Teenagers' Multisensory Routes for Learning in the Museum

Abstract

a a Vaike Fors has researched museums and teenagers' encounters with museum and science center exhibits in various projects in order to contribute to further understandings of contemporary conditions for learning.ABSTRACT In this article I draw on a study of sensory aspects of teenagers' use of digital media, how these sensory aspects are incorporated in emerging learning strategies, and the implications of this for the same teenagers' engagement in museums. My focus is on how an ethnographic approach that attends to the senses may enable a critical review of prevailing pedagogical ideas in museums. Recent developments in museum education have led to large investments in state-of-the-art technology to produce interactive, multisensory exhibits. However, the question of how teenagers respond to these campaigns remains rather

Chatbots and New Audience Opportunities for Museums and Heritage Organisations

“…What emerged from this project is that the convergence of chatbot and gamification has proved to be a powerful tool in involving younger, digital savvy generations in novel and interesting ways to them (Cawston et al 2017, Kelly & Russo 2008, Endo 2016, Fors 2016.…”

“…Teenagers are a notoriously difficult public to engage in museums and often far more interested in social interactions between themselves than in cultural contentand this was proven to be even more challenging if that content is associated with a 19th century historic house. In general, teenagers visiting museums are identified with high levels of distraction and highly adapted to the use of social media (Kelly & Russo 2008, Endo 2016, Fors 2016. Recent research in the U.S., for example, shows that online chatting is one of the highest forms of social interaction of teenagers (Statista 2017).…”

Sensory experiences of digital photo-sharing—“mundane frictions” and emerging learning strategies

“…This article draws on an ethnographic study undertaken with a group of teenagers about their learning habits that emerged through their everyday use of digital media, 8 and the pedagogical implications of this for museums. Following Gillian Rose's model of different sites and modalities for interpreting visual materials, 9 this research focused on the social modalities of why and how the web-based visual materials were produced and how they were interpreted when viewed, thus leaving the compositional and technological modalities of the digital media aside.…”

“…Visual ethnographic methods were used to pay attention to the relationship between online and offline practices and the pedagogical implications of these practices in informal learning settings. 10 The study was exploratory in its design and probed teenagers' contemporary use of imagebased digital media as emergent learning resources. The chosen research participants were specifically targeted as accustomed users of web-based media.…”

“…What is scarcely examined is how use of media technologies has an impact on people's everyday learning strategies, strategies that they bring with them into different, both informal and institutional, learning contexts. 5 Ellsworth suggests that investigations in this neglected field actually can move learning theory further to acknowledge the embodied experience of change and motion. 6 These routes to knowing might be hard to articulate since peoples lifeworld based learning resources cannot be treated as content; it consists of knowing that is ''morethan-representational.…”