Why Not MOOseums?

Posted on by

I have been interested in museums for a long time, with a special concern for museum effectiveness in offering open, informal or free-choice learning for the visitor.

I’ve recently written about this (Barr 2013: online at http://innogenesis.info/2013/01/museums-and-e-learning/), although I didn’t know that much about MOOCs at the time. Now that I’ve been studying this phenomenon for three months, I’m even more enthusiastic.MOOseum

“There are plenty of fascinating things about museums. And one of the most intriguing is that during the 20th century anyway, museums have been one of the few places where adults (and children) could experience informal or free-choice learning. During that century, the educational mandate rose to become one of the primary goals of most museums.”

But that museum focus has been almost entirely onsite. Museum learning has been mostly for those who walk through the doors.

“In spite of the speed with which museums embraced the world wide web, few of them seem to have become equally enthusiastic about the prospect of expanding their on-site educational activities into the online environment. Meanwhile, the rest of the world, including most of the mainstream educational institutions are taking up online learning, or E-Learning in a big way. The internet has meant that the potential museum visitor today has many [new]options for free-choice learning.”

Combining the museum mandate with the learning potential of MOOCs, especially cMOOCs (connectivist learning MOOCs), seems to me like a natural. Why not MOOseums (massively open online museum learning).

All one would need is for existing museum education staff to gain some familiarity with cMOOC structure and develop some facility with digital literacy. The informative content is already available in the form of label text from a hundred past exhibits and the websites of not only their own but also dozens of sister institutions.

The connectivist learning opportunities offered through cMOOCs offer a whole new dimension to museum learning. As in other fields, the museum specialist staff can become facilitators instead of instructors. Group learning activities in this type of course are likely to far exceed the experience of learning on the museum visit alone.

The new MOOC experience should function as an “extension of the visitor experience for museums. The museum visitor who has enjoyed an online learning offering before arriving at the museum will not only come armed with a pre-ignited enthusiasm for seeing the actual artifacts, but can also spend more time examining and appreciating those artifacts and less time reading the wall-mounted didactics.”

“The museum visitor who delves into online learning after the visit can re-kindle the excitement of the museum experience and be more highly motivated to undertake additional museum visits in the future.”

[The museum logo in the illustration above is by Otterinfo, CC license]

AAM’s Trendswatch 2013 Highlights Open Education

Posted on by

In a quick follow-up to my last post, the American Alliance of Museums has just released Trendswatchtrendswatch2013_cover 2013, the annual survey of leading indicators produced by their Center for the Future of Museums.

Trend number 3 is entitled, “The Great Unbundling – Academic Credentials Go Micro: Will Museums and Formal Education Converge?” Here they speculate that open education offered online by museums may well in future become part of the requirements for earning various forms of formal certification.

Among other things, they discuss trends in higher education and badging as a form of motivation, as well as giving several museum-based examples.

You can find out more here: http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.ca/2013/03/cfm-returns-to-future-with-trendswatch.html

 

 

It’s Open Education Week! Who Knew? (#h817open)

Posted on by

I certainly didn’t.

Coincidentally, however, I had already signed up for a MOOC (massive open online course) aboutopenEd_logoRemix open education (you can find the course description HERE). Discovering this course through benefit of my personal learning network (PLN) on Google+ was really great (thanks +Deborah L Gabriel, PhD, MD ), because I had just completed another MOOC on E-Learning and Digital Cultures, and like many participants in that one was experiencing a sense of emptiness and letdown. This new one was billed informally as a MOOC about MOOCs – just the thing to lift one’s spirits in the gray days before Spring arrives.

This blog post, by the way, is the first formal activity I’ve been asked to complete in the new MOOC, which goes by the hashtag of #h817open.

Interestingly enough, museums have been pioneers in delivering open education, also called free or informal education. During the 20th century museums increasingly adopted informal education as one of their core missions. As I try to list my learning objectives for the course, below, you’ll see that I am grappling with the ways and means that museums can continue to play a leadership role, now that open education has become a popular preoccupation.

