4 ways cultural organisations can ‘do digital’ for learning
By Missy Mills, Digital Development Producer, Royal Opera House
I was recently asked to fill a slot at a conference for National Portfolio Organisation applicants from cultural education organisations, with particular reference to goal 5 — children and young people. My brief was to give practical examples of ways in which cultural learning organisations can ‘do digital’.
I’m surprised we’re still talking about ‘doing digital’, and I guess it is in part due to people like me not talking widely enough with smaller cultural organisations. I work at the Royal Opera House, where we are fortunate enough to have some great digital expertise in house, but I do understand the difficulties faced by cultural organisations feeling pressured to ‘digitise’. Digital is not a silver bullet or the saviour to all life’s challenges — a technical build is often a path fraught with difficulties, seldom delivered to time and hugely expensive if you haven’t fully planned for it.
Think of it as pootling along and suddenly a baby drops out of the sky. Do you have a clue what to do with it? Having never had one before do you know what to feed it, how to keep it healthy and happy, how to afford the latest generation Bugaboo and Gucci onesie? This is exactly what a digital product requires; an understanding how it fits within your strategy (life), how you will maintain and develop it (mula and school), why you are doing it (embracing the wonder that is parenthood?) and most importantly, where our baby analogy arguably is most useful…who is it for?
A good way to think about it is as a methodology not a ‘thing’. The question always must be, I need to achieve THIS outcome, which is related to my business, so will digital help me achieve that? If I want more children to learn of the hazards of eating too much sugar, I have a range of options at my disposal; for instance, I could send people to do workshops in schools, bring children into my world, or create a web experience to communicate this. Ultimately, it’s about what I’m communicating, not how I’m doing it.
I could philosophise for ages about the whens, hows, whats, and whys you should think first before commission, but I hope it’s more useful to explore four tangible ways in which you can use digital for learning:
- Understand your audience and what they need
First identify them, and then use digital methods to find out what they need. This is a no-brainer, but where most people trip up; the learning for your audience must always come first. Here’s an example; I recently completed a digital build of an interactive which was a hugely complex design education project. With many moving parts which included no less than eight internal departments and an aspiration to be digital, I kept to the bare bones of what the user needed. In this case, that’s getting down to brass tacks — getting into a classroom of 16 year-olds to understand what they need from us to learn better. Then one needs to make the digital vs live decision. Do I send out a teacher into a group of schools for the same money it will cost me to create a digital experience? This is the great dilemma. If your digital product is designed well enough, developed and maintained, it should live for a long time — and prove its worth. But sadly, these are rare and they are often relegated to that distant junk yard of the internet where formerly-treasured projects go to die. In this instance, I designed the product to have an afterlife; once the learning project is over, it will serve as a holder for interesting production information and as a showcase for archival collections items. You can see what I made here.
2. Create a learning arc
In my time at a music education hub I became increasingly aware of the amount of tentpole design on education projects. This means that you spend a tonne of money on one event where everyone goes home and quickly forgets the whole thing. Digital technology can really help you to make this a more meaningful and longer-lasting experience. For instance; I managed to secure a big orchestral schools’ concert for 2,000 children. Teachers started receiving emails from players beginning to introduce repertoire and fun facts about members of the orchestra. We then managed to squeeze in a morning of teacher CPD, (obviously a luxury) and the concert happened. After this, utilising worksheets for kids from their seats at the theatre, teachers built on the work from their CPD alongside post-concert digital resources to continue and finally conclude the learning arc.
3. Use technology to fill the gaps
In the current climate with slashed budgets and tightening belts, it’s often necessary to reduce contact time in educational settings. Using technology to provide the support you cannot do face to face is a good way to invest. Remember, this is all about strengthening your learning outcome, not just using tech. Some examples of this could be; creating a support network through a social media group, (a warning here is to take time to understand normal user behaviour — ie. teenagers are often on snapchat, the older millennials + on facebook etc). I have often been asked by different organisations to create teacher communities, or spaces for kids to meet online. However, it has been very infrequently successful in my experience. There are some great groundswell groups that have created their own energetic movement to action, like Musical Futures for secondary teachers, or the teacher twitter community. I think it’s a bit like putting out some scones and tea in your living room and inviting people off the street to use it as a space to chat. It’s a bit weird and chances are you’d be left with a couple of stray dogs and some lonely odd bods. Rather than taking a didactic approach to this, I’d recommend finding out where your target audience currently meets online, if at all, and then finding out what conditions they would appreciate. For instance, please don’t make any more complicated login-required fancy-bit-of-tech which sits unopened for months because they can’t remember their login or the even the URL.
More hardware-intense is to invest in a livestream methodology. I work with the wonderful NYMAZ — a charity which uses livestream cameras (just like Skype) in rural North Yorkshire schools to provide instrumental tuition remotely. Take time to find out which method fits most cleanly with your audience, and is simplest to maintain in relation to its benefit.
4. Create sustainability
Creating a jump-off from targeted educational practice is of huge importance to my philosophical approach to education. In this financial cultural climate, small pieces of funding emerge and there’s often pressure to have a stab at making something happen; which isn’t conducive to longitudinal development. However, it’s not always realistically achievable to create pathways for progression out of a project yourself. Putting in the groundwork first, by finding out, at the very beginning of the project design phase, who local partners are, you can then use technology to connect your participants with a progression route through localised organisations and groups.
I’m always keen to hear of new and brilliant ways to use digital, please do get in touch if you have suggestions of successful projects or questions about how you can make digital work for YOU!
