“Real Change Comes from Within!”: Towards a Symbiosis of Human and Digital Guides in the Museum

Extensive research on mobile guides for museums has explored the potential of technology to offer some of the services that have been traditionally provided by human guides, including guiding visitors in the museum space, providing information about the exhibits, and using more advanced interpretative approaches such as digital storytelling and gamified techniques. However, the majority of these approaches either ignores or tries to substitute entirely the role of the human guide. In this work, we present a user study with 10 experienced tour guides, currently working in the museum of modern art of the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. Based on a three-phase procedure, the study is designed to empower professionals into envisaging their work in symbiosis with current technological developments. First, we attempt to identify existing challenges guides face and to capture their tacit knowledge in addressing emerging problems in guided tours. In the second and third stage, through a reflective and productive discussion, we employ a set of contemporary innovative digital applications as a starting point to elicit their views on their role in an envisaged symbiotic future of human-led hybrid digital experiences.

The family experiences in the daily local-guided tours: Evidence from the sharing economy platform (Withlocals)

Despite the increasing popularity of family travels and the importance of the daily local tours in the sharing economy, there is no research combining both and it is still very much lacking. Hence, this paper seeks to explore family experiences of the daily local-guided tours offered on a sharing economy platform, Withlocals, utilizing online narratives. To attain this aim, this study applies netnography approach and involves a total of 867 family experience reviews. As a result of the analysis, eight components revealed: local guides’ attributes, awe, learning, memorable, child-friendly activities, engaging tour members, family-friendly tips, and novelty. The outcomes serve as indicators for local guides in addressing the essentials and expectations in family local-guided experience. As well as having practical implications, the results yield valuable theoretical insights for family tourism literature by opening a new door for future studies.

‘I feel like I can’t do a lot’: Affectivity, reflection and action in ‘Transformative’ genocide education

Guided tours of memorial museums have sought to have an impact on visitors through an affective learning environment and critical reflection leading to ‘action’. However, there is limited work investigating the pedagogical underpinnings of such guided tours in order to understand whether they can facilitate action. This paper presents reflections of 21 students’ experiences of educational visits to the former Nazi extermination and concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland between 2017 and 2018. Students identified the guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau as having an affective dimension that enhanced understanding and brought about a perspective transformation but action was ill-defined. In considering ill-defined action, this paper attempts to frame understanding of the guided tour of the memorial museum within the context of Transformative Learning. It concludes that guiding practices should incorporate space for reflection and provide examples of potential ‘action’ so that visitors can mobilise their deeper understanding and experience long-term personal ‘change’.

A Methodology to Produce Augmented-Reality Guided Tours in Museums for Mixed-Reality Headsets

In recent years, the use of technology in the museum context has changed radically. It has switched from the display of information to offering emotive, immersive, and rich experiences with heritage. Virtual interactive media have the potential to put museums back into a relevant place in our increasingly digital society. The emergence of augmented-reality glasses offers the possibility to test and implement new methodologies compatible with this aim. However, most of the first examples developed in recent years did not take advantage of the possibilities of this new medium. This paper presents a novel methodology for producing mixed-reality applications for museums and heritage sites, with an intuitive, immersive, and natural way of operating. An experimental prototype designed for the archaeological museum of the Almoina is shown in the paper to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed system and methodology of production. In addition, the paper shows the results of several tests.

Zebrafish Beyond the Bench: The ‘Plataforma Zebrafish Open Doors’ Programme

The Butantan Institute is a pioneering Brazilian health sciences institution, which also houses a large science park with museums that contribute to ongoing science education for schools and the wider community. In recent years, as part of Butantan Institute’s Plataforma Zebrafish™, zebrafish embryos have been used for the dissemination of scientific knowledge during on-site events and as part of outreach campaigns to non-scientific audiences, mostly children. The aim of this work is mainly to demystify the activities of the scientific researcher, highlight the role of science in the furthering of knowledge, and increase public interest and confidence in science. In this article, the Institute’s ‘Plataforma Zebrafish Open Doors’ programme is described, which offered guided tours of the laboratory facilities. The tours gave visitors the opportunity to observe zebrafish research and embryo development, and to use the knowledge gained from this experience as a framework for understanding fundamental ethical issues. During the 2-day event, around 800 visitors (most of them school-age children) attended. Together with the guided tours, our experience of outreach offered meaningful opportunities to bring children and members of the public closer to science and ‘real-life’ scientists, hopefully inspiring and encouraging the next generation of scientists. It also gave the scientists an opportunity to engage more closely with wider society. We believe that these activities also substantially contribute to the wider dissemination of relevant experimental results that have been obtained with public funding and that impact society in general.

