the development of a shared 3D virtual space.
Virtual spaces and museums
Journal of Museum Education, 1999
Communication technologies are changing the ways we use actual spaces -including museums. In this article, I look at some of the most common aspects of adding "virtual" components to traditional museum activities. Through some examples and observations, I conclude that while virtual resources do not necessarily undermine the social experience of the museum, at the same time, that they should be used with care.
Interaction and interactives: collaboration and participation with computer-based exhibits
Public Understanding of Science, 2005
It is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration are critical to our experience of museums and galleries. Curators, museum managers and designers are exploring ways of enhancing interaction and in particular using tools and technologies to create new forms of participation, with and around, exhibits. It is found, however, that these new tools and technologies, whilst enhancing "interactivity," can do so at the cost of social interaction and collaboration, inadvertently impoverishing co-participation, and cooperation. In this paper we address some of the issues and difficulties that arise in designing for "interactivity" and in particular point to the complex and highly contingent forms of social interaction which arise with, and around, exhibits. The paper is based on a series of video-based field studies of conduct and interaction in various museums and galleries in London and elsewhere including the Science Museum and Explore@ Bristol. SAGE PUBLICATIONS (www.sagepublications.com)
Joint spaces between schools and museums via virtual worlds: A case study
2012
In this work, we describe the results in the study of the user experience of three groups of children within a flexible virtual space that connects school and museum. This integrated educational space includes not only the exploration of exhibition areas but also includes telepresence talks on the part of museum personnel, simulations, educational work in the form of virtual quests, all within a multi-user virtual environment based on OpenSim and simultaneously accessible from the different institutions involved in the experiment. The results obtained could serve as a starting point for a future implementation of this platform for connecting educational institutions and museums across the entire city.
Web Communities as instruments to improve museum services and communication activities
In recent years social networks have undergone a significant process of expansion. The purpose of this article is to approach this issue, by considering the web community as an instrument of promoting and improving museum services and relations with the visitors. More deeply this paper focuses on identifying the potential of web communities and of the related tools in order to improve the quality of the services offered by museums and cultural institutions: the use of web 2.0 applications not only contributes to support and to encourage more active participation on behalf of the citizens, but it also represent a marketing and communication channel to the society through which various experiences linked to the museum can be revealed, communicated and shared. By applying the case study method we will analyse the case of the web community created for Palazzo Madama, one of the most important museums in Turin. Our aim is to demonstrate that a web community represents an excellent way to improve the visitor experiences and to promote the museum activities through the word of mouth, since it offers an easily accessible way to interact with the museum staff and with the other visitors.
Beyond Museum Walls"--A Critical Analysis of Emerging Approaches to Museum Web-Based Education
2000
The most ubiquitous of contemporary interactive multimedia (IMM), the Internet, is making steady progress as an interpretive tool within museums.However, its major impact is being felt beyond museum walls. As an outreach agent, the Internet has captivated many museums and particularly their educators. As a communication medium, the Internet allows museum educators to enter the homes and schools of students without their ever needing to visit the museum. Some museum education products try to simulate the spatial and social experience of visiting a museum. However, this approach is just one of many resource "types" educators have deployed as they grapple with the promise and reality of on-line education. This paper explores why and how museums are using the Internet for education outreach, as well as the diversity of emerging on-line education expressions. It also reviews current research into the unique interface, navigation and content preferences of various learners and discusses best practice teaching and learning strategies to help museum educators develop more effective on-line educational resources. (Author/AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
The Participatory Museum: How Games can be used in the Museum's hunt for the Active Audience
This paper examines how the evolution of the Museums place in society has defined how it engages with it's audience, and observes that this relationship has become increasingly interactive. The paper goes on to criticise this focus on "interactivity" being wrong for the productive engagement that would suit the Museums' goals far better. To further this idea, the highly productive culture of play and games in general are analysed, focusing on contemporary computer games, and the atmosphere of irreverence present in Modding communities. In conclusion, the paper asserts that this culture of irreverence could be the key to audiences productively bouncing off voices of cultural authority such as museums.
