Insights from four years of evaluation and research on mobile learning at the British Museum's Samsung Digital Discovery Centre. Presented at the University of Leicester Museum Studies brown bag research seminar on 19 June 2013. Many thanks to Dr. Giasemi Vavoula and Laura Diaz Ramos for inviting me to speak and organising the event.

1. Mobile learning in museums
Insights from research at the British Museum
Presented at University of Leicester, 19 June 2013
Shelley Mannion @smannion
Digital Learning Programmes Manager
The British Museum
Photos by Benedict Johnson

2. Virtual versus real.
Really?

3. Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam, 1952
Photo by LoicT on Flickr

4. Integrated interpretation
From Peter Samis, MW2007, Gaining Traction in Vaseline

5. Mobile is simply an
addition to our existing
arsenal of interpretive
tools.

6. Big Draw, 2010: Even old devices are cool.
Mobile learning at the British Museum

7. Passport to the Afterlife Augmented Reality trail

8. QR code trails with iBeaken in permanent galleries

9. Photography trails for schools, families. Cameras are mobile devices too.

10. Tablet-based activity trails plus cameras in Multimedia Magic.

11. Mobile worksheets with WildForm for fact gathering offline.

12. Get away from
stop-based treasure hunts
Active and participatory
Experiential
Collaborative
Accommodate different
learning styles
Our goals

13. Our audience

14. Our content

15. Novelty effect

16. Motivating

17. • Can be superficial. Too excited.
Distractions
Distractions
Distractions
Distractions

18. Collaboration

20. 4-5 per device too
many
Large screens - bah.
Can blend with
analogue (sometimes)
Friendship groups
versus ability groups

21. Younger children, 2
per device, but
prompt them to
share
Teens (11 and up),
own device doesn’t
discourage social
interaction

22. Activity design

23. Photography trumps all

24. Drawing.
Drawing.
Very creative and you can
remember it more if you do
something yourself. 65

25. Augmented Reality.
Provides direct visual dialogue
between camera view and
objects in cases.

26. Natural feature tracking
and reconstruction.

27. Challenges spatial
hegemony in galleries.

28. Promotes kinaesthetic learning.

29. Narrative / theme versus
object-based activities.

30. 1 2 3
Paper prototypes

31. Model for mobile learning
Frohberg, et al 2009
Adapted by Doll 2012: 31
Only 11 of 102
mobile learning
apps used this
approach
Voice recording,
drawing

32. Platforms

33. Research models

35. Educators as
pioneers