My learning objectives for H817Open include:

  • understanding better all that MOOCs can be
  • understanding a lot more about world-wide activity in open education
  • becoming better acquainted with some of the resources and channels for open education
  • understanding better some online education techniques like gamification
  • understanding what role museums can play in today’s approaches to open education
A final objective, under the heading of ‘other,’ is continuing to expand my personal learning network.
Oh, yes. And Mar. 11-16 really is Open Education Week, organized by the Open Courseware Consortium. From the OpenEd website: “The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness of the open education movement and opportunities it creates in teaching and learning worldwide. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free and open to everyone.”  Lots to do and see – check it out at http://www.openeducationweek.org/.  (Thanks, +Sara Roegiers )
Not only that, but have you ever heard of P2PU? From their website: “Peer 2 Peer University (we mostly just say P2PU) is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities.” Get the whole scoop at https://p2pu.org/en/  (Thanks, +Sara Roegiers )

As for museums, my thoughts are still at a very formative stage. But my firm suspicion is that if we want to remain leaders in open education, we’d better get going with the online versions, ASAP. The rest of the world is starting to leave us behind.

[The illustration is a mash-up of the logos for Open Education Week and Peer 2 Peer University, from their respective websites, which I just know are made available under a Creative Commons license :) ]

The Museum Curse and A Strategy for Brushfires and Burn-out (#edcmooc)

Stories of the mummy’s curse are still capable of haunting the 21st century mind. But there is a real curse afoot in museums as well. And it haunts almost every museum professional.

Many of those who have dedicated their lives to museum work carry on month-to-month, year-to-year, always feeling like they’re living life just on the very edge of burn-out. There’s always so much to do. So many obligations… obligations to supervisors, obligations to colleagues, obligations to visitors, obligations to peers outside the museum. And then there are the brushfires, the daily crises that pop up unexpectedly and have to be squelched before they become raging conflagrations. You’re always struggling to keep up. Where does it all stop?

Museum workers

Ron and his wife assemble two sections of the head to determine the size of the brain. (Natural History Museum of Utah)

Others who appear to have escaped the stress of a working life at fever pitch may have taken refuge in near-clinical depression. They have accepted a chronic sense of personal inadequacy, knowing that they can never keep up and that what once seemed like a glorious museum career has turned out to be profoundly disappointing.

This situation, it has always seemed to me, is inevitable for the museum professional. It’s endemic to the museum environment. I think at it’s root this Sysiphian challenge arises because we have sought a professional career as opposed to making widgets in a factory. As professionals, in many ways we set our own goals and our own standards of excellence. And when you set those yourself, you are always striving for improvement. We can always see ways that our job can be done better, the visitor better served, a more spectacular presentation delivered.

Then, on top of these foundationally unattainable goals, come all the demands of an ordinary working life. Our supervisers, our colleagues, our peers and our visitors come to us with another weighty layer of demands and expectations. And the brushfires never give it a rest.

What to do? How to cope? Must every museum career end in burn-out or zombie-like detachment from the demands of the job? For the dedicated professional, this is something no union, nor contractual agreement, nor army of assistants can solve. Every new advantage simply sets the bar for what we should be doing, what we feel we should be accomplishing, just that much higher.

Yet there must be a solution. We all know museum people who seem to cruise confidently across the turbulent waters of museum life. What is their secret?

I’ve had occasion to think about this again while enrolled in the ‘E-learning and Digital Culture’(EDC) MOOC offered by faculty at the University of Edinburgh. The course requirements are not that heavy if you have full time to deal with them. Only three to five hours a week is the estimate of the organizers. Of course it’s much more if you review all of the resources, both core and advanced, answer all of the questions, do all the thinking and engage in all of the interactions with fellow participants (some 40,000 of them!).

