Encouraging museum visitor engagement using spontaneous talk-in-interaction audio guides

Elliston, Brian and FitzGerald, Elizabeth (2012). Encouraging museum visitor engagement using spontaneous talk-in-interaction audio guides. In: 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2012), 16-18 Apr 2012, Porto, Portugal.

URL: http://csedu.org/Program/2012/CSEDU_paperList.htm

Abstract

We describe the building and testing of a museum audio tour with content recorded as spontaneous interactive dialogue between two curators as they walked around an art gallery. The aim was to produce a guide which would increase the amount of topically relevant talk shared by people visiting a museum in groups of two or more. Conversation analysis is used to show how a pair of visitors engaged more with the content of the guide than they would have with audio produced as traditional scripted monologue. Examples of a variety of engagement types are detailed and a supporting rationale drawing on Goffman's theory of 'footing' is discussed. The approach potentially offers a low cost way for organisations involved in informal learning to produce flexible in-house audio content for mobile and e-learning, which improves visitor engagement both with the content and with one another, and leads to a more enjoyable visitor/learner experience than traditional forms of audio.

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