Week 2 Reflection (10th Apr)
The article by Packer and Ballantyne on Solitary vs Shared Learning is an interesting read. At the end of the article, the authors urged that exhibition designers provide opportunities for both solitary and shared approaches since both are conducive to learning. In fact, I think that exhibition designers really have a whole lot to consider: different learning styles (notion of multiple intelligence by Howard Gardner, hands-on or hands-off, words to read or pictures to see, headphones to listen to or TV screens. to watch...), profile of target audience (who are they, issue of whether to cater to different age groups), etc. I am eager to learn more about how challenging tasks like these can be addressed.
The second article by Crowley et al on parents' bias in explaining more to boys than girls just reinforced my thoughts about the importance of optimizing the learning experience of each exhibit with every individual who interacts with it. In an ideal set-up, if anyone, regardless of age, gender, learning styles and abilities can reap the intended learning outcomes from every exhibit, then intervention by another (e.g. parents) in the learning process becomes secondary. Of course, it is quite impossible to achieve that ideal set-up and one might argue for the value of parental involvement but what I think is that if we can design for an optimum learning experience for everyone, it just brings the learning to a much higher platform. But how can this seemingly impossible mission be achieved? Again, I feel excited as this course unfolds...