But we all have other demands in life, both professional and personal. During the first week of the course many participants expressed a feeling of being overwhelmed by it all. How could one possibly do justice to all of the wonderful opportunities being presented simultaneously? A few left brief notes of good-bye, saying this obviously wasn’t their kind of thing. Not what they had signed on for.

The parallel with everday museum life, to me seems striking. And the solution to the dilemma, I suspect, is the same.

I can’t speak, of course, for all of those who appear gloriously successful in their museum careers, nor for all those who will be gloriously successful in completing the EDC MOOC (#edcmooc). But I can tell you my own survival strategy in the face of overwhelming obligations.

It’s an old strategy (but a good one), and I didn’t invent it. In fact you’ve certainly heard of it before. When dealing with large numbers of trauma victims simultaneously, healthcare professionals have to make quick decisions about first, second and third priorities in providing care. In their work, these decisions may be a matter of life and death. It works, and they call the practice triage.

I have found my work in museums and my MOOC experience to be similar. I have to sift quickly through the lists of things to be done, whether a result of attaining my own objectives or responding to the demands of others. And I mentally sort them into three imaginary piles. The first and smallest pile is called ‘must be done immediately.’ Must be done or the sky will fall, others will suffer, or I will suffer shame and humiliation (yes, it’s that visceral).

The second imaginary pile of tasks is called ‘can wait for just a bit,’ and the third is called, ‘one of these days, when I get a chance.’ That last one is always the biggest.

Now the magic of this system, at least in my world, is that it’s self organizing. I can get to work immediately on the most urgent items without having to worry or even think about the others. And I soon begin to reduce the size of the first pile. Usually someone else will ask for something in the second priority pile and that pressure will send it up immediately to top priority status and I start dealing with it. Some items in task pile number two I select myself for attention, whenever I get a breather from the most urgent items.

Best of all is the news about obligations in the third, or lowest priority pile. Some develop sufficient pressure to rise in the hierarchy. But my own experience shows that many of these third-rank obligations turn out to have been illusions. They were never serious obligations but only spurious artifacts of my own over-heated sense of duty. Many were heaped on me from outside sources who were never serious about what they were asking for in the first place. After awhile everybody forgets about these and they just disappear.

Try it. If you’re anything like me you’ll get great satisfaction from dealing with first things first. And your mind will be happier and healthier knowing that much of that guilt list you are coping with is purely imaginary and before long will melt away of its own accord.
[Photo by Brett Neilson, CC License]

Museums and E-Learning (#edcmooc)

There are plenty of fascinating things about museums. And one of the most intriguing is that during the 20th century anyway, museums have been one of the few places where adults (and children) could experience informal or free-choice learning. During that century, the educational mandate rose to become one of the primary goals of most museums.

Vatican Map Gallery

Visitors to the Map Gallery at the Vatican Museum.

In spite of the speed with which museums embraced the world wide web, few of them seem to have become equally enthusiastic about the prospect of expanding their on-site educational activities into the online environment. Meanwhile, the rest of the world, including most of the mainstream educational institutions are taking up online learning, or E-Learning in a big way. The internet has meant that the potential museum visitor today has many options for free-choice learning.

I’m a big fan both of museums and e-learning. Combining the two seems to me like a natural extension of the visitor experience for museums. The museum visitor who has enjoyed an online learning offering before arriving at the museum will not only come armed with a pre-ignited enthusiasm for seeing the actual artifacts, but can also spend more time examining and appreciating those artifacts and less time reading the wall-mounted didactics.

The museum visitor who delves into online learning after the visit can re-kindle the excitement of the museum experience and be more highly motivated to undertake additional museum visits in the future.

So why are more museums not exploring the potential for delivering leading-edge e-learning?

