In my ideal job, I would muse about museums all day long, tinkering in the intersections of exhibits and education, of theory and visits. And I’m very fortunate in that for part of each week for part of the year, I get to teach a history and theory class in a graduate museum studies program. Even better–this year, I’m overseeing the master’s theses, so I get to witness a dozen and a half students–some of them with lots of museum experience, some of them with a bit less–emerge into the profession, their first big academic project under their belts.

The rest of my time, I occupy myself as a teaching consultant at my local university–meaning I help faculty be more thoughtful about their teaching of undergraduates. My days could easily degenerate into a series of canned workshops on grading tests, using the university’s course management system, or lecturing. Such workshops typically draw few people. And at a university with thousands of instructors, it gets pretty disheartening when only three people show up to a workshop.

Instead, at our teaching resources center, we’re taking a different approach. While it is important that faculty know how to write a test (how else can you assess students in a course of 750?), it’s also important that they see one another as resources. Instead of weekly workshops, then, we’re trying something different. Here’s a sampling:

Every Friday during the academic year, between 15 and 30 faculty come to hear their peers talk about innovative strategies they’re trying out in their classrooms. An ecologist recently spoke about how he’s using technological tools to make his 500-student course feel smaller. A geologist talked of how she records four-minute-long videos revisiting a key concept from her lecture, then posts the videos on YouTube. A physician talked of how he uses online simulations in the continuing education of doctors throughout the state.

We publish a monthly newsletter, The Electronic Envelope, that brings faculty up-to-date with not only what we’re doing at the teaching resources center, but also alerts them to the hot issues in pedagogical discussions today. Many of our faculty are very much caught up in research agendas, and they don’t have time to keep up with the latest and greatest in undergraduate instructional practice. So we write short articles–almost like blog posts–on such issues as reading among Gen Y students, digital literacies of students and faculty, and strategies for improving visual literacy.

We offer quarterly More Thoughtful Teaching (MTT) symposia, each comprising three hours of presentations, workshops, and conversations. Each MTT takes a different form and supports a different strand of undergraduate instructional practice. Our most recent MTT focused, for example, on fear and anxiety among faculty and students. We had the director of the university’s student mental health center give a talk on student mental health, and then over lunch we sat at themed tables to discuss anxieties we and our students feel over such subjects as technology, copyright and intellectual property, and evaluating students and courses. The theme of the event was inspired by this passage anatomy and cell biology Professor Tom Marino of Temple University wrote in 2000:

“I knew why I liked the safe humanistic classroom now. It was the classroom I have always wanted but was afraid to try. Yes, I too was afraid, and fear was not only part of my students’ classroom it was part of my classroom too. So what could I do and how was I going to do it?

I was going to make my classroom a safe place. A place where students did not just learn about the facts but also learned about each other and the implications of the facts they were learning. It was important no for me to begin to create a place where my students felt free to explore and grow along with experiencing the subject they were studying. In my safe, humanistic classroom, my students will be learning as much about themselves and their relationship to the subject and their colleagues as they are about science facts. We will all be working together to learn.”

Why am I telling you all this? What does this have to do with museums?

Plenty. All of our activities are aimed at helping faculty interact with and help one another. We put forward questions–and the opportunity to ask questions–and listen and moderate as faculty answer those questions in ways that make sense to them depending on their disciplines and where they are in their careers. We’re providing a “third space”–not the home, not the classroom or lab or office–where faculty can exchange ideas about teaching–where they can learn to take risks that will likely improve their instruction. If we can reach even 100 faculty members each year–and we are in contact with far more instructors than that–we can impact the lives of thousands of undergraduates, as well as graduate students who have these faculty as mentors.

Similarly, the best museums–through exhibits, outreach, and other educational programs–seek to meet people where they are, and help them take the next steps on their journey toward making their communities a better place. This gets back to the post on museums and civic discourse I wrote back in March. Funding issues aside, many museums are ideally positioned to serve as these “third places” where people can be changed and be inspired to effect change in their communities.

I spent a couple years working for a small science center, first as an educational outreach specialist and then as an exhibition developer. In both roles I was called upon to tailor our exhibits and lessons to meet the needs of classroom teachers–that is, I needed to make explicit in the appendices of our teacher guides exactly which of the state’s science standards our programs met for each grade level. The science center’s assumption, then, was not only that classroom teachers needed help meeting the standards because they didn’t have the temporal and financial resources to teach these subjects in their own classrooms (which was true), but also that the state’s standards of scientific literacy by grade level made sense.

Such an assumption troubles me. Yes, Americans in particular could benefit from supplemental learning opportunities that boost their scientific and historical literacies. That said, should we let the state dictate the content of our exhibitions and education programs? I’m considerably less interested in making sure that a fourth grader understands the basics of electricity and magnetism and can build a simple compass than I am in getting that fourth grader to think through the hard choices we have to make about the sources–coal, wind, petroleum, solar, geothermal–of the electricity that powers her home. I’m more interested in helping a seventh grader and her parents understand why it’s not safe for a huge school bus depot to be sited in their neighborhood–and helping them combat rising rates of asthma among urban children–than I am in having that same girl understand the finer details of how the cardiovascular system functions.

Let the schools teach students to make compasses and diagram bronchioles. Our job as museum professionals is to provide the learning that students frequently can’t get in schools because of conservative school boards, high-stakes standardized testing, or for myriad other reasons.

But to get to the community–to those youth and adults most in need of this kind of advocacy and information–museums need to partner with institutions they don’t normally court. In my previous post on civic discourse, I mentioned supermarkets as one space for advocacy about foodways. But there are plenty of other spaces as well.

