Connecting digital technologies with museum education. The state of the sector during COVID-19
In the last fifty years, museums have become more and more open and participative places in the heart of cities where citizens can learn about our past and develop through cultural heritage their critical thinking skills to have a better future.
This social role of museums is totally opposed to the most traditional one of collecting objects, researching about them, and presenting them as idols to a reduced number of people.
In this perspective, education has been one of the most important tasks for museums. From visits and workshops for school and high school education to talks and visits for lifelong learning among others, the domain of museum education has been very expanded.
In the last few years, along with the digital transformation of cultural heritage, the view of museums has become more open, international, and ubiquitous in the ways of connecting with visitors and showing all its contents. It has been a fast technological growth to be updated with the most recent innovations.
In this new concept of the museum, heritage education has also been adapted (Kraybill 2015). A great number of big and medium-size cultural heritage institutions have curated digital heritage contents in virtual galleries or exhibitions for educational purposes, some of them have launched educational platforms and games and others have been very active in social media and other third-party platforms. At this point, the big issue is little museums where economic difficulties neither allow them to develop digital initiatives nor to increase education staff numbers sufficiently (ICOM 2020).
In the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation of distance learning and e-learning education did not improve this issue as it has also been proven informal education (Di Pietro, Biagi, et al. 2020). Following the assessment published on the Eurydice report (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2019), the EU countries offered little or non-guidance and proper training to the educators for the development of digital competencies as a cross-curricular theme.
But it is not all bad news, during this time a lot of institutions in partnership with the public and private sectors have developed digital educational programs successfully as Make stories as Roald Dahl from the Roald Dahl Museum (UK), Ostia Antica per la Scuola with video lessons and video laboratory from the Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica (Italy) and ‘Jaar 0 in Drenthe’ a game developed by the Drents Museum (The Netherlands) (see more digital assets developed during the COVID-19 times on this article and visit the map https://digitalmuseums.at).
As can be seen with the fruitful examples, digital cultural heritage education is a way of encouraging participation, creativity, and motivation (Bontempi & Nash, 2012).
Also, following Hooper-Greenhill (2002, 2004, and 2007) researches, Sylaiou, Mania, et al (2017) has shown that digital cultural heritage assets help to make better conceptual connections, improve cognitive (i.e problem-solving skills), emotional (i.e. attitudes and values about oneself and other people) and sensory development (i.e. concepts of inspiration and creativity) appropriate also for students with different learning needs.
Bibliography
- Bontempi, E.& Nash, S. (2012). Effective Strategies in Museum Distance Education. Proceedings of Informing Science & IT Education Conference, Volume 12. pp. 013–025. California: InSITE.
- Di Pietro, G., Biagi, F., Dinis Mota Da Costa, P., Karpinski, Z. and Mazza, J., The likely impact of COVID-19 on education: Reflections based on the existing literature and recent international datasets. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
- European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2019. Digital Education at School in Europe. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
- Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2002) Developing a scheme for finding evidence of the outcomes and impact of learning in museums, archives, and libraries: the conceptual framework. Leicester: Leicester University.
- Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2004) ‘Measuring Learning Outcomes in Museums, Archives and Libraries: The Learning Impact Research Project (LIRP)’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10:2, 151–174.
- Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2007) Museums and Learning in the 21st century. Oxon: Routledge
- ICOM-CECA (2020): ICOM Education 29. Paris: ICOM.
- Kraybill, A. (2015) Going the Distance: Online Learning and the Museum, Journal of Museum Education, 40:2, 97–101
- Sylaiou, S, Mania, K., Paliokas, I., Pujol-Tost, L., Killintzis, V., Liarokapis, F (2017) Exploring the educational impact of diverse technologies in online virtual museums, International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART), Vol. 10, №1, 2017
