2nd December 2009
UK Museums and the Web 2009
2nd April 2009
Making Elearning Visible in Museums
Western man has created chaos by denying that part of his self that integrates while enshrining the parts that fragment experience.
–Edward T. Hall in Beyond Culture
An interesting moment for me during the E-Learning Group’s Think Drink, came when Wendy Earle, Online Education Manager at the British Film Institute, shared her (perhaps slightly depressing) insight that elearning is a marginalized activity within an already marginalized field. Her statement highlights the practical obstacles to elearning, particularly the lack of recognition for educators within many museums. In some institutions, this expresses itself literally in the physical arrangement of offices which places educators in a no-man’s land where they have little opportunity to interact with colleagues from other departments. In others, it manifests when educators are denied access to technology resources, such as the museum’s website, additional workstations and desperately needed software upgrades.
This scene from Jacques Tati's classic Playtime (1967) epitomizes the compartmental (and departmental) thinking that stifles collaboration between educators and technologists in many museums.
The impenetrability of departmental boundaries creates tension between the IT, web or communications teams who manage the museum website, and educators, who do not possess the technical expertise or resources to develop elearning applications on their own. An undercurrent here is the unacknowledged hierarchy of museum audiences, which privileges wealthy adult visitors over children, teachers and ethnic/diaspora communities. If the website is seen primarily as an outward facing marketing tool for members, funders and the press, then elearning initiatives aimed at these less affluent audiences are pushed aside.
Lack of respect for educators’ primary audiences is certainly not the only issue. Museum educators themselves sometimes find it easier to stay below the radar in order to get their work done. Busy with demanding day-to-day teaching activities, many simply have no time to self-promote. Even those who have time, may be uncomfortable advertising their accomplishments because it feels like a betrayal of their authentic educational mission. In addition, some side-effects of increased visibility, e.g., increased work load, managerial scrutiny of existing programs, is a discouragement.
This naturally raises the question: What can educators do to boost their visibility of their activities, and by extension, their elearning projects? Here are five ideas drawn from my own experience. I’m sure there are lots of other great ideas out there:
- Make friends. Establishing good relationships with members of the IT or web teams that own technology in the museum, lays the foundation for potential collaboration on elearning projects. At the Museum of London, Think Drink panelist Rhiannon Looseley sees her role as a vital link between the education and web teams, informing each of the other’s activities and maintaining good communication. Connecting regularly with other departments helps thaw the ice of territoriality.
- Evangelize. Make the rounds to colleagues’ offices for a chat, publish a blog, podcast, internal newsletter, or start an email list to share information about your projects. Organize symposia, retreats or informal gatherings for colleagues where you can communicate and dialogue about your work. In January 2009, the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a conference for its employees on connecting with new audiences through digital technologies. Consider inviting industry experts to these events and collaborate with them beforehand to ensure examples from your work are included in their talks.
- Demonstrate. Use statistics from recent research to bolster your arguments for why elearning is important. As Think Drink participants noted, museum curators and administrators repeatedly raise the same kinds of objections to web-based learning and publishing. For example, if someone claims that putting museum content online discourages visitors from coming to the museum, you can refute this with two recent studies from IMLS and CHIN, both of which showed that visiting the website made people more likely (not less) to make a physical visit.
- Develop, hire or recruit technical expertise. If organizational conflicts make it difficult to establish a cooperative relationship with the IT group, consider teaching yourself some basic technical skills. It has become easy to produce instructional media using online tools that do not require in-depth knowledge of programming. Increasing your familiarity with technology will enable you to speak more intelligently with engineers when making the case for elearning. Another option is to hire a part-time programmer or recruit a volunteer who can assist with small-scale development projects and help bring non-technical educators up to speed.
- Experiment. Try out new ideas through pilot projects that you can develop without outside approval or additional funding. Shelley Bernstein has successfully used this approach to introduce social media at the Brooklyn Museum. Her articles on “scrappy” IT (2007, 2008) are a great source of inspiration. “Going rogue” doesn’t have to be scary, if done in a measured way. Make a list of projects, choose the best three, and imagine how they might be tested through small scale pilots. Volunteer testers can be invited to the museum to try the application if publishing content on the web is a sensitive issue. Once you have hard data and positive feedback, use this to advocate for more resources to fully implement the single most promising project.
As Edward Hall points out, it is an unfortunate feature of Western society that our institutions are dominated by fragmented thinking. In the pursuit of orderliness and efficiency, we break apart organizations and activities into isolated departments which rarely communicate or collaborate well with one another. Though learning (and therefore elearning) is a core activity of our museums, it is often seen as the exclusive domain of educators. If educators take the initiative in spreading their mission and sharing expertise liberally throughout their institutions, it will bring us closer to the goal of integration we aspire to.
On Thursday, 26th March 2009, the E-Learning Group met for a “Think Drink” in a cozy pub in Covent Garden. Three panelists from London museums discussed the role of elearning in their institutions with other learning and technology professionals. The informal atmosphere and relatively small group, led to a lively and wide-ranging discussion of topics including the definition of learning, 3D virtual tours, and “going rouge” to promote Web 2.0 technologies. Thanks to Martin Bazley for organizing the event, and to the panelists: Rhiannon Looseley, Web Elearning Officer at the Museum of London; Carolyn Howitt, Elearning Editor at The British Museum; and Wendy Earle, Online Education Manager at the British Film Institute.