I hope to explore answers to this question during participation in my first MOOC, E-learning and Digital Cultures, offered by the University of Edinburgh (https://www.coursera.org/#course/edc). Supposedly some 36,000 participants are signed up, with lots of emphasis on networking via social media. Should be mind-blowing. #edcmooc

[Photo by Mark, GNUFD License, Creative Commons]

Apologies to the Hamilton-Area Museum Educators

Still feeling badly about this. I had promised to attend the peer learning circle (PLC) held by the Hamilton-area Museum Educators (HME) last Monday. Unfortunately, an urgent personal matter prevented me from going and I had to bow out at the last minute. The kind folks at HME have said “no worries,” but it’s the kind of thing you never want to happen.

So as partial compensation, I am mounting here the slides I would have used for my 15-minute talk. This leaves out what I would have said, of course, but you should be able to get the general gist.

By the way, they still had a great day in Hamilton. You can learn more about it on their blog HERE.

Apologies, HME. Hope you’ll invite me back another time.
-Dave Barr

QR Codes in The Museum Context: Part 2

Posted on by

Yes, Just Do It! – But do it right

I’m delighted to have had the opportunity for having some of my thoughts on QR codes for museums published in Muse (vol. XXX, no. 4, pp. 34-47, July 2012). But with the high cost of the print medium these days, there is never enough space in a magazine article. That article, as a consequence, was devoted primarily to exploring some of the exciting possibilities QR codes offer for a new level of engagement with the museum visitor.

Multicolored QR codes

Multicolored QR codes for the Muse web page.

That article was very much about ‘why do it?’, not ‘how to do it.’ So this blog posting gives me the opportunity to move beyond the limitations of print to begin the exploration of best practices when working with QR codes for the museum visitor.

There is actually some controversy surrounding the use of QR codes in museums. Perhaps that’s not surprising. There are usually radically different opinions about the use of any new technology in a museum (as there are about a lot of other aspects of contemporary museological practice).

Some museums have been unsatisfied with the results of their experiments with this technology. There is usually a reason for this, however, and that reason usually involves not only ‘how-to-do-it,’ but how to do it well.

In museums it’s important to continually try out new ways of doing things, including the use of new technologies. It’s also important to do it right and to start evolving a set of best practices for the most promising initiatives.

I’ve discussed some of the things that can go wrong (and how to avoid them) in my earlier post, ‘Kickstarting The Mobile Museum.’ (http://innogenesis.info/2012/03/kickstarting-the-mobile-museum/) For a start, those of us who are enthused about, for instance mobile applications, have be aware that especially since the technology is new, not everyone knows what it is and how it works. I am reminded of the detailed instructions prepared by telephone companies for users of the new rotary-dial telephones introduced from about 1920 to about 1950, depending on the exchange. These instructions would still probably be helpful to any of today’s teenagers faced with using a heritage phone to dial a call. Not every smartphone user has downloaded and used a new app.

QR code converted to a distinctive design.

QR code converted to a distinctive design.

When I’m working with any mobile technology in a museum, and QR codes are no exception, I consider a 25-point checklist that must be satisfied before the offering goes public to the museum visitor. Introducing a new technology is an area where failure is not an option. Fail, and forever more when a new mobile technology idea comes up it will immediately be squashed by the nay-sayers and opponents of innovation who will chant, “We tried that once already and we know it doesn’t work.” Don’t let this happen to you. Get it right the first time and improve your odds of success.

Prepare for Success

Here are a few of the things that have to be in place if QR codes are to be a success in the museum setting:

1. Design your own unique code. Make it attractive enough to encourage those who find the raw, black-and-white patterns unattractive. Distinctive code imagery will also discourage the planting of spam codes that could link visitors to commercial websites.

2. Make it big enough and be sure it is accessible to smartphones. Be sure it is sufficiently well-lighted to scan well. Test, test, test, and test again to make sure that different smartphones and different QR code apps can access your content.

3. Make sure the code leads to a mobile-friendly web page. Mobile web design is not the same as conventional web design, but it is something any web designer can manage easily.

4. Answer the question, “Will our visitors be able to find out what a QR code is and what it can do for them as soon as they walk into the museum?” Or if they miss it upon entering, will they still be able to learn how to take advantage of your rich media offerings at any time during their visit?

