Presented at 2012 Visitor Studies Association Conference in Raleigh, NC by Kirsten Ellenbogen, Elizabeth Fleming, Troy Livingston and Jeff Grabill

1. Facilitating Learning in Digital
Museum Environments
Kirsten Ellenbogen • @kellenbogen • kellenbogen@smm.org
Elizabeth Fleming • @elizabef • elizabethf@ncmls.org
Troy Livingston • @Troybur • troy.livingston@ncmls.org
Jeff Grabill • @grabill • grabill@msu.edu

2. Take Two Project
Our framing question:
How do web 2.0 technologies Impact Museum
Learning and Practice?
Our focus:
On a science museum blog (Science Buzz) and on the
impact that web 2.0 technologies on museum practice
(MLS).
Our big question:
Do online interactions rise to the level of “co-
construction of knowledge?”

3. Understanding Online Interaction
In Take 2, our investigation of online activity relied on
discourse analysis to characterize that activity, focusing on
four major rhetorical acts:

4. Take Two Project
Some high level findings:
• The Buzz blog is a site where informal argumentation
happens. Lots of it
• There were also high levels of identity work
• There was meaningful community building work as well
• Facilitation seemed to be a big deal
• Clear styles of facilitation were visible
• These styles seemed to be associated with different
outcomes
And so we thought this merited more exploration …

10. 10

12. Learning is an ongoing process of change due to interactions
between individuals and their social and physical environments.
This ecological perspective emphasizes that the activity of learning is
shaped by learners’ interests and needs, their prior experiences, their
companions, facilitators, and other distinctive features of their specific
socio-cultural and physical environments.
In our people-centered view of an online learning ecology, we see
evidence of learning through the examination of an individual’s
adaptations, which may be observed in many ways including their
actions, language, emotions and practices.
For our study of online learning environments, we are particularly
concerned with facilitation, such as
listening, questioning, involving, encouraging, and redirecting, which
play an important role in creating strong learning environments.

13. Understanding Online Interaction
In Facilitation, our investigation of online activity also relied
on discourse analysis to characterize that activity:
Change Learning Discourse Facilitation
Environment
• Change in action, • Claim • Introducing ideas
thinking or values • Citing authority • Suggesting follow up
• Sympathy or empathy • Citing evidence actions
that shows a change in • Explanations • Demonstrating sympathy
thought or feeling • Articulation of shared or empathy
• Use of technical or roles or experiences • Demonstrating respect
scientific concepts or • Invocation of place, for perspective or identity
language evidence, or status • Invitations (to connect, to
• Other change move • Use of values, affect, or develop ideas)
technology • Redirection
• Other DE move • Provocation
• Construction of
connection between
ideas or people

14. Facilitation Moves
Introducing new ideas
Statement introduces a new idea, concept, or example that
has not been previously stated
Suggesting follow-up actions
Statement providing advice or direction to another’s
exploration of a subject
Demonstrating sympathy or empathy
An explicit statement recognizing or relating to emotions
experienced by another
Demonstrating respect for perspective or identity
An explicit statement demonstrating a positive response to
another’s account of their actions or identity

15. Facilitation Moves
Invitation development
An explicit request to explain or expand for understanding
Invitation connection
An explicit request to explain or expand to foster connection to
the ideas of others
Redirection
A statement or request that explicitly changes the focus of the
conversation
Provoking
A statement playing “devil’s advocate” or explicitly naming a
taboo subject that participants are talking around

16. Facilitation Moves
Construction of a connection between ideas or people
Explicit reference within the thread that indexes a
specific name or idea in a previous post

17. Preliminary Findings
There are three facilitation moves that are associated with
change:
1. Invitations (connection in particular but also
development)
2. Construction of connections between people and
ideas
It is clear that “experimonth itself” has agency:
1. Activities that create heightened awareness
2. Activities that ask people to share things
(pictures, links, articles, etc.)
3. Technology and cultures that allow for meaningful
conversations to happen
4. Experimonth facilitators