National Museums Online Learning Project
Dr Sian Bayne (PI), Zoe Williamson (RA) and Jen Ross (RA) from the School of Education at The University of Edinburgh were research partners to the National Museums Online Learning Project over the period 2007-2009.
The National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP) was a £1.75m initiative funded by the Treasury's Invest to Save Initiative, and sponsored by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Led by the Victoria and Albert Museum, it was a partnership between nine national museums and galleries - the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Sir John Soane's Museum, Tate, The Wallace Collection and the V&A.
By creating online learning environments for children and adults structured around the digital image collections of the project partners, the NMOLP aimed to increase levels of user access to partners' digital collections, to draw in new audiences and to forge change in the ways in which museum users engage with and learn from digital collections.
University of Edinburgh Research Reports
The research team provided four reports to the project, each of which are available here.
Spring 2009. National Museums Online Learning Project final report. V&A/University of Edinburgh.
Summer 2008. National Museums Online Learning Project Stage two report: part 2, Watching, gaming, learning: webquest contexts of use. V&A/University of Edinburgh.
Winter 2008. National Museums Online Learning Project Stage two report: part 1, Creative journeying: portraits of our users. V&A/University of Edinburgh.
Autumn 2007. National Museums Online Learning Project Stage one report. V&A/University of Edinburgh.
Research Output Relating to This Project
The following academic papers have been informed by the project and are either published or in process:
Ross, J., Bayne, S. and Williamson, Z., (2008) 'Reach, Relevance, Relationship and Recontextualisation: The 4 Rs of Inclusive Online Museum Learning', The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, Vol. 1(1), pp. 67-74.
Bayne, S., Ross, J., Williamson, Z. (2009) 'Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums', Museum and Society, Vol. 7(2). pp. 110-124.
Bayne, S., Williamson, Z., Ross, J. (2010) 'Reading screens: a critical visual analysis', Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010, Edited by: Dirckinck-Holmfeld L et al.
Williamson, Z., Bayne, S., Ross, J. (under submission) '"I will ask permission before using the internet": surveillance, literacies and online education in schools', Surveillance & Society, Special Issue: Surveillance, Children and Childhood.
NMOLP-related research has to date been presented at the following conferences and events:
Bayne, S., Ross, J., Williamson, Z. (2010) 'Museum education for the 21st century: online learning and social media', Museology - Museum of XXI century: problems of learning and teaching conference, 19-21 May 2010, St Petersburg, Russia.
Bayne, S., Williamson, Z., Ross, J. (2010) 'Reading screens: a critical visual analysis', 7th International Conference on Networked Learning, 3-4 May 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bayne, S. (2009) 'Creative spaces: social media and cultural heritage', Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Centenary Seminar (March 2009), invited lecture.
Ross, J., Williamson, Z. and Bayne, S. (2008) 'Participation, possessability and power: multimodal learning in online museum education', Multimodality and Learning: New Perspectives on Knowledge, Representation and Communication, 19-20 June 2008, King's College London, London.
Williamson, Z., Bayne, S. and Ross, J. (2008) 'Performativity and innovation in online learning: a question of vision', British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, 3-6 September 2008, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh.
Ross, J., Bayne, S. and Williamson, Z. (2008) '"This is their stuff": The role of social media in museum learning online', Association of Internet Researchers Conference, 16-18 October 2008, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.
Ross, J., Bayne, S. and Williamson, Z. (2008) 'Reach, relevance, relationship and recontextualisation: the 4 Rs of inclusive online museum learning', International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, 8-11 June 2008, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden.
Funding for further research related to the area has been achieved via an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award in partnership with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
We have also gained a grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to run a Scottish research network on 'The digital futures of cultural heritage education'.
NMOLP Output
The Creative Spaces, for social networking around the partners' digital collections.
The Webquests, curriculum-focused online resources for schools.