5. Be sure to use codes consistently and in a number of different ways in your organization. And keep it up. A one-shot effort that lasts only a few weeks is unlikely to become a hit

6. Check to make sure that there is a strong cell phone carrier signal available throughout the areas of your building where QR codes are in use. Otherwise, provide free wifi access. I recently visited a museum that used a smartphone app in their basement where the carrier signal was so weak you could not download the app. I had to leave the exhibit, go back upstairs to download the app, and then return to the exhibit before I could take advantage of the rich media features. Every little barrier that stands between your visitor and effective use of your offering can cause the whole program to fail.

Reap the Benefits

When done right, QR codes still represent one of the best ways to go in reaping the amazing potential for increasingly rich engagement of the museum visitor through mobile technologies. The advantages include:

1. QR code readers are available for every major mobile operating system. They are cross-platform, so you can take advantage of the ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) approach. Visitors bring the smartphone hardware with them, in their pockets. The museum does not have to supply physical devices, unless it wishes to do so to provide a larger view-screen or as a supplement, for visitors without a smartphone.

2. Because most museums are already involved in the creation of websites and exhibition graphics, effective QR code links in the gallery are remarkably inexpensive to implement.

QR code in use in a street advertisement

QR code in use in a street advertisement

3. Because implementation is inexpensive, it is easy to change and improve content. Systems are easy and economical to maintain.

4. QR code use depends on a smartphone app with which many people are already familiar because of its widespread deployment in product marketing. You don’t have to create a new, proprietary app that only works in your institution or for each new tour or treasure hunt you want to offer.

5. QR codes offer access to a wide range of rich media options – images, audio, video, 3-D animations – in fact, anything the internet has to offer.

6. Interactivity, engaging the museum visitor in mobile dialog, is possible.

And finally, learning how to do it right with QR codes is sure to prepare you for taking advantage of the tsunami of future museum mobile technologies that is already starting to swell.

References: Here are a couple of more links that may be of interest

http://www.technologyinthearts.org/2012/03/part-2-wikimedia-and-qr-codes-in-the-museum-setting/

http://www.pro.rcip-chin.gc.ca/carrefour-du-savoir-knowledge-exchange/ansm_qr/description-about-eng.jsp

 

It’s Official – We’re Now Mobile Friendly

Posted on by

With the installation of the Weaver II theme, this blog is now mobile friendly. It can be easily viewed on smartphones and most other mobile devices, as well as looking pretty much the same as before on computer browsers.

Mobilization of websites is becoming more and more important as slowly-but-surely, the smartphone replaces the personal computer as the must-have information/communication appliance of the future.

QR Codes in The Museum Context: Part 1

Posted on by

Museums Bring QR Codes Into Play

[The text of this post first appeared in my article, 'Museums Bring QR Codes Into Play,' published in MUSE, vol. XXX, no. 4, pp. 34-37, July 2012.]

As technology continues to rapidly change the way we communicate with one another, it also continues to evolve. Today there are several means for museums to communicate with their public; among the newest, easiest and most versatile is the QR code.

What is a OR Code?

A QR code is a graphic image. Each one looks like a random array of black and white squares, a sort of warped checkerboard, grouped in a small frame. Much like the linear bar codes that we are more familiar with, QR codes contain information, text or numbers that have been made into a graphic. Similar to the bar code, each QR code can be scanned and decoded. Today this decoding process can be done by any individual owning a smartphone with a reader application, often referred to as an “app”.

QR code leading to the Muse homepage

QR code leading to the Muse homepage

The initials “QR” stand for Quick Response. If the QR graphic encodes a web address, the smartphone app decodes the message quickly, activating the phone’s browser and retrieving the web page within moments. The user has immediate access to any electronic media that has been encoded. The most obvious reason for a museum to leverage QR code technology is to enhance the visitor experience.