Science Museum in a Pizza Box - Performance, museum tour guiding, and science communication

<p>This study focuses on the relationship between performance and museum tour guiding. Building on the analysis of this relationship, the author of this study has created a performance that is inspired by museum guided tours. The aim of the performance is to encourage a critical reflection on the role and the function of science in contemporary society, while giving insight into how science is socially constructed. The performance is based on participation. The participants define their own experiences, actively reflecting on the value that science has in their lives through a dialogue with the other participants and the performer. This dialogue starts with exhibits based on science that are presented to the participants. To develop this performance, this research has utilised action research, and qualitative methods to explore the participants’ experiences of the performance. This study is interdisciplinary, and connects performance studies, museum studies and science communication, while using applied research to explore its topics. The outcomes of this study are an innovative conceptualisation of the museum guided tour, and an original approach to science communication based on dialogic, live performance.</p>

Science Museum in a Pizza Box - Performance, museum tour guiding, and science communication

<p>This study focuses on the relationship between performance and museum tour guiding. Building on the analysis of this relationship, the author of this study has created a performance that is inspired by museum guided tours. The aim of the performance is to encourage a critical reflection on the role and the function of science in contemporary society, while giving insight into how science is socially constructed. The performance is based on participation. The participants define their own experiences, actively reflecting on the value that science has in their lives through a dialogue with the other participants and the performer. This dialogue starts with exhibits based on science that are presented to the participants. To develop this performance, this research has utilised action research, and qualitative methods to explore the participants’ experiences of the performance. This study is interdisciplinary, and connects performance studies, museum studies and science communication, while using applied research to explore its topics. The outcomes of this study are an innovative conceptualisation of the museum guided tour, and an original approach to science communication based on dialogic, live performance.</p>

Empirical Knowledge About Person-Led Guided Tours in Museums: A Scoping Review

Person-led guided tours play an important role in museums’ educational programs. With this scoping review, we take a critical look at existing knowledge based on empirically-based primary studies to shed light on the practices of person-led guided tours in museums, focusing on the tour leader and his/her work practice. Our review included 39 peer-reviewed papers from 1978 to 2018. Results indicate that the research landscape is scattered across different disciplines. We specified three main research topics (docent training, professionalism/expertise, tour performance) to which the reviewed papers could be assigned and made cross-references between studies. Consequently, the review reveals the very complex practice of person-led guided tours in museums. Our review closes with the discussion of implications for practice and further research, with the intention of advancing multidisciplinary empirical research on the guiding practice in museums and person-led museum guided tours.

Experimental design and biometric research. Toward innovations

This e-book aims to present the most critical aspects of knowledge about using experiments in economics and practical tools for using them. The topic is extended to the more advanced and increasing in popularity area of biometric research. The book is divided into three parts mirroring experimentation. The first part provides theoretical background and tips about organising own research. The chapter is concluded with a guide focused on writing a research report in APA style. This part includes an example of the actual research report. The next part has two chapters, and both are guided tours allowing to plan and conduct eye-tracking research and electrodermal activity research (EDA). The chapters contain details about preparing experiments, conducting them, using the dedicated software to analyse collected data and interpreting the default charts. The last part is devoted to the data analysis and is universal, goes beyond the biometric experiments. There are three chapters in this part covering the standard procedures used in the analysis of experiments. The first part includes tests for one hypothesis: parametric t-test and One-Way ANOVA and non-parametric siblings: Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test. The next part describes tests allowing testing more hypotheses: ANOVA without repetition and ANOVA with repetitions. Furthermore, the last chapter deals with dependent samples, which are a popular approach in experiments. This part describes the dependent sample t-test and Wilcoxon test. The effect sizes calculations are included; each test is shown with screenshots from SPSS and some additional screenshots from Excel. This approach allows following the procedure step by step. The examples help easily understand procedures and interpretations; they were chosen from areas of sustainability and innovations to match the general idea of the e-books series prepared within the CENETSIE program. The book contains texts that can be useful in the teaching process. It can be helpful in graduate programs in economics and business schools. Programs of doctoral schools cab benefit from this book as well.