For example, say you’re doing an exhibition on AIDS or HIV, and you’ve seen these stats:

Black people have come to bear the greatest burden of AIDS in America. They represent 54 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases in America, 70 percent of the new cases among American youth are Black, and nearly 67 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases among American women are Black, and 43 percent of the new cases among men are Black. Most importantly, the majority of those still dying from AIDS in America, totaling more than 18,000 last year, were Black.
(BlackAIDS.org)

Why wouldn’t you partner with local African American churches as well as correctional facilities where African American men are incarcerated in numbers out of proportion to their representation in the United States? If you work for a science center, you can reach out to churches, even though in the U.S. we tend to see science and faith as oppositional.

Another example: Increasingly, Americans are growing food in community gardens, in abandoned lots, in their backyards, and even in their front yards. After more than five decades of waging war on weeds in their suburban front lawns, citizens are realizing that lawns can be an environmental nightmare. Add to that a dawning realization that our food sources are insecure, and you have an increased interest in urban agriculture. (Did you know there are people farming in the increasingly abandoned Detroit suburbs?) Whether your institution is dedicated to history, art, or science, there are myriad opportunities to connect with local communities around growing food: tours of local suburban homesteads, workshops on how to grow tomatoes–even on an apartment balcony in a hanging basket (and don’t forget to give away tomato plants), classes on how to compost, quasi-guerrilla gardening projects in underutilized public or private spaces, or contests to see who can grow the biggest pumpkin or the tallest sunflower in each neighborhood in your city or town. Set up a sustainable garden on your museum grounds, demonstrating how to safely recycle “gray water.” Write labels and install educational signage in your town’s communal gardens. Showcase how people historically conserved, transported, and used water and food in your region. Hire some local artists and horticulture experts to collaborate on an art garden, where the beauty is in the garden itself but perhaps also in sculptures made from “freecycled” objects.

The earth is dying, our educational systems are in many ways dysfunctional, and Americans’ health is declining. Museums can’t afford to be apolitical in the face of such challenges. We don’t need our exhibit labels to express radical political beliefs, but our actions and partnerships need a radical overhaul.

What museum-community partnerships do you find exciting and inspiring change in their regions?

I know this content of this post isn’t news for the museum professionals who read this blog, but I get some search traffic from people looking for more general information about museum-going. This post is meant for them.

Did you know that during conversations they have about science museum exhibits, parents are three times more likely to explain scientific concepts to boys than they are to girls?* Here are some tips on helping your daughters and other girls get the most out of museum visits. (Note: All of these tips apply to boys as well!)

1. Before going to the museum, check out the museum’s web site. Many museums offer tips to teachers (and, by extension, parents) on how best to prepare children for a visit to that specific museum. Some museums even have materials designed for teachers, including background materials as well as worksheets for kids or (better yet) pre- and post-visit activities. (See, for example, these resources from the National Museum of American History.) If you can’t find any such materials on the web site, try calling the museum’s education department to see if they have any age-appropriate materials available related to the current or permanent exhibitions. Let these materials inform your visit to the museum.

2. Familiarize yourself with the subject of the exhibitions before you go to the museum–but don’t overdo it. This might be as simple as reading a few pages on Wikipedia. If you can find children’s books or newspaper or magazine articles on the topic, share these with your children. But don’t pressure your kids to absorb too much before the visit–you don’t want to burn them out. Just pique their curiosity–and give yourself some background knowledge so that you can help your kids understand the context of the objects and activities at the museum.

3. If you’re going to a very large museum, make a preliminary visit without your kids. Large museums can be tiring, so it’s a good idea to get an idea of what’s in the exhibition halls before you show up with your daughter. Bonus: If you’re at an art museum that has an audio tour, take it! That way you can gain a better context for the art and you can use this knowledge when you visit the museum with your children.

4. Call ahead to find out when the museum is most crowded–and then avoid those hours. For many museums, the best time to visit is early or late in the day on a weekend, or after 3 p.m. on school days.

5. Talk to your kids while you’re in the exhibition. Ask them questions about the art, science phenomena, or objects on display. Ask open-ended questions that require an answer of more than a word or two. Connect what you’re seeing with your daughter’s interests or other experiences in her life. And remember: don’t shy away from scientific topics, especially if you’re a woman yourself. You want to model for your daughter the satisfaction we get from asking intelligent, interesting questions and seeking answers.

6. Talk to museum staff and volunteers on the exhibit floor. In science centers, aquaria, and zoos, there will often be education staff available to engage with your family and to answer your questions. These people–many of them volunteer docents or “explainers”–tend not only to be trained to work with children, but also have a passion for the subject.

My experience in art museums, unfortunately, is that there are fewer people available to answer questions, unless you tag along on a docent- or curator-led tour. In this case, don’t be afraid to approach the security guards and ask them questions. Chances are they’ve overheard information from the tours and can share something about the art with you. Despite their sometimes stern demeanor, many of these guards enjoy being asked about their expertise or opinions. If they can’t answer your questions, they might be able to point you to someone who can.

7. Don’t be afraid to interact with other families. Too often, museum visitors wander around in their own little family silos. Most kids like to interact with other children, so if you see an opportunity–for example, at a hands-on science center or children’s museum–to let your daughter try an activity with another child, encourage her to play.

8. Even if you’re especially well-prepared for your visit, don’t be didactic–that is, overly instructive. Pay attention to cues from your daughter to see what interests her, and follow her lead.