Museums Already on Board

Although some of us are unfamiliar with QR codes, they can be found everywhere, even in museums and galleries. Any museum can develop their own QR code guided tour for exhibitions, galleries, or the whole museum by using this simple and affordable technology. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is already using QR codes on the construction site. They decided to incorporate the codes around the perimeter of the site as a way of offering descriptions to what pedestrians see as they walk past the building. Visitors can “scan-to-learn” about the building process and about architect Antoine Predock’s vision of a building swirling upward to the clouds. There are five stops in total. The content, available in both English and French, is also on their website for remote audiences. The information about the construction site is being used as a test run for a potential QR code tour of the museum. “Visitor response to date has been very positive,” said Corey Timpson, director of design, new media and collections at the CMHR. “The initiative has been picked up by the local media as there is high local interest in the building’s unique design, its complex construction, and the diversity of materials being used.”

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. currently has 14 QR codes posted in its Ocean Hall. By using the codes, visitors with smartphones can view related pages from the NMNH’s website Ocean Portal directly on their phones. Other museum users include the Mattress Factory Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in the U.S., the Derby Museum and Gallery in the U.K., and the Powerhouse Museum in Australia. These organizations have realized that communication with the public is rapidly changing and are adapting to common visitor practices.

QR code on the exhibit brochure for the David Hockney exhibit at the ROM.

QR code on the exhibit brochure for theDavid Hockney exhibit at the ROM.

Last October, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) opened an exhibition featuring David Hockney’s digital paintings. They placed a QR code which gave smartphone users access to download a free full-colour Hockney digital original to use as a cell phone wallpaper. The QR code was printed in their programs and events printed guide entitled let’s ROM. It also appeared at the entrance of the exhibition and the ROM made five more Hockneys available during the course of the exhibition. Dr. Julian Siggers, vice president of programs and content communication at the ROM, says: “We will indeed be using QR codes in upcoming major exhibitions and in some of our permanent galleries. We are currently working on this as part of a new digital strategic plan for the museum.” In addition, the Association of Nova Scotia Museums has worked in partnership with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), to prepare a how-to guide for using QR codes in museums.

QR codes give museums the opportunity to build anticipation and engage the public in new ways. The National Museum of Scotland (NMS) is using them to gather visitor contributions for a social history project. They have posted QR codes on over 70 objects in one gallery. When visitors scan a code they receive enhanced multimedia information content and are invited to record their own comments on the artefact. Alison Taubman, the principal curator of communications at NMS, is quoted in the Guardian newspaper of Edinburgh, saying “[this] project is a great example of how museums can not only give visitors more information about objects and stories, but also involve [them] by adding their own responses to the objects, whether personal reflections or additional resources, to let others find out even more.”

QR Codes: the Possibilities

These tiny graphics are so versatile they can be used in a variety of ways, limited only by the user’s smartphone and the creator’s imagination. Temporary QR code labels in a gallery can mark specific objects as stations in a treasure hunt. When each station is reached, the QR code offers information about the object and gives clues on reaching the next station. Prizes can be a product or service, or a donation from a co-sponsorship partner, such as free admission to a sister cultural attraction. The flexibility of QR codes gives visitors the opportunity to provide instant feedback on exhibitions. Their feedback can be moderated and incorporated into the museum’s website. Visitors can provide input and respond to what other visitors are saying, thereby creating a forum for discussions. This approach connects museum visitors to each other and builds a community. If your institution uses social media to engage audiences, instant access from a smartphone will broaden your horizons. QR codes can offer a quick way to bring a new “Friend” in to “Like” your museum’s Facebook page.

Mock-up of an exhibit label

Mock-up of an exhibit label with a QR code leading to an online video showing glass blowing technique.

Quick response codes in print materials can drive more traffic to a museum’s website. This is exactly what happened for the ROM as a result of the Hockney advertisement. Print and TV advertisements often display URLs and trying to remember them or write them down can be challenging. Viewers will be more inclined to scan the code out of curiosity if each of those print links were replaced by a Quick Response graphic; the code can link to anything.

