Aggregating Agency to Support Collaborative Learning in a Museum Exhibit

• In Event: Scaffolding Self-Directed Learning in Technology-Enhanced Environments

Abstract

We wished to study how our design decisions affect visitor explorations of the data, how that exploration was distributed across visitors, and how the actions taken controlling the shared display mediated the resulting discussions. To do so we have conducted a series of in situ trials in one local and one major museum where visitors were videotaped during their use and interviewed. We were looking for evidence that the users could progress to a stage of “instrumental control” over the exhibit (Williams et al., 2005), how that progression evidenced itself across the different members of visitor groups, and how their individual and joint degree of control affected the conversations about the data being displayed.

Authors

• Leilah Lyons, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Francesco Cafaro, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Joshua L. Radinsky, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Jessica Roberts, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kristen Vogt, Urban Gateways