Educational principles for developing digital cultural heritage resources
Introduction
Since some years, the transformation of educational spaces along with the innovation in school pedagogies have been the most important changes in education.
With this change, for example, face-to-face lectures in many education centers have resulted in active learning classrooms where co-working spaces are designed for a project-based pedagogy.
Today, the technological advances together with the living in a COVID-19 pandemic have promoted the widespread application of new pedagogies such as blended learning, distance-learning, or flipped classrooms open the ways of teaching and learning (World Economic Forum 2019).
At the same time, cultural heritage spaces like museums where education plays an important role have turned into digital (i.e. GEM 2020) adapting the educational trends and new perspectives in education to their educational activities for schools and young people. Also, they give an opportunity for reinforcing the 21st-century learning skills (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills).
Educational Trends and Movements
Democratizing the classroom
The classroom is the first place where kids and young people have their first interaction with a multicultural society, the first place where they can make some decisions, co-working with others, etc. Taking this view, democratic and civic values are at the core of this pedagogy through communication and promoting active learning, participation, and decision-making processes (Haynal, 2017).
Moving the classroom outdoors
According to Kuo et al (2018), learning outdoors or facing students in a real environment improves attention and engaging capacities. Taking learning-by-doing techniques and applying the place-based learning pedagogy, students immersed in cultural heritage, nature, and real experiences will improve their learning from all subjects and their own personal development breaking their own limits. Also, it benefits a more inclusive and diverse education going from respecting multiethnicity to acquire civic competencies.
Flipped classroom
Studying the contents at home and putting them into practice in the classroom are the base of the flipped classroom pedagogy. The experience at home is more interactive and digital than ever based on video and interactive activities and the collective work in the classroom is more efficient and engaging open the possibilities to diversify the practice in different ways (van Alten et al. 2019) like gamification that improves the increasing of the learning outcomes (Huang et al. 2020).
Project-based education
Working on projects in the classroom is the best way of focusing students on a common objective (Rahm 2016). Project-based education improves team working capacities, develops cognitive capacities, or helps to learn about problem-solving techniques. Also, it gives the opportunity to students to put into practice all they learn and take several subjects at the same time.
Implications for digital heritage education for museums
Democratizing the classroom
Digital education and museum education have become indivisible. Many museums have developed an interactive and active learning digital environment where they invite students to take part in participation processes with the classroom taking a central role in this learning process. Anyone can introduce an idea to the classroom and debate related to the topic and the museum collections (i.e. many examples of it can be found on GEM 2020).
Moving the classroom outdoors
Visiting a physical or virtual museum can be a very rich experience for any student. Museums are environments where they can learn from any subject, taking practical classes and learning about inclusivity and diversity. Many tools and resources can be useful for schools.
Flipped classroom
Schools and museums share projects worldwide (i.e. Rahm 2016, Kennisnet 2019) mixing digital classes with museum resources and practical sessions in the museums in blended learning and flipped classroom environment.
Project-based education
As Thornburg (2013) explains every learning space has its own function. Some metaphors used by this author are:
- Campfires for storytelling and learning from experts
- Watering holes for interaction and learning from peers
- Caves for reflection and learning by yourself
- Life for testing and application of knowledge.
In project-based learning, all capacities described by Thornburg are used in real life. So, having different spaces for learning in different ways is a good idea for developing competencies and engaging students with the project. They can be digital and any question asked by the students can be a moment for researching through the digital museum collection and try to answer this question with them using the problem-solving technique.
Bibliography
- GEM (2020): Case Studies Remote learning in museums, heritage, and cultural settings. Catham: GEM.
- Haynal. K (2017). The Transformative Power of Communication: Democratizing Practices for the General Education Classroom. The Journal of General Education, 65(2): 110–125.
- Huang, R., Ritzhaupt, A. D., Sommer, M., Zhu, J., Stephen, A., Valle, N., Li, J. (2020): The impact of gamification in educational settings on student learning outcomes: a meta-analysis. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68:1875–1901.
- Kennisnet (2019): How available and usable is digital heritage for education? Initial Findings. Zoetermeer: Kennisnet.
- Kuo M, Browning-MHE M and Penner ML (2018): Do Lessons in Nature Boost Subsequent Classroom Engagement? Refueling Students in Flight. Frontiers of Psychology (8):2253.
- Rahm, J. (2016). Project-based museum-school partnerships in support of meaningful student interest- and equity driven learning across settings. Canadian Review of Art Education: Research and Issues, 43(1):184–198
- Thornburg, D. (2013). From the campfire to the holodeck: Creating engaging and powerful 21st century learning environments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
- Van Alten, D. C. D., Phielix, C., Janssen, J., & Kester, L. (2019). Effects of Flipping the Classroom on Learning Outcomes and Satisfaction: a Meta-Analysis. Educational Research Review, 28: 100281.
- World Economic Forum (2019): Schools of the Future Defining New Models of Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva, CH: World Economic Forum. Available on “http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Schools_of_the_Future_Report_2019.pdf” [Reviewed 20 March 2021]