Quick Response codes in collections and exhibitions can be used to connect to books and reproductions in the museum gift shop, or vice versa. If an artefact is linked to the gift shop, visitors might be more likely to buy items related to their experience. They will know exactly what they are looking for without needing to spend extra time trying to find the right gift item. There is no limit to what these codes can accomplish once the system is set up.

Strategically placed QR codes could link to “you-are-here” maps. A code could cross-link from an iron stove in the kitchen of an historic home to a stack of firewood beside the back door. A code could open a video showing the use of various fuels for winter heating. Using relevant cross-links, visitors can choose their own meaningful path through the museum and create their own learning experience.

It is also possible to use cross-linking on a larger scale. Hyperlinking, which is the ability to jump instantly from one concept to another, is the most powerful asset on the World Wide Web. The judicious use of QR codes can turn a museum or historic village visit into an experience in hyper-reality. This type of experience puts the visitor in touch with the subject matter in a different way than a museum curator or educator might. A name has already been coined for this type of experience — augmented reality. This term signifies the extension of real-world experience through additional sensory input such as sights, sounds and concepts which excite the imagination and expand perception.

Getting Started

Fortunately it is remarkably inexpensive to get started with QR codes. They are also substantially less expensive to maintain than any number of current technologies. A QR code is easily handled by designers and effortlessly integrated into the work flow of label production. The software for creating the codes is widely available on the Internet and mostly free.

Illustration of how a QR code could be used to bring a visitor to a museum's Facebook page.

Illustration of how a QR code could be used to bring a visitor to a museum's Facebook page.

Coded links to the web can prove useful in researching your public; every time a museum visitor is directed to a page on your website, you can use web server data or special services like Google Analytics to track the activity. This visitor research data can indicate which codes are used most frequently and which displays in the galleries are most popular.

The best way for any museum to decide whether to try QR code technology is to carry out an environmental scan. How popular is this technology now? How popular is it going to be? Which age groups are using it? Many students on group tours are already using their smartphones. Why not leverage the use of this technology in museum galleries to bring the excitement back to the objects on display?

Using QR codes in museums can help change popular perceptions and engage tech-savvy visitors. Some place-based apps like FourSquare and Instagram are already extremely popular with smartphone users. Other applications with a specific museum focus like SCVNGR, MoblMuseum and Exhibit.ly, are just starting up. Now is the time to take advantage of these applications and technologies. The ROM’s director and CEO, Janet Carding, appears to be impressed by the potential of these technologies in fostering involvement with the museum visitor. “We’ve been hugely helped along by the challenge [that] everybody brings an encyclopedia to the museum in their own pocket.”

QR codes themselves are starting to show up everywhere in our high-tech culture. Once you know what to look for, they become obvious in all kinds of print materials, on products and in public places. “With the penetration of smartphone usage in Canada being as high as it is, we’re confident that QR codes are not a fad and will become a significant marketing tool for Canadian organizations and businesses in the coming years” said Tracy Ruddell, assistant vice president of marketing at the ROM. Considering the low start-up costs, it makes good sense to get involved now, during the early QR code adoption curve.

[For more ideas on how to use QR codes for museums, see my post entitled, 'How Does Your Garden Grow?' This is about using QR codes in a small botanical garden, and after all, what are botanical gardens but living museums?]

Should a Museum’s Reach Exceed Its Grasp?

Posted on by

The poet, Robert Browning, is famous for (among other things) these two lines from Andrea del Sarto:

“Ah, but a [hu]man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”

What about museums? What might we consider a museum’s reach, and what its grasp? One answer may come from the strategic planning exercise.

2-Dimensional Museum Model Illustrating Reach (Stature) and Grasp (Interactivity)

When we enter into strategic planning for a museum or for any of the similar CB/VSO (collection-based and visitor-service-oriented) organizations, a consideration of the institution’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) is usually considered mandatory. This is because setting reasonable goals for the institution’s future is only possible when these parameters of its current situation are taken into account.