Virtual Museums from Four Directions: An Emerging Model for School-Museum Collaboration
2001
Museums have long been the repository of important cultural items. They make these items available to public view in exhibitions in specially designed architectural spaces, and more recently, in the virtual spaces provided on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM. By making their collections accessible to the public in carefully crafted and coherent presentations, museums serve an important mission of perpetuating cultural heritage through the educational experiences they offer to the public. Schools share a mission of cultural preservation with museums, making them natural partners in the development of effective educational experiences for young citizens. The creation of virtual museums as classroom learning projects is one emerging strategy schools have explored that makes use of new digital media, the World Wide Web and multimedia authoring. This paper presents a culturally responsive emerging model for school-museum collaboration. The Four Directions Project has been working with American Indian Schools to explore the uses of technology for culturally responsive teaching. One approach Four Directions is exploring is school-museum collaboration for student-created virtual museum projects. A Four Directions Model for school-museum partnerships has emerged from these experiences. Two example projects are described and the benefits of virtual museum projects are discussed. (Contains 11 references.) (AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
MuseumScouts: Exploring how schools, museums and interactive technologies can work together to support learning
Computers & Education, 2010
In this paper we report on the successes and challenges of using the online authoring tool 'Evolution' to underpin a creative project linking museums and schools. The MuseumScouts project itself is EU Comenius 2.1 funded and involves teachers, teacher educators, museum staff, students and researchers from five European countries: Germany (Berlin and Munich), Lithuania (Vilnius), Portugal (Porto), Austria (Linz), and the UK (Bristol and London).
Creating a museum learning environment
This paper argues that the concept of the 'museum learning environment' is a central support to learning in museums and must be extended beyond the physical to encompass every aspect of the user experience, from the potential visitor's initial contact with the museum to the resources that can be drawn on after the visit. The author, approaching the field from the point of view of an interpreter rather than a learning specialist, defines a series of practical principles that can be adapted by all museums. These prioritise mapping orientation and learning provision; the role of visitor services; empowering the user; minimizing visitor effort so the user can focus attention on what matters; taking an experience design approach to exhibition creation; encouraging reflection through social contact; supporting follow-up work; and the central role of seating! Personalising the museum visit Museums must recognise that they can no longer act as agents of mass communication but must instead seek to offer a personalised visit. We must acknowledge that:
Related topics
Related papers
Interaction paradigms in technology-enhanced social spaces: a case study in museums
2007
This paper investigates, through a case study, the interaction paradigms that can be adopted in a museum exhibition involving hybrid interactive artifacts, i.e., installations that support visitors manipulating and interacting with physical and digital exhibits [6], [1]. We discuss the design principles and solutions we adopted in a temporary exhibition titled "The Fire and The Mountain", where we integrated technological and physical artifacts within a multi-sensory exhibition space to foster enjoyment, engagement, and, ultimately, learning, and to promote a variety of social behaviors among visitors interacting together with hybrid exhibits. We also discuss a field study we carried on to evaluate the user experience in "The Fire and the Mountain", and the lessons we learnt.
Bridging the Gap: Using Digital Interactives for Social Museums
Yedi Journal of Art, Design & Science, 2024
Designing the built environment with an inclusive approach that allows equal access for everyone is necessary to reduce social inequalities. Creating a physical environment that includes all segments of society and activates all senses is crucial in museum spaces. Digital interactions used in museum spaces offer new possibilities and interfaces to eliminate inequalities and increase inclusiveness. This study examines the integration of digital interactives in museums with a focus on the social museum concept. Through a comprehensive review of literature spanning museum studies on social museums, digital interactives, and inclusive museum concepts, this research investigates the role of digital interactives in fostering social engagement and facilitating interactive learning experiences within museum settings. Drawing on the theoretical framework and practical examples the paper explores how to employ digital technologies strategically to enhance visitor interaction, promote inclusivity, and facilitate knowledge sharing in social museum environments. This research demonstrates the transformative potential of digital interactives in museums as social spaces and provides a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationship between technology, museum practices, and social inclusion. The result of the research shows that digital interactives used in museum environments, such as haptic tools, wearables and mobile technologies, extended reality technologies, RFID and AI technologies, offer new ways of engagement for a more social museum and increase social inclusion.
Museums, digital media and a perpetual beta way of communicating
Digital media technology and especially various types of Web 2.0 applications facilitate communication as user-centered, and new media technologies like smart phones make use of these applications and combine them into mashups enabling this type of communication. Thus communication here implies collaboration, participation and co-creation as primary communication mode and feeds on the interplay between a variety of different media and media technologies (cross-media communication). This paper demonstrates how this mode of communication invites museums to think in the lines of computer games and augmented reality on the one hand and constructivist approaches to learning on the other, both of which are related to the experience economy. In doing so, the paper will present a case study of a museum project communicating the history of the Danish city Vejle through an augmented reality game using mobile phones, Web 2.0 mashups, a playable conspiracy plot, and the city as game universe.
