Appreciation of the learning strategies
and needs of the wide variety of
museum learners means that there
cannot be a single, simple approach.
Johnson and Quin’s (2004) checklist of
recommendations for exhibitions
recognises this:
• have many entry points, and no
specific path, start, or end
• employ a wide range of active learning media
• present a variety of perspectives
• enable visitors to engage with objects
(and ideas) through a range of activities
and experiences
• provide experiences and materials that
stimulate participants to experiment,
conjecture and draw conclusions.
2.4 ICT AND MUSEUM LEARNING
“The limitations of computer-assisted
learning lie in our ability to understand the
learning process, and not in the ability to
develop the technology appropriate to any
learning situation.” (Tawney 1979)
The accelerating development and
influence of ICT has generated within the
education community three distinct
perspectives on e-learning. One is
concerned almost exclusively with
technical issues. The second sees ICT
predominantly as a means of delivering
conventional content, effectively
unchanged, more quickly, more efficiently
and to a much wider audience. The third
takes a more radical stance and regards
advances in ICT – with its powerful
potential for democracy and differentiation
– as a catalyst for a fundamental
reappraisal of the whole enterprise of
education.
Many myths persist about the role of ICT in
learning (Hawkey 2001), and these can be
as powerful in museums and galleries as
they are in schools. Real progress will be
limited until learning is widely regarded as
much more than the acquisition of a body
of knowledge. Even in the informal
learning sector the notion of a necessarily
prescribed ‘curriculum’ remains strong,
with learning seen as the transfer of
knowledge from expert to novice, with
ICT as a vehicle for state-of-the-art
information delivery. The final myth is
that assessment requires but a simple
measure of the knowledge deficit – “Why
not,” enquired a government minister of a
museum’s Head of Learning, “test visitors’
knowledge on entry and then test them
again when they leave?”
The online museum offers a tantalising,
seductive prospect for learning. Within
a few years, suggests
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Anderson (1999),
museum learning could become
ubiquitous, reaching every home,
workplace and educational institution.
Learners can choose where and when they
learn, both individually and socially. New kinds of learning – not necessarily better
or worse, but certainly different, become
possible. Moreover, learners can be
stimulated to enhance their virtual
experiences with a visit to the real thing,
to engage directly with authentic objects.
But, for all the talk of innovation and
excitement, caution is counselled. After
all, much digital learning material is
impoverished – imaginatively, aesthetically,
symbolically and educationally (Anderson
1999). And there are more fundamental
issues.
Knell (2003) highlights a number of
questions concerning the relationship
between museums and digital
technologies. Firstly, he is anxious that
developments such as those evident in
DigiCULT (European Commission 2002) are
being led primarily by technologists, rather
than by museologists. (Nor, we might add,
are they necessarily influenced by
educationalists.) Secondly, and more
fundamentally, he questions whether a
digital exhibit, however much it can be manipulated, can ever offer anything
approaching the real museum experience:
“The emotive experience of seeing the real
requires the real and no surrogate will do.
A virtual visitor may understand the thing
better and be better prepared to interpret
it when they see it but they may receive
those peculiar attributes of real things only
through real world engagement” (Knell
2003). That haptic technologies – 3D virtual
reality – may one day give a sense of
tangible reality he dismisses, at least for
the time being, as “simply an illusion”.
More credence is attributed to wireless
technology and the handheld PDA, in
potentially turning museums into inclusive
spaces. Some examples, including the Tate
Modern’s successful foray into this
domain, are considered in some detail
later (section 3).
Learning is, of course, both process and
product. Historically society has paid more
attention to the product – and, especially,
to its assessment. One of the anticipated
consequences of e-learning is a shift in
emphasis towards process (Resnik 1999;
Hepple 2000). It is, therefore, important
that attention is paid to the learning
process, rather than solely to the technical
aspects of computer-based exhibits: did it
work? was it robust? For example, while
the Science Museum’s guidance for
developers points out that the major |
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