Evaluation My Art Space mLearn 2007- Oct 2007

An Evaluation of MyArtSpace: a Mobile Learning Service for School Museum Trips Mike Sharples LSRI, University of Nottingham Peter Lonsdale LSRI, University of Nottingham Julia Meek Lifecycle Paul Rudman Department of Computing, Oxford Brookes University Giasemi Vavoula Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester

School Museum Visits
Should guide students towards development and contrasting of their own ideas (Guisasola et al. , 2005)
But how to guide students while allowing them to engage with authentic artefacts and discover their own responses to the exhibits?
Should connect with learning in the classroom (Guisasola et al. , 2005)
But how to recall and continue the rich experience of the museum visit back in the classroom?

MyArtSpace
Service on mobile phones for enquiry-led museum learning
Learning through structured enquiry, exploration, connection
Students create their own interpretation of a museum visit which they explore back in the classroom

MyArtSpace
Combines
physical space (museum, classroom)
virtual space (online store and gallery)
personal space (mobile phones)
Museum test sites
Urbis (Manchester)
The D-Day Museum (Portsmouth)
The Study Gallery of Modern Art (Poole)
About 3000 children during 2006

How it works
In class before the visit, the teacher sets an inquiry topic
At the museum, children are loaned multimedia phones
Exhibits in the museum have 2-letter codes printed by them
Children can use the phone to
Type the code to ‘collect’ an object and see a presentation about it
Record sounds
Take photos
Make notes
See who else has ‘collected’ the object
All the information collected or created is sent automatically to a personal website showing a list of the items
The website provides a record of the child’s interpretation of the visit
In class after the visit, the children share the collected and recorded items and make them into presentations

Lifecycle evaluation
Micro level: Usability issues
technology usability
individual and group activities
Meso level: Educational Issues
learning experience as a whole
classroom-museum-home continuity
critical incidents: learning breakthroughs and breakdowns
Macro level: Organisational Issues
effect on the educational practice for school museum visits
emergence of new practices
take-up and sustainability

Evaluation At each level
Step 1 – what was supposed to happen
pre-interviews with stakeholders (teachers, students, museum educators),
documents provided to support the visits
Step 2 – what actually happened
observer logs
post-focus groups
analysis of video diaries
Step 3 – differences between 1 & 2
reflective interviews with stakeholders
critical incident analysis

Summary of results
The technology worked
Photos, information on exhibits, notes, automatic sending to website
Minor usability problems
Students liked the ‘cool’ technology
Students enjoyed the experience more than their previous museum visit
The students indicated that the phones made the visit more interactive
Teachers were pleased that students engaged with the inquiry learning task

Usability Issues
Appropriate form factor
Device is a mobile phone, not a typical handheld museum guide
Collecting and creating items was an easy and natural process
Mobile phone connection
Text annotations
Integration of website with commercial software, e.g. PowerPoint

Educational Issues
Supports curriculum topics in literacy and media studies
Encourages meaningful and enjoyable pre- and post-visit lessons
Encourages children to make active choices in what is normally a passive experience
Teacher preparation
Need for teacher to understand the experience and run an appropriate pre-visit lesson
Where to impose constraints
Structure and restrict the collecting activity, or learn from organising the material back in the classroom
Support for collaborative learning
“ X has also collected” wasn’t successful

Organistional issues
Museum appeal
attracting secondary schools to the museum
Student engagement
Students spent longer on a MAS visit (90 mins compared to 20 mins)
Museum accessibility
Ability to engage with museum content after the visit
Problems of museum staff engagement
Burden on museum staff
Business model
Maintenance of phones
Data charges
Competition with other museum media

Future
Multimedia company The SEA has developed a commercial service, OOKL
Deployed at Kew Gardens, London

Partners
Department of Culture, Media and Sport
The SEA – software development
University of Birmingham
University of Nottingham
Urbis,Manchester
Study Gallery, Poole
D-Day Museum, Portsmouth

Evaluation My Art Space mLearn 2007- Oct 2007

by sharplem

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