Creating digital learning sessions for young audiences in museums and heritage sites Katherine Biggs
This tutorial, led by Katherine Biggs from the British Museum’s Samsung Digital Discovery Centre (SDDC), will provide participants with key recommendations for developing digital sessions for informal learning, and an understanding of how to implement these recommendations within a heritage site or museum. The SDDC runs an extensive digital learning programme to support young visitors’ engagement with the museum’s collection. This interactive half-day tutorial will share recommendations based on practical examples from the SDDC to provide participants with ideas to plan their own informal digital education sessions within cultural sites, specifically within object-based learning. The key learning objectives of the tutorial are twofold: for participants to go away with a greater understanding of how digital technology is currently being used within museum education, and to empower them to implement this. The tutorial will look at three key areas within the development of digital learning sessions: audience, content, and the technology used. Within this, it will cover the potential problems of using digital technology within a heritage site. During this tutorial, participants will specifically see how two digital sessions for families were developed to accompany temporary exhibitions at the British Museum: an animation workshop linked to Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind; and an augmented reality code-making session around Contemporary Chinese seals. Participants will then have the opportunity to design their own digital activity using assets from an upcoming British Museum exhibition. Working collaboratively, they will need to consider their audience, content and technology used. Participants wanting to tailor their learning to their own site will be able to bring their own assets to the session. The extensive digital programming implemented by the British Museum’s Samsung Digital Discovery Centre (SDDC) puts it in a unique position. The SDDC delivers informal digital learning sessions 50 weekends a year for over 6,000 family visitors, providing us with a large amount of experience and evidence as to how digital technology can best be utilised within object-based learning. These sessions span the Museum’s diverse collection and are created for different audiences, which means that this tutorial will be relevant to a range of audiences. This session would particularly suit educators looking to introduce or expand their digital learning offering, but is also relevant to those who have a general interest in the capabilities of digital learning for young audiences in cultural sites.
