Four dimensions of digital heritage educational resources. The pedagogical dimension

Teenagers and their smartphones visiting a museum, Vilseskogen,CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The pedagogical dimension of the digital heritage educational resources is related to its pedagogical adaptability and the aims and results of learning.

1. Pedagogical adaptability

Pedagogical adaptability is the capacity of a resource to be adjusted to the necessities of each educative model and each learning experience.

In the case of open educational resources, like digital and interactive textbooks and digital heritage educational resources, the personalizable elements, the evaluability, the usability, the accessibility, and the intelligibility must be excellent to get useful, usable, and accessible educational materials for anyone who wants to use (Bikowski, 2018).

Personalization is the capacity of the resource of being adjusted to every user. It includes, for example, ways to hide elements or remove the sound.

The evaluability is the capacity of the resource of having their content evaluated in different ways (gamified elements, tests, and other types of activities) and get feedback from the user to improve the resource.

Usability is the capacity of the resources of being used easily. It includes the difficulty of use, the effectiveness, and the efficiency of the use.

Accessibility is the capacity of the resource of being adjusted to every user to be inclusive independently of their (dis)ability. It includes functionalities as screen reading, keyboard navigation, voice recognition, subtitles, alternative text, and color contrast among others.

The intelligibility is the capacity of the resource of transmitting their content and being understood by anyone, independently to their (dis)ability, level of education, or origin. This aspect includes text adaptability or the capacity of being understood through graphic elements.

2. Learning models

Since some years, the transformation of educational spaces along with the innovation in school pedagogies have been the most important changes in education.

Today, the technological advances together with 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).

● Active learning

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).

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. That’s something similar to a creative lab where anyone can debate about any topic.

● Place-based learning

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.

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

Studying the contents at home and putting them into practice in the classroom is the basis 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).

Schools and museums share projects worldwide (i.e. Rahm 2016, Kennisnet 2019, GEM 2020) mixing digital classes with museum resources and practical sessions in the museums in blended learning and flipped classroom environments.

● Project-based learning

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.

As Thornburg (2013) explains every learning space has its own function: places for storytelling and learning from experts, places for interaction and learning from peers, places for reflection and learning by yourself, and places 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.

3. Generic Learning Outcomes

In formal education, learning outcomes are defined as “statements of the knowledge, skills, and abilities individual students should possess and can demonstrate upon completion of a learning experience or sequence of learning experiences” (Linn & Miller 2005).

These learning outcomes are created and assessed by the teacher and also their progress can be judged by others and the aim is to acquire some external standard of knowledge (Moussouri 2002)

By comparison, the learning outcomes in informal education are understood as a result of learning but in an individual way but not depending on a strict assessment. They are adaptable and co-created by the staff, no one can judge each other because the learning process depends on the participant and everyone can establish their limits and the aim is to get new knowledge but moving at their own pace (Hooper Greenhill et alli 2003)

According to the Stanford University Guidelines collected by Boston University, an effective learning outcome must be:

• Specific and well-defined in the goal they must achieve.
• Realistic with time and effort. It can be useful for the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound).
• Simple.
• Focused on learning products, not the learning process.
• Aligned with the educational program.

These tips can be really useful in the development of heritage learning outcomes where a specific view of the resources must be taken aligning formal and informal education and adaptable on time and effort of the participants.

Also, it is needed to develop specific learning outcomes in a collaborative way of implying teachers, museum educators, museum content producers, and participants in the process.

It also needs to set a way of assessing these statements in an open and adaptable way where participants do not feel uncomfortable and judged as part of the activity using engaging elements like gamification techniques.

The capacity of working together in the development will help to adapt the formal statement in an informal way, to show museums and schools can work together for developing educational programs useful for both environments and to evidence that including cultural heritage in education is a powerful way of engaging young people with educational contents, understanding their daily life and their past through cultural heritage.

In the case of museums specifically to have online transparency with the publication of the whole educational planning and work plans with the learning outcomes help teachers to organize the content and increase the opportunities of coordination and working together.

Also, related to heritage learning outcomes, the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester (UK), developed the Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) as a way to assess the impact of learning in cultural heritage institutions, (Hooper-Greenhill 2007).

The Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) are divided into five categories each one with a list of associated statements and a purpose (Kling 2010: Appendix 2; Hooper Greenhill et alli 2003):

• Increase in knowledge and understanding: it includes learning specific facts or making links and relationships between things etc.
• Increase in 21st Century Skills (Salas-Pilco, 2013): it includes social, communicative, and organizational skills.
• Change in attitudes or values: it includes opinions about ourselves (self-esteem) or empathy.
• Evidence of enjoyment, inspiration, and creativity
• Evidence of activity, behavior, progression: it includes a change in behavior or cultural habits and reflection about their actions.

This model of assessing heritage learning outcomes is suggested to be flexible and generic, not thought of as any specific program, to use a common language, and to have categories adapted to the statement of the users. It can be combined and used with the improvements cited above for the definition of learning outcomes to have effective use of this methodology.

In a digital application, for example, Sylaiou, Mania, et al (2017) show how learning digitally with digital heritage educational resources improves the learning of digital skills, 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.

Follow the links in each title to find more information from previous weeks related to these topics.

Find here the general perspective of the four dimensions or keep reading this series in the next post: the social dimension.

Bibliography

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