Investigating 'interactives' at the Powerhouse Museum: Personal, social and physical context

Grahame Ramsay
Research Associate
Powerhouse Museum 		EdTech98 logo
The term "interactives" has been used within the Powerhouse Museum to describe a myriad of activities and learning aids. "Interactives" range from activities that require the visitor to use their whole body to solve problems to activities that involve simply clicking a button. Each of these interactives have quite different outcomes and provide very different experiences for the museum visitor. This paper considers the history, classification, instructional design and purpose of "interactives" as part of exhibitions within the Powerhouse Museum. It describes trends in interactive exhibit design, key success factors for interactives and key limiting factors on the use of interactives within museum exhibits.

To identify and analyse the range of tools that have been broadly categorised as "interactives" within the Powerhouse Museum, a sample of computer based interactives and non-computer based interactives were compared. The use of these interactives by museum visitors were observed and differences in the way these different types of interactive can and are being used were identified.

Defining "hands-on" and" interactives"

The use of umbrella terms term like "hands-on" and "interactive" to describe vastly different kinds of exhibition tools, has produced a blurring of important differences between these tools. The origins of this stem from the convergence of different technologies and traditions.

A recent publication (Bearman 1995) contained the apparent oxymoron "hands-on hypermedia". The report contained articles on computer based interactives which relied in the main on use of a keyboard and a mouse. Is the use of a mouse and a keyboard " hands-on"? Previous usages of the term "hands on " have described activities that involved many of the senses in discovery and experiential learning ( Kolb, 1984) with museum visitors employing many learning styles (Thomas 1994). Inappropriate expectations have been produced by grouping computer based multimedia with non-computer based "hands-on" tools and assuming they share identical potential and produce similar outcomes. The appropriation of the term to describe computer based interactives may confuse its meaning, but it may also indicate the evolution of the term "hands-on" to describe the underlying intention of the computer based interactive. A recent definition indicates this possibility:

A hands on or interactive museum exhibit has clear educational objectives which encourage individuals or groups of people working together to understand real objects or real phenomena through physical exploration which involves choice and initiative (Caulton, 1998: 2)

History of "hands on" and interactives within museums

This research seeks to identify and analyse the range of tools that have been broadly categorised as "interactives" within the Powerhouse museum. It seeks to trace the origins of the terms and their usage within a museum context.

Interactives represent the convergence of two separate traditions within the science and technology museum. The first is tradition derived from San Fransisco's "Exploratorium" which emphasises active participation by users in hands on experiences. Users are able to do experiments and infer scientific principles from first hand experience (Danilov, 1982).

The second tradition is derived from the British Science Museum. It emphasises working models of machines. Users have been able to set machines in motion by pressing buttons and observe the motion. This tradition frequently employs cut-away sections of machines that allow users to see processes that would have been hidden in the past. Interactives have the potential to demonstrate processes and enable the user to see from new perspectives (Pearce, 1992).

The museum experience

Museums have a generally educative purpose but there has been considerable debate as to what museum visitors actually learn (Roschell,1995). There are claims that hands on experience is not adequate for scientific understanding (Gregory, 1989). Museums are obviously a different environment from formal education settings such as school and cater for a much wider and diverse audience. The Powerhouse Museum has a diverse philosophy of "museum as a curiosity shop". A visit to the Powerhouse Museum is designed to be an active experience and the collection's diversity provides a unique experience for visitors (MAAS Annual Report 1996/1997). . Museums have been described as sites of "informal learning" (Rosefield, 1980). The term "informal science learning" has become one of the science centre's favourite phrases. It has been invoked to summarise an educational niche. Crane (1994) examined studies that have measured affective, cognitive, and behavioural impacts of museums and the resulting knowledge about what makes such projects work. Crane describes research models and techniques that are useful in measuring "informal learning". The term "informal learning", however, is problematic. It describes the location of possible "learning" rather than telling us anything about the "learning". Educational theory and practice has been more interested in the nature of the learners rather than the location of the learners. Some division of learning into modes is more relevant, for example, affective and cognitive.

Falk (1992) has also emphasised that the essence of the exhibition medium and science centres generally is affective and motivational, not cognitive. He argued that what people learn in the museum is often directly related to what they knew when they walked in and that learning is cumulative. He argued that the museum visitors' experience and learning is an interaction between three contexts, the personal, the social and the physical. Personal includes visitor agendas, previous experience and source of information. Social includes family visitors, school field trips and other visitors. Physical includes visitor behaviour, influence of the physical social context, exhibits and labels, visitors' frames of reference and experience of objects. The interplay of contexts produces what Falk describes as the museum gestalt.

These three areas, personal, social and physical will provide an organising framework for this research.

