Assignment Description
Project 3B: Informal Learning, Infotainment and Edutainment

Why do we often yearn to see "the real thing" in a museum instead of just a mediated representation on TV? When we're looking at the real thing in a museum, how can media help us understand and appreciate what we're looking at?

And what qualifies as a museum, anyway? Art museums? Natural history museums? Hands-on science centers? Parks? Theme parks?

Can museum exhibits change the way people think? Feel? Believe? Behave?

What brings people into a museum? What keeps them at an exhibit long enough to learn something? What does technology have to do with it?

In this assignment, you'll choose a topic that you believe people should know more about and design an appropriate museum exhibit to bring it to their attention.

This assignment counts for 25% of your course grade.

Download 4/06/05 presentation slides (PPT 92k)

See examples from last year's group

Proposal for a 9/11 museum (Word)

Music Museum treatment (Word)
Music Museum presentation (PPT)

Film Museum treatment (Rich Text)
Film Museum presentation (PPT)

Your task (team of 3 persons)

  1. (Today) Use Brainwriting (Higgins, p. 125) and Brainstorming (Higgins, p. 118) to choose a topic you think deserves a museum exhibit (for fine art, natural history, science, park, social history, place, aquariaum, botanical garden, zoo, entertainment museum, or the like). For example, you might feel that people need to know more about:
    1. native plants that can be used in landscaping here in Southern California;
    2. the role of Native American peoples in the development of Spanish Colonial culture in Southern California;
    3. the waste cycle, particularly as manifest here in San Diego;
    4. bolemic bottom feeders of Baja;
    5. earliest landscape paintings and naturalists' drawings of North America;
    6. fossil fragments from the firmament; or
    7. manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. (5%, due April 13) Use Story Boarding (Higgins, p. 161; Download Story Board (Word format)) to develop a short proposal that includes:
    1. your names;
    2. a short paragraph describing your topic;
    3. a paragraph specifying what you want visitors to learn, feel, believe, or be able to do as a result of the exhibit; and
    4. a paragraph describing your visitors and identifying their needs. For example, you might be aiming at:
      1. Southern California homeowners, who want to know about basic landscaping strategies, plants that thrive in specific micro climates, and where they can obtain those plants;
      2. school children studying California history who want to know how life changed for Native American peoples with the coming of the Spaniards;
    5. what you would do to motivate visitors to come into your exhibit.
  3. (15%, due April 13) Develop a draft of a treatment (a narrative description) of a museum exhibit that includes detailed descriptions of
    1. at least three objects (or clusters of objects) that are central to or representative of your exhibit;
    2. interpretive material that prompt visitors to interact with each of your three objects in ways that make the objects meaningful to visitors' own lives, interests, and contexts;
    3. media your exhibit would use to deliver interpretive material (video, audio, text, etc.)

    Your treatment should include:

    • drawings or sketches if appropriate;
    • references to the articles listed below;
    • and a short description of how you would evaluate whether the exhibit was successful.
  4. (5%, due April 20) Present your treatment, including any drawings or sketches, to the class.

References

Each person on your team should read one of these articles, share their understanding of it with the other members of the team, and apply appropriate principles in the design of the team's exhibit.

[PDF 11MB] Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Hermanson, K. (1995). Intrinsic motivation in museums: Why does one want to learn? In J. Falk and L. Dierking (Eds.), Public institutions for personal learning: Establishing a research agenda. Washington, DC: American Associations of Museums.

[PDF 9MB] Evans, G. (1995). Learning and physical environment. In J. Falk and L. Dierking (Eds.), Public institutions for personal learning: Establishing a research agenda. Washington, DC: American Associations of Museums.

[PDF 10MB] Bain, R., & Ellenbogen, K. (2002). Placing objects within disciplinary perspectives: Examples from history and science. In S. Paris (Ed.), Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.