Museum Learning via Social Media: (How) Can Interactions on Twitter Enhance the Museum Learning Experience?

Museums are rich sources of artifacts, people and potential dialogic interactions. Recent developments in web technologies pose big challenges to museums to integrate such technologies in their learning provision. The study presented here is concerned with the potential of how school visits to museums can be enhanced by the use of social media. The Museum of London (MoL) is selected as the site of the study and the participants were a Year 9 History class (13-14 years old) in a secondary school in Milton Keynes. It draws on Falk and Dierking’s (2000) Contextual Model of Learning and considers evidence of meaning making from students’ tweets and activity on-site. Observational data during the visit, the visit’s Twitter stream and post-visit interview data with the participants is presented and analysed. It is argued that use of Twitter, a microblogging platform (http://twitter.com), enhances the social interaction around museum artifacts and thus, the process of shared construction of meaning making, which can enrich the museum experience

An investigation into the use of a microblogging technology in school trips to museums

School trips to museums are an important means of introducing young people to museum collections and may have a long-term learning impact (Falk & Dierking, 1997). At the same time, activities in museum spaces can be challenging for students who are engaged in complex learning processes. The thesis considers the use of a microblogging technology (Twitter) by a Year 9 History class (13-14s) from a secondary school in Milton Keynes during a trip to the Museum of London (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/). It draws on the view that mobile technologies can create a continuity of the learning experience despite changes in the physical and social context (Sharples, 2015) and contributes to the body of research on how such technologies can best support young people’s visit experience and extend it beyond the museum. The thesis is informed by sociocultural perspectives of learning with a focus on mediating artefacts in the development of understanding in situated learning activities. It draws on the Contextual Model of Learning which views the visit experience in relation to meaning making and situates this in visitors' personal, physical and sociocultural contexts (Falk & Dierking, 2000). This research employs a case-study methodology and adopts a research design that involved a pre- and post-visit approach. Evidence of students’ activity in the museum and the classroom while using Twitter is considered. The findings are based on video analysis (Ash, 2007), analysis of questionnaires, interviews and personal meaning maps (Falk et al., 1998). Evidence reveals that the use of microblogging reconfigures the museum space by creating an ‘interconnected space’. Evidence also shows that the content generated by the students was ‘designed’ for an audience and offered opportunities for new ways of engagement with objects within the context of a semi-formal visit. The analysis illustrates that prominent practices in the museum were ‘live’ communication, documentation and sharing, while in the classroom the microblogging supported the students to connect to meanings made in the museum by providing prompts for reflection and recollection. Learners were able to weave everyday informal practices related to the use of Web 2.0 technologies with formal museum visiting practices. However, the analysis also points out that learners faced some threats in the continuity of their experience and the development of their trajectories of meaning making as reflected in the three types of visit experience: the ‘focused’, the ‘hybrid’ and the ‘floating’. Drawing on this evidence, the thesis makes a distinction between ‘microblogging as a tool’, ‘microblogging as a space to create, review and share content’ and ‘microblogging as a practice’. The thesis also points to three intertwined areas of consideration for designing learning activities across contexts. These areas include: the technological properties of the tools in use, the types of activity the tools support and specific practices associated with the tools and the contexts. This work essentially contributes to the contemporary discourse around studying ‘seamless learning spaces’ (Chan et al., 2006) and has implications in designing approaches for technology-enhanced learning in museums

Cultural Citizen Inquiry: Making space for the ‘everyday’ in language teaching and learning

This chapter presents a small exploratory study undertaken as action research in two community schools in the UK that draws on a blended approach to language learning and utilises methods of inquiry learning (e.g., observation, data collection, reflection) along with web and mobile technologies to facilitate young people’s engagement in citizen-led inquiry with a focus on social and cultural issues. The chapter introduces the idea of cultural citizen inquiry as a method that may validate young heritage language learners’ search for identity, usually intertwined with heritage and culture, and also support them to engage critically with their everyday experiences

Trajectories of learning across museums and classrooms

This paper explores the use of social and mobile technologies on school field trips as means of enhancing the visitor experience. It employs the notion of a ‘trajectory’ (Ludvigsen et al. 2010; Pierroux et al., 2010; Littleton & Kerawalla, 2012) as appropriate means of connecting learners temporal experiences with informal and formal learning contexts. The focus of the analysis is on a group’s trajectory with an aim to examine the meanings made and represented in multimodal ‘ensembles’ and further, to explore whether artefacts and tools encountered or used inform students’ ensembles and assist them in making connections across the settings. This paper aims to contribute to contemporary discourse on technology-enhanced museum learning by exploring aspects of the visitor experience, such as meaning making across and between contexts