9. If appropriate, purchase souvenirs at the museum store–and I’m not talking about the cheap little plastic crap near the register. You don’t need to spend a fortune, but if there’s something relevant to the exhibitions that is affordable, interesting, and age appropriate, then purchase it for follow-up activities (see #10). I especially like The Savvy Source’s tip to purchase postcards of the art you have seen in a museum, and even to start a collection of such postcards for your children.

10. Plan some follow-up activities. If you’ve been to an art museum, make plenty of art materials available to your children for the days following your exhibit. We have a table set up in a corner of our kitchen where our almost three-year-old sits down a couple times a day to draw, paint, glue, cut, and hole punch his way to happiness. It’s a mess, but he gets a lot of joy from it, and learns a lot, too. (His preschool teacher is amazed at his attention span for arts and crafts. Little does she know we’ve inculcated him at home. Heh heh.) You could even place the postcards from tip #9 on the wall for inspiration.

If you’ve been to a science exhibition, go to your local library and find books of related science experiments. I recommend just about anything by Janice VanCleave–her experiments are simple to do and make concepts clear.

Parenting and education bloggers have been very generous with tips on museum-going. Here are a few:

• How to Visit a Museum and Not Die at Opinión Sur Joven
• Tips for a Family Visit to the Art MuseumM/a> at Harmony Art Mom
• Tips for a Museum Visit with Your Little One, from Savvy Source
• Using Museums in Education at Cultural Connections
• How to Make a Trip to the Art Museum FUN for Your Child, from The Artful Parent

What are your thoughts? Share your tips for (and frustrations about) visiting museums with children in the comments.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.

*Kevin Crowley, Maureen A. Callanan, Harriet R. Tenenbaum, Elizabeth Allen (2001). Parents Explain More Often to Boys than to Girls During Shared Scientific Thinking. Psychological Science 12 (3), 258–261. (Abstract)

I’ve decided to move this blog to the WordPress platform. Welcome, and please pardon the dust–and weird things in the sidebar–as I find a new template, update links, replace lost images, etc.

Things should finally be looking better–I hope!–in the next few days.

FORUM: What difference can museums make by engaging the public in civic dialogue?

This is a second question around the Winter 2008 issue of The Public Historian journal. The issue explores the topic of “Sites of Conscience: Opening Historic Sites for Civic Dialogue.” Editor Randolph Bergstrom writes in his forward, “At sites in the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, museums are inviting the public into conversation about contemporary civic concerns, linking remembrance with current issues to affirm and build civic voice and critical democratic engagement.”

The Public Historian and H-Public would like to know what you think!

“What difference can a museum make by offering spaces for civic engagement and/or dialogue for addressing contemporary issues?”

Along with the guest editors, we are inviting commentary and conversation about the articles and ideas in this issue. We hope that H-Publicans will join in by:

* sending a message to H-Public (H-PUBLIC@h-net.msu.edu). Tell us whether you agree or disagree that museum can make a difference by offering spaces for civic engagement for addressing contemporary issues. Have you seen or can you see these types of discussions happening in your community? Share with us about examples from your experience. This is a question for everyone interested in public history - students
as well as professional practitioners!

* staying tuned for blog reports from the National Council on Public History (NCPH) conference in Louisville, Kentucky next week, where there will be a session devoted to discussing the special issue of The Public Historian and the questions it raises. (If you’re planning to be at the conference, the session is #27, held on Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m.)

Through the conference, the listserv, and the blog, we are hoping to create a more extended conversation around this stimulating collection of articles - so please feel free to join in! A link to the conference blog will go out to H-Public subscribers on each of the four days of the conference.

————

Visit the table of contents of the “Sites of Conscience” issue.

For an EXCERPT FROM THE FOREWORD, see below:

“Sites of Conscience: Opening Historic Sites for Civic Dialogue”

ABSTRACT:
Sites of Conscience are historic places that foster public dialogue on pressing contemporary issues in historical perspective. This foreword to a collection of essays from members of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience highlights diverse approaches to opening historic sites for civic dialogue. The collection explores the challenges sites around the world face to hosting public conversation on difficult subjects in their different political contexts, and some of the strategies they have used to address those challenges. The foreword reflects on the perspectives international examples provide for U.S. museums that seek to serve as Sites of Conscience.

FOREWORD
Liz Sevcenko and Maggie Russell-Ciardi

In 1999, a group of historic site directors from around the world came together to explore how their museums could serve as new centers for democracy in action. Directors from the National Trust of Britain and the National Park Service in the United States shared their experience preserving sites like the Workhouse and the Martin Luther King National Historic Site–places that confronted the failures of their long-standing democracies, and how citizens fought to improve them. Others were activists who had only recently struggled to deliver their countries from violent repression, like directors of the District Six Museum in South Africa and Memoria Abierta in Argentina, and who believed that remembering sites of both abuse and resistance were critical in the transition to democracy. From these wildly different perspectives, the group emerged with a common commitment:

“We hold in common the belief that it is the obligation of historic sites to assist the public in drawing connections between the history of our sites and its contemporary implications. We view stimulating dialogue on pressing social issues and promoting democratic and humanitarian values as a primary function.”

With this statement, the diverse group challenged themselves and museums around the world to take responsibility for promoting public engagement in the contemporary civic issues that matter to them most– that is, promoting the democratic process. They called themselves the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. Since that meeting, these and hundreds of other museums around the world have joined the Coalition’s ongoing dialogue about how to put its founding statement into practice.

