EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
As institutions for the general public,
museums pre-date schools yet the popular
assumption is that schools are for learning
(and for preparation for the future) while
museums are for the preservation of the
past. The reality may well be, however,
that it is museums that have embraced
new technologies and approaches to
learning while schools focus on delivering
an outmoded curriculum.
Museums are a heterogeneous set of
institutions whose original twin functions
of scholarship and education, once
inseparable, but subsequently divorced,
are being reunited by digital technologies.
Such technologies also encompass a wide
variety, including multimedia, simulations
and presentations as well as the internet.
Not only do they facilitate and/or
accelerate long-established learning
tasks, but, critically, they permit activities
that would otherwise be impossible.
This includes new approaches to
learning by different audiences and
for different purposes.
Despite reservations about access –
with social class the major determinant –
digital technologies for learning are
available to the majority of UK households
and to almost all UK schoolchildren.
Museums, galleries and (especially)
science centres are among the most
enthusiastic providers of digital learning
opportunities. Virtual visitors to museum
websites already out-number physical
(on-site) visitors, and many of these are
engaged in dedicated learning activities –
as even a cursory glance at the 24 Hour
Museum website will confirm. Indeed, so
rapid and widespread has been the growth
– in both provision and uptake – that the
extensive survey of UK museum education
activity in 1999 did not include websites
and conflated audio-visual guides with
printed materials.
2 LEARNING IN MUSEUMS
Museums have a number of philosophical
and practical considerations when
planning learning opportunities, namely to:
• engage in learning as constructive
dialogue rather than as a passive
process of transmission
• take on the role of privileged participant
rather than that of expert
• carefully evaluate the significance of
the formal school curriculum (and its
assessment process)
• facilitate lifelong learning by providing
a free-choice learning environment that
permits a plethora of pathways and
possibilities.
Museums have an important role to play in
facilitating lifelong learning, in terms of
creative, cultural and intellectual activity
beyond any merely vocational aspects.
Lifelong learning, museums and digital
technologies share many of the same
attributes, with emphasis on learning from
objects (rather than about objects) and on
strategies for discovering information
(rather than the information itself). Such a
view of learning as active engagement is
supported by The Campaign for Learning
in Museums and Galleries (CLMG) and the
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
(MLA), who also celebrate the important
(if different) outcomes of informal learning.
Many of the informal learning opportunities
offered by museums, |
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through digital
technologies and in other ways, sit
uncomfortably with the formal education
system. Indeed, far from reducing tensions
between the formal and informal learning
sectors, the drive for ‘learning objects’
may create further stresses.
3 ON-SITE LEARNING
Objects are the unique attribute of
museums and galleries, their USP, yet
many museums and science centres
apparently seek the Holy Grail of
interactivity. Most of the learning issues
are similar, whether interactives are
mechanical or digital, on-site or online. In
any case, poor examples, of whatever type,
do little to promote the learning potential
of interactives. While some authors
question the compatibility of objects and
interactives, there are key principles
emerging. Beyond the naïve assumption
that digital technologies are inevitably
interactive, there are strident demands
for clear learning objectives, for learner
choice and initiative.
After interactivity, the goal of many
museums is learner participation. This
may involve simple feedback (often digital
voting), digital storage of images and ideas
(for subsequent remote retrieval) or even
contributing directly to the museum’s
own exhibits and interpretation.
Digital technologies facilitate many kinds
of collaboration – between museum and
learner, between different institutions
and among learners themselves. Exciting
examples include those between real
and virtual learners and of learners
creating their own associations within
and between collections.
In many ways the opposite of
collaboration, digital technologies also
facilitate personalisation. Freed from
the constraints, both physical and
interpretative, of the curator and exhibition
designer, the learner can use appropriate
technologies to provide a dedicated and
personal mentor. Examples from a science
centre (the Exploratorium) and from an
art gallery (Tate Modern) highlight the
learning potential of a versatile and
mobile information source that is under
the control of the learner.
4 ONLINE LEARNING
Museum websites are possibly even more
diverse than museums. Apart from obvious
differences of content and design, their
underlying philosophies and approaches
to learning differ considerably, sometimes
(but not consistently) reflecting the views
of the museum itself. The extremes are
represented by the ‘interactive reference’
type and by creative applications with
learner-created outcomes.
The accounts in the literature, although
largely descriptive, do give an indication of
the types of learning made possible by the
variety of websites already on offer.
Examples from the major national
museums, heritage organisations and
other institutions reflect the diversity of
approaches, from encyclopaedias to
games, but include innovative and
imaginative products driven by underlying
theory and some that actively encourage
participation in knowledge creation.
Webcasts are seen as a way of introducing
the human dimension to the digital, as a
bridge between on site and online, and
as a step from a deficit model of learning
towards greater dialogue.
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 the learner can
use appropriate
technologies to
provide a
dedicated and
personal mentor |
