Entertainment Vs Education

[R. Manigandan]

How can Entertainment component of an educational exhibit be studied?

[Mingfong Jan]

There are two elements in your question that need clarification--entertainment component and educational exhibit. Assuming that we are talking about museums that display historical artifacts in order to inform the learning of history, then the entertainment component could be the artifacts themselves for someone or the digital tools (such as videos) that are used to explain the artifacts for others.

Some educational researchers are studying how people learn by playing games using case studies, ethnography or other methods. That might be a starting point.

[R. Manigandan]

Thank you for reply. But it seems multimedia in an exhibit is only the entertainment component from the discussions. But this could not be established by any evidance. This gives an idea to me that the distinction between these two is very complicated.

[Brett McLennan]

I probably need you to unpack this a little bit more -- the statement may be better posed as engagement vs education. Also the type of exhibit and the context in which it is situated.

A broad example of this across across an entire exhibition is a measure like dwell time.

Typically a longer dwell time signifies greater engagement with an exhibition with visitors staying longer in the space. In theory the longer the stay the greater the engagement. Many factors effect a measure like this including how busy a show is (engagement may be low; but it takes time to move through given a crowd making dwell time appear greater).

Brett

[R. Manigandan]

Thank you for your reply. Actually here the question of what attracting visitors to a museum. Hence my interest was to find out the relation between Education and entertainment.

[Lynda Kelly]

Hi there. I studied this issue in my thesis and is summarised on a post on my blog called Learning vs education vs entertainment??.

There is alot more detail on this topic in my actual thesis - various chapters can be found on my wiki (scroll down the page a bit). The relacvnt chapters are 2 (literature review); 5 (Stage 1 discussion) and 7 (conclusion).

Overall, I found that it wasn't an education vs entertainment debate, but that in visitors' minds the concepts worked together. As Brett states, context is really important, as are people's attitudes to museums before they even visit them. Some of the work I did in this area is also in my thesis - in summary seeking entertaining and educational experiences are important motivators for visiting and what makes them different from theme parks for example.

Best of luck,

[R. Manigandan]

Sure. I read your blog atleast five times in the last month. It is really informative and the approach is suggestive. Also I have got the pdf versions of the chapters from wiki. My observations in the indian scenario is not matching with some of the key points mentioned in those chapters. That is where exactly I wish to take my probe. On many occasions the visitor behavior is not accountable. What brings them to a tourist spot? How do they decide the loc. What influence them other than their earlier experience? etc. I hope our discussion and your expertise on this will help me to understand further in this context.
R. Manigandan

[Lynda Kelly]

This is great, thank you. One thing I concluded in my thesis was that these constructs may be culturally constructed, and you've clarified that nicely for me.

When I was in Germany last year this was really made clear to me as the German words 'education' and 'learning' are almost totally the opposite in meaning to the English. So where I found education had "control" and "school" associations in my Australian sample, in Germany these are associated with the word "learning".

I'm really glad you're taking this work further and have joined our network. Good luck.

[R. Manigandan]

Mr. Brett,
The time of engagement of the visitors in some of the galleries are more. But visitors are not showing much learning. But they answered that they were satisfied. The question here is what provides this satisfaction to them? Can it be concluded as Entertainment aspects?
R. Manigandan

[R. Manigandan]

I want to study the various visitor behaviours of entertainment and education in a museum setup. I could hardly get few visitor characterestics for entertainment like laughing, sharing with groupmates or family. Can you please add some good characterestics to study?

[Lynda Kelly]

This is a tough question. Maybe you could get a small sample of people to describe to you the kinds of behaviours they associate with the word "entertainment" and use those as a starting point, especially as there may be different meanings in an Indian context compared to an Australian one for example. If they are having trouble with the question you could ask them to descibe a recent entertaining experience and then unpack that with them to develop a list of behaviours??

I think it's going to be hard to decide what behaviours demonstrate "entertaining" and "learning" (for example sharing with groupmates/family to me is learning).

[R. Manigandan]

I mean to say, people in groups or with friends wish to share their remarkable experiences (good or bad) can go with entertainment (no doubt about learning involved in it). Thanks for the idea to bat the ball to the visitor's court to get it back. I shall try it out and soon get you the result in Indian context. Thanks.

[Robert]

I think that it also go es back to how the experience is marketed or promoted? That can set up a ertain level of expectation in the visitors mind before they even walk in the door. For instance a theme park is often promoted as an 'entertainment' experience and a museum is often promoted as an 'educational' experience. However both are leisure time activities and the museum can be promoted in that way to audiences who wouldn't visit an 'educational' institution. Museums can also link into marketing/promotional themes such as 'developing creativity', 'developing community' and 'developing awareness', especially when looking at children/family audiences. However if the actual visitor expeience is very didactic and doesn't match the promotions/marketing then you can have problems.