To explore the role of historic sites in building democracy, it’s important to define the processes we think comprise it. In recent years, increasing numbers of institutions in the museum field in the United States have advanced the idea that museums should serve as centers for “civic dialogue” and “civic engagement.” There is no consensus about what these terms mean, but several institutions have put forth their own definitions and issued challenges to the field to recognize the importance of these kinds of initiatives and explore what they can represent in various local contexts…

(You can read the full text of the Foreword online.)

If you’re not a member of H-PUBLIC, you can join through the H-PUBLIC home page. Simply click “Subscribe!” at the top of the left-hand column.

Some of the issues the symposium raised for me:

• What do spaces of civic engagement look like, and with what kinds of institutions should we be collaborating?
• What do museum civic engagement and advocacy look like in an age of culture wars?
• How do we build conversations and discussions into civic discourse?
• How can I get more museum folks on board with social media?

Note: Some of what I write about below was raised during the symposium, while some of it came to me afterward; the details of who said what are now mixed up in my mind. Apologies if I’m not always giving credit where it’s due–corrections are welcome.

What do spaces of civic engagement look like, and with what kinds of institutions should we be collaborating?

These spaces are unlikely to look like traditional exhibits, especially those you see in older natural history and art institutions (first-generation museums) and push-button exhibitions (second-generation museums). They may look something like science centers or children’s museums (third-generation museums). These spaces must allow for interactivity, encourage curiosity, reward discovery, and facilitate problem solving.

These places don’t necessarily look like auditoriums, although a panel/forum discussion might begin in an auditorium and move into spaces more conducive for small-group, face-to-face discussion.

These places are comfortable, familiar and/or stimulating, and, in a best-case scenario, free of charge for community members to access. They will be on public transportation routes as well as have plenty of parking for cars and/or bikes. In other words, we want to remove any psychological hurdles to attendance: “It’s too hard to find parking in that part of town,” “I don’t have a car to get there,” “I can’t afford that museum’s admission fee,” etc.

For more information on what these spaces should look like, check out Herman Miller’s research on “places to teach, learn, and grow.” The company lists six must-haves for up-to-date learning spaces:

• Adaptable
• Social
• Stimulating
• Healthful
• Resourceful
• Sustainable

These spaces may also be outside of museum buildings completely–for example science cafés, where a “casual meeting place, plain language, and inclusive conversation create a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere for people with no science background.”

We may find ourselves reaching out to constituencies we never really imagined. Do you run a science museum? Do you have an exhibit on AIDS or STDs? Have you reached out to the local African-American church? AIDS is a major concern in African-American communities, and data published this week shows that STDs are a growing epidemic among African-American teen girls. Years ago, when I was a reporter in Long Beach, California, I remember a nurse telling me about the presentations she did in African-American churches about HIV transmission and AIDS treatment options. Why shouldn’t science museums, or museums focused on African-American culture and community, get involved in this kind of advocacy?

It’s also possible, of course, to encourage conversations within museum spaces–and then partner with organizations (like churches) to continue the conversations off-site. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a faux diner where visitors can “order” seafood and get immediate feedback on their choices via video. Visitors can also tuck the aquarium’s tiny brochures about sustainable seafood into their wallets so they know what not to order the next time they’re dining out. The little cards are useful, but when I purge my wallet, I’m likely to toss it because my wallet is already thick enough. So how then does an institution continue to reinforce a message about sustainable eating? Institutions wanting to spread information about sustainable eating should partner with local supermarkets to get the word out to community members. For example, my local supermarket chain, Nugget Market, labels the fish at their butcher counters with red, yellow, or green labels to indicate each fish’s sustainability as seafood. Why not go further? Encourage the supermarket to label all its meats and dairy products in that manner: Which product manufacturing processes are the most polluting? Which kinds of food production consume the greatest number of resources? Extend this labeling to fruits and vegetables, and you’ll even reach vegetarians like me.

Depending on your particular issue or institutional mission, partnerships (both traditionally likely and unlikely) might include working with:

• churches
• supermarkets
• malls
• managers of indoor public spaces (such as those found throughout San Francisco)
• public transit
• local bands and symphony groups
• local environmental justice activists
• commercial entities related to your mission/issue (e.g. partnering with a local utility on an environmentally-themed forum and campaign)
• universities
• school districts (think beyond the obvious: try to reach new audiences on kindergarten enrollment days, or at open house and back to school night)
• pet stores
• radio stations
• restaurants and bars (think themed “science pub quiz” with prizes)
• furniture dealers (get them to donate flexible furniture for your new stimulating discursive spaces)
• local sports franchises
• . . .and so many more organizations

We also need to ask ourselves what it is about our museum spaces that makes visitors uncomfortable–what is keeping them from speaking to other visitors? There’s not a whole lot we can do right away with American cultural mores that keep strangers from speaking freely with one another, but we can try to chip away at visitor reticence by ensuring all visitors feel relatively at ease. (Of course, we can also put visitors ill at ease in order to get them talking–I’m thinking in particular of the “Colored” or “Whites Only” doorways through which visitors must pass in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Field to Factory exhibition.)

This process of understanding what puts visitors at ease involves not only surveying visitors and undertaking observations of visitor behavior, but also placing ourselves in spaces that make us uncomfortable. For example, a few years back, I visited the Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters in Southern California. My husband, cousin, and I had decided to visit on the day after Christmas because we’d always wondered what was going on in that building with the big “Happy Birthday Jesus!” sign on the roof. From the moment we entered, there was so much about the decor, the commercial spaces, and all kinds of details about the building that made us uncomfortable to be present in that space; there was no way we were going to engage with other visitors. What was supposed to convey to TBN’s intended audience a lesson about the gospel of wealth (the gilded banisters, the paintings and sculptures that adorned the place) only spoke to us of corruption, of money that was sent by working-class folks to pay for
“ministries” but that instead was invested in garish buildings.

