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Young peoples' sense making in museums and virtual reality
Halmstad University, School of Social and Health Sciences (HOS), Center for Social Analysis (CESAM), Social Change, Learning and Social Relations (SLSR).ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1870-683X
2008 (English)Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

My research interest lies in investigations of how young people use and make meaning of museums. In former research I have focused on teenagers who do not want to participate in museum activities. In my forthcoming study, I am instead interested in museum settings where they have acknowledged the development of contemporary media and ideas about learning and communication and are said to be successful in engaging young people in their activities. The research questions are what these museum exhibits mean to young people who are accustomed users of new media technology. How do young people engage in meaningful activities and what role does new technology and media play in these learning processes? How do these new learning processes influence young people’s use of museums? In this presentation I will outline the design for the first part of my study, in which I will compare young people’s use of virtual meeting places, like Second Life, MySpace and so forth,  with their use of museum exhibits. The comparison between the use of museums and the use of websites like Second Life may be seen as farfetched. However, there are some similarities, which this research will try to take advantage of. The museums often use sensory metaphors when they give form to their practice. For instance, the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg advises the visitors to “come in and open their senses”. At the same time, this could also be the case for websites like secondlife.com. One of the creators Linden Lab vice-president of product development Cory Ondrejka, explains that “Second Life is intended to be a canvas, rather than a world that constrains residents to a specific theme or style… residents have already created areas with fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, western and dozens of other themes. Their skills and desires determine how they experience the world, rather than the artificial limits of a typical RPG grind.” This is a description that goes in line with the multi-sensory, emotional and aesthetically driven ideology and discourse often used by the museums when they give form to their practice. When acknowledging the multi-sensory and aesthetic dimensions of the informants’ practice, their actions can also be studied as experiences of perception. However, this does not only imply visual perception. Therefore, I aim to develop a “sensory ethnography” as research method, in order to recognize and acknowledge the multi-sensory and aesthetic dimensions of the studied learning processes. In doing so, video camera will be used by the researcher to conduct video interviews in which the informants shows and talks about their sensory experiences of acting in the different settings. Hence, the websites and exhibits in this project are not to be regarded as merely surfaces to experience visually or texts to be “read”, but as a medium to experience with all your senses.

 

 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2008.
Keywords [en]
Museum, Virtual reality
National Category
Pedagogy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-4399OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-4399DiVA, id: diva2:318946
Conference
Designs for learning. 1st International Conference in Stockholm Sweden, March 3-4, 2008
Projects
Young people's sensory experiences and meaning making in virtual realities and museumsAvailable from: 2010-05-11 Created: 2010-05-11 Last updated: 2013-10-15Bibliographically approved

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Fors, Vaike

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Citation style
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