Recently, in the midst of one of these exercises, I heard one participant ask for suggestions of the museum’s current strengths. Another participant was eager to add example after example of their accomplishments and international acclaim. Then someone else said, “These are only examples of the depth of the museum. What about its breadth?” I knew what the questioner was talking about.

And I began thinking that these concepts of depth and breadth of the museum said a lot about the organization and should prove useful in assessing the overall strengths of any museum. In the strategic planning context, we should be interested in the ratio of depth to breadth both now and in the desired future, 3 to 5 years hence

What might be considered part of the depth of the museum? Obvious candidates are its collections (size, quality and diversity), disciplinary research carried out, professional publications, critical acclaim, professional awards, size and excellence of professional staff, international reputation, academic library and archives, presentations at professional conferences, and its ‘prestige.’  Can it be said to be one of the most respected museums? In the long run, rather than ‘depth,’ I would be more inclined to call this important characteristic of a museum its ‘stature.’

What then is meant by the breadth of an organization? Likely components are the number and frequency of public exhibits, public amenities, public information sources, participation in social media, attendance numbers, positive reviews in the media, visitor comments, positive visitor research parameters, word-of-mouth, top-of-mind awareness, general media coverage, radius of visitor catchment area, diversity of programs and audiences, attendance at programs, level of engagement with visitors and community, level and effectiveness of marketing, promotional and PR activity, and educational activity. All of this might be summarized as the ‘buzz’ the museum creates. Can it be considered one of the most ‘cherished’ museums? Again, rather than referring to this museum trait as ‘breadth,’ I’d prefer to think of it as ‘interactivity.’ It’s all about the degree to which the institution is engaged with and connected with its visitors, its potential visitors and its community.

There may be valid ways of quantifying the stature and interactivity characteristics of any museum, but normally an exhaustive listing of strengths under the two headings will suffice to give an adequate qualitative picture.

Qualitative assessments of strengths in stature and interactivity can be easily visualized as two dimensions of organizational achievement; with stature as the vertical axis and interactivity as the horizontal axis, The museum can now be modeled in visual terms, as in the diagram above. This type of modelling allows for rough, qualitative comparisons of where the organization is now, vs. where it wants to be in the future

These two types of museum strengths both contribute to assessing the value offered by the organization. The ’value’ of stature lies in the potential for contributions to the solution of world problems, to the preservation of heritage, and contributions to human self-knowledge (self and environment). Museums of very great stature are high in public awareness. Here then is something that might readily be called a museum’s ‘reach’ – the universal significance and recognition it longs for.

The ’value of interactivity, on the other hand, is that it advances the goals of education and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, a high level of public engagement is, in most cases, the key to accessing adequate resources. This characteristic, especially with respect to the ability to command the financial resources needed to carry out all programs, might well be identified as the museum’s ‘grasp.’

A museum can have great stature with very little public engagement and still be of great value. But will it be able to access sufficient resources to sustain its operations? Such a museum is a little like an iceberg, with 90% of its resources invisible to public view.

A museum can have great interactivity with the community coupled with very little professional stature and be flush with resources. But is it then much different from a commercial amusement park?

Back to planning for stature and interactivity in scenarios of increasing, stable or decreasing resources. If funding is expected to remain stable, do you want to increase either stature or interactivity at the expense of the other?  What if the current resource base appears to be decreasing? Would you then want to put desirable increases in stature on hold to favor interactivity that might generate new funding? Those rare instances where resources are projected to increase mean you have the luxury of deciding exactly what kind of a museum you want to be.

Thinking about museums in this way during the planning process can be useful in achieving a healthy balance between stature and interactivity in an environment of limited resources.

A  healthy and balanced museum will have sufficient public engagement, like the extensive, nourishing root system of a great tree, to sustain the majestic crown of leafy branches that reach upward towards the sky. So with museums, as it is with humans, optimistic reach is a good thing to keep in mind, but an effective grasp is essential to realistic survival.