What details of your museum might visitors find off-putting if not suspicious? Again, the point is not to make your visitors feel entirely comfortable–some of the best learning takes place because we are uncomfortable–but rather to identify those points where you can remove obstacles to engagement for visitors who are not in your core constituency.

What do museum civic engagement and advocacy look like in an age of culture wars?

One person participating in the final large-group discussion expressed her concern that she doesn’t want to dialogue in her scientific institution with creationists or racists. Nina Simon paraphrases this comment as “I don’t want my institution to be a place where it is safe for THOSE people to air THEIR beliefs.” I think Nina is spot-on. While I can in some ways understand the impulses from which this speaker’s sentiment arises, I also feel we can’t bar the doors of our institutions from “those people.” Can we moderate the discussion a bit? Certainly. Can we discourage racism and ignorance? Yes–and serving as a forum for civic discourse is one way of discouraging such beliefs and practices.

That said, we have to pick our battles. Museums, of course, are perfectly within their rights to serve as forums for discourse only on subjects that fall squarely within the museum’s mission. And sometimes it is difficult–if not impossible–to talk with people who refuse to open their minds to other possibilities. But we can’t lump all “those people” together into one camp, because we need to take a different approach to discourse with each of them. For example, take talking with creationists or racists. My experience in talking with creationists is that they feel they have enough pseudoscientific research to support their claims–or, rather, to refute the claims of evolutionary biologists, and thus can be difficult to engage in meaningful, mind-changing conversations. Racists, on the other hand–and here I’m talking about your everyday ignorant racist, not people who participate in organized hate groups–may not have thought through why they hold the opinions they do, or they may express particular beliefs they feel are grounded in reality but which are actually easily refuted by more level-headed folks.

Sometimes we need to come at an issue from an alternative angle, perhaps by conversing at the intersection of two issues. Take creationism and racism, for example. In talking with a creationist, I might push her to more fully explain her beliefs, and in so doing, I might discover that some of what she believes is rooted in racism. (See this interesting article on how both evolution and creationism have been used to promote racist beliefs and behaviors.) Would I accuse her outright of being a racist? No. But in leading the conversation down that path, she might better understand why–beyond its obvious false statements of “fact”–I find her belief system troubling. And maybe that would make her reconsider her position. (My guess is also that some of your harder-core racists–e.g. white Christian nationalists–are also creationists, which raises a whole bunch of other issues.)

But just because these conversations could take place doesn’t necessarily mean museums need to be facilitating them. And certainly not all museum staff participating (as institutional representatives or more casually on their own time) in such discourses are keen enough facilitators to handle such hot-button issues.

I believe that museums can and should take on such issues. Too often these complex issues become black-and-white in the public eye. Evolution vs. intelligent design. Racism vs. antiracism. When these issues are presented as dichotomies, we feel compelled to pick a side and fight for it tooth and nail. But if we ask new (or at least new-to-our-audience) questions that don’t let people settle comfortably on one side of another, then we open up avenues for discourse. I can see a museum hosting a forum with the title “Is creationism racist? Is evolution?” And the answer to both of those is “at times, deployed in certain ways, yes.” But it can be deeply discomfiting to hear that your side of an issue has been compromised morally or ethically. It forces you situate yourself more thoughtfully. You might, over the course of an evening, move from “I believe evolution is the only way to explain life on earth” to “I believe evolution is an excellent explanatory mechanism for life on earth, but we need to be careful how we explain its workings because there are huge cultural ramifications to this discussion, especially concerning human evolution.”

I think museums also can provide facilitation to these discussions–we can help people rediscover (or learn for the first time) how to have conversations, how to be listeners and be listened to, how to talk civilly with people whose opinions they find distasteful or offensive. After all, haven’t we already been challenging and correcting people’s beliefs through exhibit signage and interactives? Let’s make those challenges collective and connective by transforming them into civic discourse.

How do we build conversations and discussions into civic discourse?

I guess I’m not sure how much museums can tackle “civic discourse” head on, other than by providing space and hosting/modeling good discussions. We need to provide inspiration and space for people to start the conversations that will snowball into larger civic discourse. At the symposium on Saturday there was some discussion at lunch as to what constitutes discourse vs. discussion vs. conversation. I don’t have an answer (yet), but we can’t wait for museums to figure that out before we dive into the realm of civic discourse.

Here are some sample forums I think museums might host in a variety of formats and spaces (online and off), as well as some ideas for community-based research projects museums might facilitate, particularly if they have scientists on staff:

• What would we do as a community if our city ran out of oil? What contingencies should we put in place? For what actions should we be lobbying local and regional government bodies? (Thanks to Nina Simon for her references to the serious game World without Oil.)
• In an era of high-stakes testing, how can we be sure our children discover the joy of learning?
• Do we redevelop our downtown area for the wealthier people we hope will live there once construction is finished, or for the working-class people who already live there? For example, at the redeveloped mall, do we put in a supermarket (since there’s no grocery store downtown) and a Target or do we anchor the mall with Nordstorm and Saks?
• What’s the best neighborhood in which to site a much-needed but unattractive and potentially polluting industrial process/plant?
• Why are asthma rates rising among children in our urban area, and how do we remediate this trend?
• What are the best ways–in terms of ease, feasibility, and cost–to reduce our city’s carbon footprint by x thousand/hundred thousand/million tons? (What are we willing to give up? What big and little changes are we ready to make? What are we willing to pay? And what are our next steps?)
• Where does our community get its food? Is this the most sustainable and widely affordable method of procuring sustenance?

