How to develop educational content in digital environment for children in art museum: a proposal for content design framework based on visual thinking strategies

Abstract

Art museums have taken the role as a communicator in which educators strive to create an active conver-sation with visitors by using the museum’s collection. Over the last century, art museums have experienced changes in educational approach. One of the recent developments has been the incorporation of digital tech-nology. Nowadays, the use of digital technology in art museum seems to be an imperative element due to the societal acceptance of the technology into daily life of the public. Despite the active use of digital technology, there has been little research on the practical use of digital technology in art museum. When designing educational contents, the existing guidelines that art museum used to use are inapt for ed-ucational contents offered through digital technology. In art museums, educational programs are provided by face-to-face interaction between the educator and visitors in art museum. However, this interaction cannot be sustained in a digital environment. Therefore there is a crucial need of a new framework that can help educators transfer this face-to-face interaction with a new way of interaction. This study proposes a frame-work that can be practically used by art museum educators when designing an artwork-centered educational content in digital environment specifically for children. This framework integrates various aspects of informal learning in digital environment with Visual Thinking Strategies which is one of the art interpretation methods, readily used for young visitors. The framework suggested in this study was applied to design an educational content which was then im-plemented to develop an iPad application. The application was evaluated in order to preliminarily verify the effectiveness of the framework for practical use. The result of this study shows that the framework can be an effective guideline for art museum educators in designing educational contents. In conclusion, by addressing the need for developing the intera...