Engineering multiuser museum interactives for shared cultural experiences
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2015
Multiuser museum interactives are computer systems installed in museums or galleries which allow several visitors to interact together with digital representations of artefacts and information from the museum's collection. In this paper, we describe WeCurate, a socio-technical system that supports cobrowsing across multiple devices and enables groups of users to collaboratively curate a collection of images, through negotiation, collective decision making and voting. The engineering of such a system is challenging since it requires to address several problems such as: distributed workflow control, collective decision making and multiuser synchronous interactions. The system uses a peer-to-peer Electronic Institution (EI) to manage and execute a distributed curation workflow and models community interactions into scenes, where users engage in different social activities. Social interactions are enacted by intelligent agents that interface the users participating in the curation workflow with the EI infrastructure. The multiagent system supports collective decision making, representing the actions of the users within the EI, where the agents advocate and support the desires of their users e.g. aggregating opinions for deciding which images are interesting enough to be discussed, and proposing interactions and resolutions between disagreeing group members. Throughout the paper, we describe the enabling technologies of WeCurate, the peer-to-peer EI infrastructure, the agent collective decision making capabilities and the multi-modal interface. We present a system evaluation based on data collected from cultural exhibitions in which WeCurate was used as supporting multiuser interactive.
Empowering digital museum audiences to foster museum communication
2012
This paper offers a definition of "Digital museum audience" as a significant segment of the museum public at large and presents museum trends that take place on-site and off-site, representing the ways museums can address their online audiences effectively and foster on-site communication. The article analyses examples of museum online activities (participative and narrative) as part of the pre-communicative and post-communicative phases of museum communication. Digital audiences have already begun to demonstrate to museum workers the necessity of engaging in online activities either on the official website or on integrated social media at a number of conferences and via blogosphere, which is having a considerable effect on major museums' online policies. The launch of such projects as MuseumNext.org and Museum-Analytics.org, is the way the internet community is trying to draw museums' attention to efficient online social engagement as opposed to broadcasting information. The paper aims at demonstrating the most representative trends in this area.
WeCurate: multiuser museum interactives for shared cultural experiences
CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2013
WeCurate is a multiuser museum interactive system that allows users to collaboratively create a virtual exhibition from a cultural image archive. WeCurate provides a synchronised image browser across multiple devices to enable a group of users to work together to curate a collection of images, through negotiation and collective decision making. This paper reports on the findings of a five day trial of WeCurate when it was installed at a major London museum. This paper focuses exclusively on the scope and characteristics of the social experience afforded through the collaborative use of the system.
Chapter: Springer Series on Cultural Computing Museum Experience Design Crowds, Ecosystems and Novel Technologies
Chapter 5, Experiencing the Art Museum: Methods for Public Engagement: Methods for interactive, socially engaged art museum experiences are explored. They examine the utility of developing larger, institutional philosophies to specific techniques via case studies at the U.C.L.A. Hammer Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Walker Art Center. Employed by a spectrum of practitioners such as artists, designers, and museum professionals, these approaches created new avenues for interaction. Specifically, artists entering into visitor services to drive institutional evolution, techniques for engaging atypical visitors, and approaches for engaging with “the crowd” with ephemeral art movements.
Designing for an Open Museum: An Exploration in Content Creation and Sharing through Interactive Pieces
This book investigates how interaction design can support people’s participation in museums and exhibition venues. It does so by presenting and analysing three case studies that took place in Ateneum Art Museum, Kunsthalle (Taidehalli) and the Design Museum from 2005 to 2008. Salgado proposed the concept of ecology of participation to better understand and make use of content creation and sharing in the museums. Participation needs to be grounded on existing resources, people and practices at the museum. The interactive pieces deployed in the museums provide an arena for exploration of different multimedia resources and creative means to connect with the material in the exhibition. This analysis is positioned in the context of Interaction Design; however, it combines Museum Studies and Museum Informatics to provide an understanding of the problematic from the museum point of view. The work includes recommendations for museums such as collaborating with other stakeholders, promoting community-created content and trusting the community.
The Building of Online Communities: An approach for learning organizations, with a particular focus on the museum sector
EVA 2004 London Conference Proceedings, 2004
"This paper considers the move toward and potential of building online communities, with a particular focus on the museum sector. For instance, the increase in the use of ‘personalized’toolkits that are becoming an integral part of the online presence for learning organizations, like museums, can provide a basis for creating and sustaining communities. A set of case studies further illustrates working examples of the ways in which personalization and specific tools are developing collaborative spaces, community channels and group interactions. "
Designing for Interpersonal Museum Experiences
ArXiv, 2020
What does the age of participation look like from the perspective of a museum visitor? Arguably, the concept of participative experiences is already so deeply ingrained in our culture that we may not even think about it as participation. Museum visitors engage in a number of activities, of which observing the exhibits is only one part. Since most visitors come to the museum together with someone else, they spend time and attention on the people they came with, and often the needs of the group are given priority over individual preferences. How can museums tap into these activities - and make themselves relevant to visitors? In this chapter we will try to approach this constructively, as a design opportunity. Could it be productive for the museum to consider itself not only as a disseminator of knowledge, but also as the facilitator of participative activities between visitors? In what follows, we will outline a range of practical design projects that serve as examples of this approa...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.