When does conversation become elevated to the level of discourse? When it engages diverse constituencies in a common discussion about important issues with the goal of defining specific steps to take as community members or recommendations to make to community leaders.

How can I get more museum folks on board with social media?

What’s your institution’s plan for engaging visitors online? Now that the InterConnections Report has concluded that “Internet users are more likely than non-users to visit museums and public libraries and to visit them more frequently, particularly in the case of museums” (22), there’s no excuse for not engaging with Internet users because these netizens are already more likely to visit a museum than people who don’t use the Internet. Interesting content online–content to which visitors can contribute as well as learn–is only going to help your museum raise its visitor numbers and its profile in your community.

What’s keeping your museum staff from embracing key online social networking platforms? Technophobia? Lack of conviction that these tools work? A dearth of time? My personal experiences tell me that even a small, focused investment of time into social media provides a good rate of return.

I think it’s very important not to overlook online spaces when we’re thinking about how to encourage and facilitate discourse. Social media, when used properly and in partnership with key influencers, can be exceptionally powerful in all kinds of ways. I’ll write more soon on how to identify appropriate social media platforms for achieving different institutional goals, how to develop a social media campaign, and how to measure and evaluate the results of that campaign.

If you’ve never seen Twitter, when you first visit the site, you may be overwhelmed by all the junk–in so many languages–on the home page. Don’t let that distract you. The point of Twitter, from a reader’s perspective, is to “follow” the “tweets” of interesting individuals and organizations, as well as to participate in multi-threaded conversations. Currently, I follow 65 people, and there are 56 people following me.*

Because many of the people I’m following also follow one another, I’m privy to some very interesting conversations. In fact, I recently attended the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative conference, where attendees used Twitter as a back channel for discussion of the sessions. People asked questions of one another, highlighted good points, and even offered critiques of the speakers’ ideas while the sessions were underway. For some people, such a channel is a distraction, but it enriched the conference for me; it also served as a handy form of networking, because I could initiate a conversation with folks from other institutions by referencing one of their tweets. Our conversations have continued, weeks after the conference.

In short, I’m a bit addicted to Twitter because I’ve fallen in with a good crowd.

But what can museums learn from Twitter’s popularity?

1. People like information in small chunks. Yes, we already know most people don’t read labels, but Twitter limits each post to 140 characters. When you read someone’s tweet, therefore, you’re not committing yourself to much text. But Twitter provides a nice number for us to work with: 140 characters. What can you say about an artifact or phenomenon in 140 characters? (Try it. It’s not easy.)

2. People like the challenge of communicating in brief. It’s fun to post updates and ideas in 140 characters or less. Where in your exhibits or on your web site might you ask visitors to contribute? How can you make these small chunks useful to your institution, to contributors, and to their fellow visitors?

3. People like to have a customized information stream delivered directly to them. As museum marketers, we already may target our audience with direct mail or e-mail that matches what our relationship databases tell us about them; we can segment our audiences, for example, by membership levels or events attended. But. . .

4. People like to choose what is in this information stream. Unlike in traditional nonprofit marketing efforts, in Twitter, the customer opts in to a very particular and very personalized stream. No one user’s Twitter stream is like any other. Best of all, if someone’s tweets fail to interest me or otherwise become irrelevant, I can simply stop following that person with two clicks of my mouse.

5. People appreciate ideas and humor. The Twitter users with the most followers appear to be those who are witty or who ask thought-provoking questions and provide thoughtful answers.

6. People like relying on their perceived peers as resources. On Twitter, it’s common to ask a question and get several answers–including links–in response.

7. People like to serve as resources to others–and not just to their peers. In my Twitter stream, there’s a lot of geek speak. Educational technologists and faculty at various points in their careers jump in to help one another at times of frustration and crisis. There’s a good deal of satisfaction to be had from helping out someone you perceive as more advanced than you–or at least further along in his or her career than you may be.

8. People like to eavesdrop. One of the benefits of Twitter is that I can listen in on conversations and brief exchanges to which I might not otherwise be admitted. I want to know what other people and thinking and saying about what they’re experiencing in an exhibition.

9. Conversations carry over easily into other media. Frequently tweets prompt blog posts or even video responses–to which people tweet in response, continuing the cycle. When I see something worth talking about in your museum, where can I continue the conversation? Do you make it easy for me to connect with like-minded visitors? Do you have an RSS feed set up that will alert you that I’ve posted something on my blog that references your institution by name? Will someone on your staff respond to that post within a day or two?

10. People want their information delivered in the fashion they choose–and many like it piping hot. Twitter allows people to receive updates via Twitter’s own web interface, via cell phone or handheld, or via software developed specifically so that users don’t have to continually hit their browsers’ refresh buttons in order to see the latest updates. I must admit I’m a bit chagrined when I post an update or question to Twitter, then hear a coworker’s cell phone buzzing because she’s signed up to receive my tweets in that format.

So yes, a lot of this you already knew from experience and from all those books and articles you’ve read about audience engagement. But all that stuff you learned the hard way doesn’t necessarily carry over into a networked, web 2.0 world. And yet some of that old learning can be expanded very fruitfully into new virtual spaces.

In my next post, I’ll show you some ways museums can use Twitter intelligently and meaningfully. I’ll also, as usual, point you to what some really smart people in the museum blogosphere are saying about Twitter and what they’re already doing with it.