25th March 2009
Susan Chun: An Information Technologist with a Social Mission
Portrait of Susan Chun by Mel Stringer (January 2009)
Ada Lovelace Day provides the perfect occasion to launch this blog by reflecting on the qualities of a woman technologist I admire. Susan Chun is an independent consultant to museums and cultural institutions on information and technology policy. Before starting her own business, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly 15 years, most recently as General Manager for Collection Planning. We first met at a course in Cataloguing by Crowd she taught at the University of Lugano. It was Susan who introduced me to the idea of social tagging artworks in museum collections, which became a central theme of my Masters thesis and the subject of my first grant-funded research project for the Rubin Museum of Art. There are many things I admire about Susan. Here are just a few:
Technology with a social mission
Susan is one of the few professionals I know who successfully blends her passionate idealism about open access to information with a grounded understanding of technology. Her unwavering belief that our cultural institutions should be inclusive in the broadest sense, and that they must cooperate rather than compete with one another, is at the heart of her many technology initiatives. I am continually inspired by her profoundly ethical vision of the role technology can play in improving our lives and transforming us into more responsible citizens.
Susan firmly believes that knowledge should be for the benefit of all, that culture needs to (and can) demonstrate its relevance to a wide and diverse populace, and that such a populace can in turn enrich our understanding of our cultural objects. -Peter Samis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Advocating openness
Linked to this vision is her determined work to remove unnecessary copyright restrictions on cultural materials of all sorts effectively giving members of the public rightful access to their heritage. Before meeting Susan, I was ignorant of these issues as they pertain to museum information. I thought open source only applied to software and even then my notion of “open” was limited. Susan’s efforts to make students aware of copyright issues, and her support of Creative Commons and other key initiatives (e.g., Flickr Commons, publishing of archived exhibition catalogues) are desperately needed. On a personal level, she has taught me not just to appreciate information sharing, but to practice it.
Susan and students enjoying a class discussion at the University of Lugano (October 2007)
A generous educator and mentor
Her deep interest in building community translates into a wide variety of activities. Teaching is one of these. Susan seizes every opportunity to share knowledge, both through formal courses and informal discussions at conferences, panels and other venues. In the classroom, she is a skilful instructor, who takes a genuine interest in students’ individual needs. She does not dash off emails thoughtlessly, but responds to queries with care and alacrity. In an age of speed, such attentiveness is a rare gift. At the University of Lugano, Susan has been instrumental in shaping the curriculum and connecting it more closely with students’ abilities and the working world of museum professionals.
Susan is a passionate person both in her work, her causes, and also in sharing her knowledge through educating others. -Belinda Chu, Sports and Recreation New Zealand
Facilitating collaboration
Susan’s commitment to community also expresses itself through her efforts to promote collaborations between museum colleagues at different institutions. Projects such as the Museum Computer Network Registry where museum professionals can publish and exchange information about their current technical endeavors exemplify this. Susan’s recognition of the need for an easily parsable document allowing museum workers to think strategically about technology, led to the first-ever Horizon Report for Museums. The full report, scheduled for release in 2009 by the New Media Consortium, summarizes cutting-edge technology trends while encouraging museums to focus on the basics.
I most value Susan’s insistence that we behave as a community, not isolated institutions, and develop innovations that can be shared in an open environment. -Helen Abbott, Rubin Museum of Art
Susan presents the Steve project to students at the University of Lugano (October 2007)
Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project
Perhaps no project better exemplifies Susan’s many talents than Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project, which she founded and continues to direct. Originally begun at the Met, Susan obtained a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund research into social tagging and its potential for increasing access to museum collections. To aid the investigation, Susan convened a capable team including programmers from Think Design and the Indianapolis Museum of Art who built an open source tagging platform. Steve tagger can be used freely by other institutions to collect and analyze tags on artworks in their collections. Though the project received press attention and accolades, the findings are perhaps its most significant success. Tagging, as Susan suspected, does offer an entirely new way of engaging visitors with the collections. It improves access by indexing with vernacular terms visitors are likely to search on rather than art historical jargon; and it offers a window onto what viewers perceive, informing the work of museum educators and interpreters.
I admire Susan’s never ending enthusiasm, especially the energy she puts into keeping herself aware of cutting-edge technology advances. -Amalia Sabiescu, TEC-CH Program, University of Lugano
Evangelizing for openness
Like many successful women technologists, Susan is simultaneously effective and self-effacing. She rarely talks about her own accomplishments and often it is only by working with her directly on something that I discover her pivotal role. I learned only recently that she created an innovative model for academic publishing of images from ARTstor during her time at the Met. Whether or not she actively promotes herself, Susan demonstrates a genuineness in everything she does.
Susan leads a group discussion about Web 2.0 for museums at the University of Lugano (January 2007)
One might speculate that she acquired this from the close-knit Hawaiian community where she grew up; from her elite education at Punahou School (which she attended with Barak Obama) and Bryn Mawr College; or her extensive work at other museums and cultural institutions.
I suspect, however, that it has little to do with external factors. Susan possesses an inner fire, a courageousness to speak her mind and do what she thinks is right. Often, this means evangelizing for openness and information sharing through technology in hostile environments. Combining a deep knowledge of the cultural domain, an intelligent approach to implementing technology, the ability to communicate with warmth and eloquence, and a tireless determination to facilitate universal access to culture, Susan is among the few role models for women in cultural technology.
This post is dedicated to Lucia Alyce Abeler Ballard (born 18th March 2009) and my goddaughter Maeline Rothan (age 6). May these young ladies feel free to choose, and have the opportunities to pursue, whatever career path interests them most.