Interactives in an exhibition context

Traditional forms of museum displays are either passive ( glass showcases) or active (working models of machines), but both methods can be described as "hands-off".

"Hands on" and interactive exhibits, on the other hand, encourage visitors to touch and become engaged in a narrative where the user can navigate a personal path through the material.

Interactives are the most recent response by the Powerhouse Museum to contemporary technology which might be used in museum exhibition. Their perceived importance is indicated by Powerhouse establishing a department to produce interactives and their inclusion in most exhibitions, both temporary and long term.

On the demand side, surveys indicate that interactives are memorable and popular with museum users ( Purser,1993). Overseas research confirms this trend (Davies, 1994). Their influence is now so pervasive that one exhibition, "CYBERZONE", has numerous interactives (and not many artefacts). Interactives can be seen as part of a range of tools for exhibitions which include photographs, drawings, labels, working models, videos, etc. Just another tool in the curator's craft.

Jones-Garmil (1997) argued that interactives have both implicit and explicit functions which place them in a different position in relation to the museum visitor than other components of an exhibition. They provide unique experiences, carry a potential educational function, use a technology that brings the museum into a contemporary framework, and they provide different experiences from books, information labels and photographs. They can be cognitively rich. They can allow for individually unique pathways. They can allow for group interaction. They are inherently attractive to school children. They provide a simulated "hands-on experience".

The museum interactive as a genre

The museum interactive has come as an application of the emerging technologies of interactive multimedia. There are important capacities of the medium. Laurillard (1995) observes there is a tension between the technological pull of changing capacity of the medium, and the pedagogical pull to keep it on track educationally. While an interactive can now hold enormous quantities of data there still needs to be some organising principles for the user to access that data.

Laurillard (1993) compared and contrasted the contribution that various educational media can make to the teaching and learning process. She described the contribution of IMM as 'tutorial simulation.

Interactivity

There is a symbol that appears on parts of many exhibitions within the Powerhouse Museum. The sign is a drawing of a box with two hands. One hand is pressing a button on top of a box and the other hand is exploring inside the box. The sign means that this is a "hands on" or "interactive" and "gives" permission for the visitor to "interact" with it.

However, the icon also indicates the range of "interactivity" of the broad genre of "interactives" within the Powerhouse Museum. For some there is low interactivity: you press a button and there is one outcome, for others there is high interactivity, the visitor has to put their "hands-on" and engage in an exploration which can lead to many different kinds of outcome.

Main purpose of the research

The study sought to investigate and classify the range of interactives presently within the museum. It compares use of computer and non-computer interactives to gauge what some of the strengths and weaknesses of each type may be.

Sample

Six hundred and fifty nine museum visitors were observed over a period of a month. The sample included school holiday periods as well as weekday school group visitors.

Location

Three computer based and three non computer based "interactives" were selected and observed in great detail. A computer based exhibition "CYBERZONE" was also observed during the school holidays and some comparison of the use of computer based interactives made.

Design

Fieldnotes of interactions between subject other members of group (if there was a group) and with the interactive. Variables to be noted include age group, gender, position (sitting standing, kneeling), whether the users complete the narrative, and the amount of time they spent using the "interactive". Specific observational schedules were avoided to allow for more interesting data unconstrained by preconceptions of the researcher. The user's behaviour was then analysed within the framework of the interactive experience model suggested by Falk and Dierking (1992). Data for each interactive was divided into physical, personal and social contexts.

Major findings

Non computer interactives

Computer based interactives

Conclusion

Interactives represent the current software potential of hypermedia at the time they were designed and so there are a range of interactives representing some ten years of development. Computer based interactives have been included under the general category of hands-on interactives within the context of science and technology museums. However there are important differences between hands on interactives and computer based interactives.

Despite what might be seen as apparent limitations of the medium, computer based interactives are very popular with visitors and are also popular with curators of present and forthcoming museum exhibitions. However, in the rush to incorporate interactives in exhibitions, the strengths of non computer interactive "hands-on" should not be ignored.

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Grahame Ramsay is completing a PhD on the application of instructional design theory and practice to Internet web design in museum web sites. He is currently a Research Associate at the Powerhouse Museum. He has lectured in communication and media at UWS Nepean. He has also completed major consultancies on the design of web sites in learning in the tertiary sector. He is the treasurer of ASET's NSW Chapter.

Grahame has worked for the ABC as a producer/director and continues to combine film making with more recent work on the Internet.

2 Harrison Avenue
Eastwood NSW 2122, Australia
Voice +61 2 9874 0014
Email: grahame.ramsay@tafensw.edu.au

Please cite as: Ramsay, G. (1998). Investigating 'interactives' at the Powerhouse Museum: Personal, social and physical context. In C. McBeath, C. and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/ramsay.html

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