*You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/lesliemb. My updates are protected, so you’ll need to get permission to follow me. Please send me an e-mail at leslie -at- museumblogging -dot- com to introduce yourself, and then I’ll be happy to add you as a follower. I also automatically follow everyone who follows me, so be sure to provide me with some Twittery goodness in exchange.

Update: It appears images from older posts didn’t come along for the ride to the new host. I’ll be gradually finding and re-uploading these images. Apologies for any omissions.

So I put myself on autopilot and observed people in the store.

Much has been written about how in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, museums–and especially history and natural history museums–developed in step with department stores. And studies of the traffic patterns of museum visitors and department store customers could certainly be shared between the institutions to everyone’s benefit.

In a history or natural history museum, there’s usually some kind of narrative to the exhibits. Ditto (though we may not realize it) in department stores. The different mannequins and clusters of designers and clothing labels speak to particular customers, and the items on sale work in concert with one another in a silent cross-promotion. In higher-end stores like Nordstrom’s, sales associates are ready to help interpret these narratives for you–and, more importantly, to help you insert yourself into the appropriate narrative. Don’t believe me? Walk into a high-end department store and tell them you have a job interview coming up. You’ll find yourself to be the protagonist in your own story quickly enough. The sales associate who adopts you will tell you what a shirt “says” or what messages the cut of a particular suit jacket sends.

To those of us new to such service, it can feel a bit overwhelming, but if, like me, you’re clueless when it comes to fashion, chances are you’ll walk away grateful for the assistance.

Things are considerably different in the self-service section of my local Kinko’s copy shop. The store was busy this afternoon, and all of the staff were occupied assisting customers in the full-service department. Every once in a while a harried employee would find her way over to the self-service section to fix a jammed machine or to help a self-service customer who waited for assistance in the long full-service line.

But for the most part, we were fending for ourselves. It soon became obvious that I was the resident expert. (As a Ph.D. in the humanities who spent months in museum and library archives, I know my way around a photocopier.)

Among the questions I was asked by flustered customers of various ages, genders, and ethnicities:

• Is this a copier?
• How do I open it?
• Why won’t it start?
• Where do I pay?
• What kind of card can I use to pay?
• Where does the copy come out of the machine?
• How do I copy onto a different kind of paper?
• How do I align the paper on the glass?
• Where do you work?
• Are these your books?
• How do I get my credit card out of the reader?

As a (reluctant) expert in photocopying, it took me about five seconds to use the touchscreen to select the appropriate paper drawer and then zoom out to the appropriate magnification to capture the entire page of each differently sized book. (Free tip: 95% or 93% reduction works really well for a two-page spread of most books, and allows for notes in the margins.)

I was shocked, therefore, to see people–even college students and recent college grads–struggling with the machines. After 20 years of using the damn things, their workings and quirks are transparent to me.

Apparently, this is not the case with most Kinko’s customers in my university town.

Stymied, people began to talk to one another, and then began pointing to me as a resource. And while personally I think it shows a major gap in customer service at Kinko’s if customers are providing assistance to one another, there’s a lesson here to be learned about patron interactions.

I’m thinking specifically about science centers. Your average science center is going to have a few exhibits on the floor that require the collaboration of two or more visitors. And chances are that same exhibit floor will be understaffed by volunteer or paid docents. Exhibit signs and labels can provide instructions on how to conduct the activity and information on phenomena being displayed.

What would happen if we removed some of these signs? Learning might suffer–but only if we limit our learning objectives to a narrow set of scientific concepts.

What if we redefine our learning objectives for any given exhibit to encompass the learning of new ways of constructing knowledge? After all, it’s debatable which is more important: that visitors learn the entire range of phenomena causing climate change or that visitors learn to feel comfortable discussing climate change with friends, family, casual acquaintances, and strangers. After all, they can always look up the facts after they leave the exhibit. But we miss an opportunity if we don’t get people talking and collaborating within the exhibit.

Of course, the best exhibits will draw from both the Nordstrom’s and the Kinko’s paradigms of customer service. We need to accommodate all learners, introverts as well as extroverts. But when you’re presenting a new(ish) subject–be it climate change or photocopiers–and your exhibit floor is understaffed, you had better be providing a climate where visitors can ask questions of one another. Otherwise you’ll end up with patrons who walk out in frustration, feeling stupid and unskilled.

What’s your approach? More importantly, what do visitors and patrons see as your approach?

I definitely have WIWWIWI-itis when it comes to information and knowledge. On the one hand, I inherited my father’s incredible patience for the bricks-and-mortar world. I can wait in line without complaining, as long as no one cuts in front of me. I can wait for packages, and I don’t tend to complain when they’re a few days late. But all that patience goes out the window when it comes to learning. I’ve been spoiled by the Internet and by my university’s extensive online databases. Having to order a book through interlibrary loan is agonizing to me. If I want to know something, or learn something, my first stop is Google. Even though (and maybe because!) I earned a Ph.D., I have little tolerance for the tortuous prose of scholarly articles in the humanities. Give me an abstract, stat!

I suspect I’m not alone. (No, really!)

My museum-going hangups

This combination of real-world patience and my insistence on WIWWIWI when it comes to learning makes museum-going a wee bit dangerous. I’m an unpredictable visitor. I can stand in front of an African-American quilt for 20 minutes, lost in the pattern, hearing jazz in the improvised shape of each piece. In such situations, I feel additional information would be intrusive. I know something about quilts, enough to satisfy my visual consumption of such a piece. But place me in front of a contemporary painting, and I’m flustered. Regardless of whether I think I “get” the piece or not, I want some quick information. How have other people–amateurs and experts–interpreted this work? I want to absorb multiple interpretations, and I want them immediately.