Community-based interventions for language learning among refugees and migrants

This paper presents recent research projects carried out at The Open University UK that involved work with migrant learners. Across these projects the aim was to understand the use of mobile technologies, to create and evaluate a number of mobile applications for informal learning scenarios, and to design learning activities with an aim to support language acquisition. By drawing on a small exploratory study carried out in community settings with diaspora youth we reflect on technology deployed, methods used and lessons learnt with an aim to contribute to research agenda that could guide HCI research in refugee context

The Role of Professional Learning in Addressing Global Challenges : Tensions and Innovations Associated With AMR

Changing work practice is critical when addressing global challenges. The expansion of work is mediated by a range of tensions inherent in the complex systems within which global challenges exist. This study examines tensions that inhibit the expansion of work practices contextualized within the global health challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). The study traces how an AMR surveillance system is being set up in a low-to-middle-income country in Asia (Country A). The research identifies a range of tensions that need to be considered when designing technology-enhanced learning interventions for professionals. This study is significant in moving technology-enhanced learning toward a wholistic approach that takes into account the work environment. This research takes an original standpoint by placing attention on specific work practices, then examining how technology-supported activities can build capacity. This places professionals at the center of a critical approach examining the ways technologies can add value to their professional lives. This work highlights the importance of professionals' “voice” as a lens through which researchers document their reality. The study calls for a fundamental shift in the orientation of technology-enhanced learning interventions, moving attention toward work practice and mapping supporting technologies around this, rather than focusing primarily on the technology and planning learning activity with technology tools.Peer reviewe

A review of research with co-design methods in health education

Studies using co-design methods require the meaningful involvement of stakeholders in creating new knowledge and harnessing, mobilising, and transferring existing knowledge to support comprehensive and long-term solutions. In the health sector, co-design methodology is seen as a way of supporting and engaging local communities in critical decision-making about their health. However, little is known about which specific co-design methods have been adopted, used, and implemented within health education contexts. To address this gap, this paper presents a literature review of co-design methods used to design and implement health education interventions. This rapid evidence assessment (REA) was carried out by identifying 53 papers categorised into four themes: methods, stages, stakeholders, and outcomes. We examined specific co-design methods used in health education stages to support the involvement of stakeholders, second, we reviewed the outcomes of the application of these methods. Based on the review findings, the paper reflects two areas: first, the review shows that there are a wide number of co-design methods being used to support stakeholder collaboration to design health care services as products and processes. Second, there is no clear way co-design methods are evaluated for their outcomes. This review of literature contributes an evidence base to support the future development and use of co-design in health contexts by organising relevant literature into coherent themes in ways that can inform future research

Advancing Social Justice for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK: an Open Education approach to strengthening capacity through Refugee Action’s Frontline Immigration Advice Project

Britain’s asylum system fails the most vulnerable; it cannot ensure that people who are least able to protect themselves are provided with the legal assistance that they require to cope with the challenges with which they are inevitably faced. Against this background, the charity Refugee Action developed the Frontline Immigration Advice Programme (FIAP), a technology-supported capacity strengthening programme that aims to increase access to justice for those going through the asylum system in the UK. The paper is concerned with the design and implementation of the FIAP as a free digitally enabled programme that provides learning opportunities for organisations and frontline workers in the refugee sector and supports them in developing new forms of legal practice. It provides empirical data from interviews with members of staff from six participating organisations in the FIAP, and from Refugee Action and the Office of the UK’s Immigration Services Commissioner (n=21). The paper adopts a view on social justice, which according to Fraser (2005) is understood as ‘parity of participation’. We draw on Fraser’s work, as well as work of other scholars such as Lambert (2018) and Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter (2018) to explore the relationship between social justice and Open Education by taking into consideration the context within which organisations and professionals operate. The analysis highlights six dimensions for social justice approaches for professional learning as demonstrated through the case of the FIAP: i. deliberate iterative design; ii. access to provision; iii. flexibility of provision; iv. development of resources; v. support and vi. advancing knowledge and skills whilst adapting the workplace. All these dimensions are discussed in the paper in relation to the concept of openness and are critical in developing open socially just programmes that aim to change work practice and address the needs of the most vulnerable

Professional learning as a response to societal challenges at this time of continuing struggle

The paper offers a case study of a project that examines professional learning as a response to the societal challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), defined as the ability of a microorganism to stop an antimicrobial from working against it. AMR has been identified as a significant global challenge. Reducing the effects of AMR requires a step change in learning and working in health-care settings. This study draws on cultural-historical activity theory to examine tensions expressed by professionals involved in AMR activities in three low- and middle-income countries. The qualitative study was based on 60 interviews. Tensions were analysed by thematic analysis and placing them within an activity system. The paper discusses these tensions inhibiting reconceptualization of moving towards the new activity, and four “opposing forces” for further analysis. It offers a critical reflection on how the findings informed educational researchers to navigate further tensions as the research project evolved