Abstract

In the past decade, particularly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural institutions and museums have significantly enhanced their digital offerings and experiences. These new virtual spaces serve purposes beyond conveying information to visitors and enticing them to visit the physical museum; they provide innovative teaching and learning contexts that necessitate the development of new pedagogical approaches. This manuscript-based thesis draws on participatory and collaborative practices to conduct an educational design-based study at the Oxford Natural History Museum. The initial manuscript delineates the evolution of theories pertaining to museum education, transitioning from traditional object-centered paradigms to those centered on the visitor. Subsequently, I expand this continuum to articulate a novel framework for a post-object and post-visitor museum education. The second manuscript is methodological. The emergence of new learning digital contexts calls for new methodologies to analyze them. Through a case study, the article focuses on developing a coding rubric to analyze two virtual reality museum experiences: Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass by the Louvre and Curious Alice by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The third and final manuscript examines the collaboration among educators, communications specialists, and young visitors aged 15 to 24 at the Oxford Natural History Museum in creating educational social media content. I connected the manuscripts through two bridges, where I conversed with different museum chatbots powered by artificial intelligence. Through these conversations, I reflect on how these chatbots blur the boundaries between the physical objects in museums and their digital representations or imaginaries, as well as the implications of this evolution for museum education. I conclude with thoughts on the influence of this research and its implications for forthcoming studies. This thesis contributes to the insufficient research concerning museum learning within digital environments and it also makes a meaningful contribution to the growing body of literature regarding the function of museums in the digital ecosystem.