When I walk into a science center, I want to try the manipulables. And I’m happy to read the labels’ explanations of the phenomena on exhibit. But often I also want to find out more about a phenomenon while I still have the manipulable in front of me. The best way for me to do this would be an Internet search or a chat with a very knowledgeable explainer. But docents and explainers tend to have a superficial knowledge of the phenomena on exhibit–because that’s all many visitors need–or they have a scripted explanation that I find tiresome. (This is true of history museums as well as science museums.)

WIWWIWI on the exhibit floor

How do we deal with people like me? I suspect all visitors experience this frustration from time to time.

The answer is not, I suspect, simple or singular. But I’ve heard of some innovations and I’ve brainstormed a few (though I suspect they aren’t truly new). So here’s my list of just-in-time learning aids that might be tested in your institution. I’ve tried to include tactics that benefit your institution through increased goodwill and greater contact hours with patrons (and potential donors).

Give me WIWWIWI materials.

• Provide docents or explainers that not only know the exhibit script, but who are truly passionate about the pieces on which they’re elaborating. Assess your front-line staff’s and volunteers’ interests to be sure they’re in the best place for them. Use “mystery shoppers” to help you determine where individual staff and volunteers perform best.
• Similarly, provide docents with notepads so they can take notes about visitor interests and jot down visitor contact info to marketing or education so they can follow up with specific visitors. If I can’t learn something right now, at least reassure me that you can–and will–point me to further resources. I’ll be grateful, you’re getting my e-mail address or phone number, and you’ll have an opportunity–and permission–to make further contact with a patron.
• Docents might use these same notepads to write down titles of books, URLs, names and contact info or sister institutions, or other resources for visitors. Tear off the sheet of paper and hand it to me, the happy visitor.
• Alternately, place little pieces of paper and golf pencils throughout the exhibit. Let me take notes and take the paper with me or leave comments for you in a dedicated box.
• Give me access to a kiosk where I can learn more about a specific work. These kiosks should allow touch-screen browsing, as well as provide me with a place to enter my e-mail address so that your institution can send me more information on subjects of interest to me–but only subjects I indicate are of interest.
• If your visitors are the kind who carry PDAs, then be sure they can access the Internet (or at least a museum intranet) so they can enrich their own learning.
• Provide mobile-phone-friendly web sites for your visitors so they can learn more by browsing on their phones. Give them numbers to call to learn more about specific artifacts or works of art.

Combine WIWWIWI materials with resources for further learning.

• Give me a way to get additional information on specific pieces or activities in your exhibit–whether that be a series of web pages, a resource list I can pick up in the exhibit, an audio tour, or via a series of follow-up e-mails.
• Host an adults-only discussion café once a month where visitors can meet and greet and discuss the exhibits. Let your marketing and development people circulate among the groups to hear what people are saying and to encourage further involvement with the institution.
• Set up a del.icio.us account for your museum so that visitors can browse–and even subscribe to–the tagged pages your exhibit team might have used while researching the exhibit. Encourage visitors to return the favor by using the del.icio.us “for:” tag to send interesting web-based resources your way.
• Give me a list of terms I can use to search the Internet. Sure, it’s nice when you provide me with a list of specific resources on residential restoration in my region. (Enough r’s for you there?) I’m happy to explore carefully selected websites on the particular challenges of restoring a Craftsman or Victorian home. But I may also want to know how to incorporate some of those Craftsman- or Victorian-era pieces into my 1970s ranch house. Tell me to search for “architectural salvage.” Give me a few fish, but also teach me how catch them myself.

Let me contribute.

• Next to a particularly interesting or popular exhibit or artifact, place a keyboard and screen where visitors can type their comments. Once the comments are screened by staff, the comments can rotate on the same screen between visitor entries or you can have select, particularly moving phrases projected onto the wall. If I’m in an exhibit about the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, for example, I’m probably itching to tell you that my disabled great-grandmother, then a very young girl, had to be carried from the rubble as my great-great-grandparents fled the ensuing fire. It’s a small anecdote, but I’d feel better having shared it, knowing that I’ve contributed some knowledge to the larger institutional project.
• Solicit (multimedia) reactions from me. Let me draw, ask me for family photos or artifacts for an upcoming exhibition, let me record audio. Provide me with a venue to share my insights or expertise with other visitors. If they want to listen, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. But there should be unobtrusive ways to hear other visitors’ thoughts. It’s the same phenomenon I’ve observed in my university classrooms: I’m more likely to share my own thoughts if I already know what someone else thinks. That’s why I have my students blog–and comment on one another’s posts–before class discussion. Students already know what others think, and they come prepared to engage with them–they’re a couple steps beyond where they would be if we went into the class “cold.” The same might apply to your visitors. Let them download particularly interesting audio from other visitors both before and after their visit to your site, or incorporate such visitor reactions into your audio tour.
• Let me have a vote on future exhibits. I’m more likely to come back for another visit if I get a sense of what might be on your docket for the coming year(s).

What are your thoughts, both as a museum-goer and as someone who works within an institution, on just-in-time learning (and its follow-up)?

I was a student of Jacki’s several years ago. Her course “Museum Literacy and Historical Memory” at the University of Iowa was the first (and, OK, only) museum studies course I took. It was phenomenal, mostly because Jacki has so much passion for the topic–a passion that shines through in this interesting and informative article.

I’ll have more comments on this article soon. At the moment I’m busy busy. . .