ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Eric-
The point is that people do dwell longer at transactive exhibits. They spend
longer because they can do stuff (science).
Years ago when I was directing the museum in Fresno, we circulated a
traveling exhibit of trans-active (open-ended) experiences ("Move it, Build
it, Zap it"). Lawrence Hall and the Chicago Academy of Science rented the
exhibit. Both expressed amazement at how long people spent at each exhibit
and at the high level of interactivity between people at each exhibit.
Chicago invested some money to study visitors. They found that visitors were
spending on average around 30 minutes per exhibit (the record they reported
was 60 minutes by one family at one exhibit). This is of course orders of
magnitude longer than a typical interactive exhibit.
The point is that if you give people the freedom to explore instead of
trying to teach them something, they will spend time and intellectual energy
and have fun learning. Stop teaching and start enabling and empowering.
Remove the opportunity to explore by bullet proofing the exhibits and making
each exhibit show one and only one phenomena and people tend to push the
button and wander by.
Ed
Ed Sobey, Ph.D.
Global Evangelist for Creative Learning
Northwest Invention Center
(425) 861-8685
www.invention-center.com
www.kidsinvent.com
www.asiainvents.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Siegel
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 6:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Multiple Intelligences
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
****************************************************************************
*
Nice, Chuck...
In response to this thread in general:
I am a bit skeptical of the claims that our exhibits are like "doing
science" vs "learning science." It would be pretty to think so, but
since the typical dwell time at a science museum exhibit is, what, 1
minute? I don't think it is very clear eyed to claim that during that
one minute, visitors are engaged in a process more than remotely
associated with "doing science." It may be our aspiration, but our
reach should exceed our grasp, or what's an nsf grant for ? (with
apologies to Robert Browning.)
In art museums, there is a long tradition of mute, rapt, engagement
with art pieces, going back at least to the Victorian period and
Ruskin [a sign of aging, referring twice to Victorian writers in one
post], a kind of choreography that lets one know that the viewer is
transported. Most of us who go to art museums know the drill. The
cocked head, the folded arms, the quick walk up to the canvas to check
a detail, the step back, the knowing look. Very stylized. There is a
wonderful photographer named Thomas Struth who large scale beautifully
composed photographs of visitors to art museums
<http://images.google.com/images?q=thomas+struth+museum+photographs
>
What is really going on in the mind of these other visitors to art
museums is something I have wondered since I was a child, when I was
often as interested in the other visitors as I was in the work (a
budding museum professional...). I know that there has been a fair
amount of writing about this in the art museum world, but since I have
worked in science based museums or living collections for the past 20
years, I am not very familiar with that literature.
It is probably pretty straightforward to create a typology of
interactivity, from "social" to "full body" to "push button" to "minds
on." But to me interactive exhibits are just one thing, far from the
only thing, museums can do to engage visitors. I can't imagine that
our visitors aren't engaging their multiple intelligences with us or
without us, and it always a treat to see the range of ways in which
people interact with each other and with exhibits at museums. At the
Hall, I am glad we have what I trendily think of as a "diverse
ecology" of learning opportunities, from the Science Playground to the
Library, accommodating the wide range of learning styles that visitors
bring.
Eric Siegel
Director and Chief Content Officer
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Queens, NY 11368
www.nyscience.org
718.699.0005 x 317
esiegel at nyscience dot org
On May 16, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Chuck Howarth wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
>
****************************************************************************
*
>
> There is a tradition in some art museums of presenting art without
> interpretation on the theory that visitors can and should engage on
> their own terms. So here's the question: does that qualify as
> transactive? Certainly it is open-ended and allows the visitor to
> bring whatever multiple intelligences they wish to explore the art
> in whatever way they find satisfying?
>
> Before you say that this has nothing to do with science centers, I
> have heard more than one visitor to the Exploratorium complain that
> they are ill-equipped to deal with the real intellectual challenges
> the place presents (just as some of us are intimidated by art
> museums), and that they find the experience inaccessible as a
> result, while others such as myself love the place and find it both
> engaging and stimulating.
>
> James Bradburne, whom I have not had the pleasure to meet, argued in
> a 2002 article that interactivity is a property of people, not
> exhibits, and that an artifact-based display can support very real
> and meaningful interactions—or not. Same with push-button
> electromechanicals in a science center—some promote interactive in a
> real sense, and others don't. Depends on what the visitor does with
> them, and the experience they have. Bradburne has been director of
> a science center (newMetropolis) and an art museum (Museum für
> Angewandte Kunst) so he is speaking from personal experience here.
>
> Bradburne didn't discuss transactive experiences because his article
> was written six years ago and the term wasn't yet much in use in the
> museum context, but I imagine he would make the same point:
> transactive experiences act at the level of the individual visitor
> (it is the visitor doing the transacting, not the exhibit), and such
> experiences may or may not include any sort of physical
> interaction. And more: some visitors will require help, and maybe
> lots of it, to get to the point where they can have meaningful open-
> ended experiences, while others with different backgrounds are ready
> to jump right in. So what we really need to be talking about are
> exhibits that can be used in multiple ways by multiple users
> depending on where they are in their individual learning curves, no?
>
> Chuck Howarth
> Gyroscope
> 283 4th Street
> Oakland, CA 94607
>
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