Project staff: Alison Billings

This is the story of the Explainers at the Exploratorium science museum, and their brief use of a mobile technology. The Explainers are the front line educators at one of the world’s premiere science museums; they leverage their own curiosity about science and learning to teach others about science and learning. This research documented the changes that took place with the Explainer docents at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco after the deployment of a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile technology. Over the course of six months I observed the Explainers in their work environment throughout the day. After several months of research, I, with the help of several museum staff, deployed a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile technology for the Explainers to use while they worked. The objective of this research was straightforward; give the Explainers a mobile technology (in this case a PDA) and see if the way they work changed. I completed my research in two distinct phases. Phase one was comprised of four months of observations of the Explainers at the museum when they were not using the mobile technology. Phase two was a six-week period when the Explainers had the Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs available to them to use throughout their workday.

Methods

The primary methods that I used to collect data were field observations and structured interviews. The field research entailed going to the Exploratorium Museum and observing the Explainers work, while talking copious notes. The structured interviews I conducted were with eight of the participants throughout the duration of the experimental research. Within the group of interviewees there were two distinct sub groups, individuals who worked as Explainers, and members of their managerial team who also occasionally worked as Explainers on the museum floor.

Key Findings

In my observations I came to understand the primary task performed by the Explainers at the museum through a specific practice. I loosely call this practice ‘explaining’. I say loosely because most of the time the Explainers are not actually explaining anything, rather they are giving the visitors the tools to figure things out for themselves.

I have observed four primary strategies for creating the space to have an Explaining interaction with a visitor. The first is ‘silent interjection’, which is when an Explainer inserts him or her self into an interaction without speaking a work to the visitor. The second is ‘verbal interjection’; verbal interjection can take the form of a whisper, or an announcement depending on the Explainer and the circumstances. The third is ‘passive enticement’, which is the practice of using an exhibit, clearly showing how to use it until a visitor approaches, and then moving on leaving the exhibit free for the visitors to use on by themselves. And the fourth is ‘active enticement’, this is the practice of actively calling visitors over to see or do something with an exhibit. There is a lot of personal thought and training that goes into the staging of these interactions, and the individual skill level doesn’t always reflect the amount of time that the Explainer has been working at the museum.

After my initial observations, I met with several members of the museum staff to discuss what kind or kinds of technology we were going to offer the Explainers. The museum already owned 11 Wi-Fi enabled PDAs that the Explainers could use, so we decided to take advantage of the hardware we already had and use the Wi-Fi PDAs. The next question in the research design was: what application would we develop for the Explainers to use on the PDA? After many conversations, we decided to use a pre-developed application called “Q&A”. The Q&A application is a forum like application that was developed for the Explainers that allows them to post and answer questions about selected topics in the museum or about science to other users of the application. All of the content on the site would be generated by the Explainers through the transfer of information through the questions and answers posted to the group. The Q&A is accessible through a web browser, so the Explainers would need to be able to have Internet access in order to use it. This would allow Explainers to share their breadth of knowledge about the museum in a peer-to-peer fashion, as well as creating a repository of Explainer-generated content about the museum. When combined with the Internet, the Q&A application provided Explainers with a sampling of tools that they could use while they were working on the museum.

In my observations of the Explainers using the PDAs I saw examples of Explainers trying to negotiate personal use of the technology and interacting with the public while roaming the floor. For many of the Explainers the time when they would be performing the work of roaming became the time when they would be using their PDA. As the weeks went by, there was less use of the PDAs by the Explainers, but initially they seemed to spark a curiosity in them that needed to be satisfied with exploring all of the possibilities of the devices. It was interesting to see how many of the Explainers tried to integrate the technology into their work at the museum.

In one instance I observed an Explainer facilitated a learning interaction with an exhibit through the use of his PDA and a Google search. I spoke with the Explainer after this interaction, and he told me that the students he had helped had a work sheet form a class that discussed a specific scientific principle, which he did not know. After typing the name of the principle into Google, the Explainer realized what they were talking about, and took the group to the exhibit and demonstrated the principle for them, allowing the visitors to have a first-hand experience with it at the exhibit.

In several cases the Explainers used the PDA to supplement knowledge about a subject and help visitors understand and engage in the science they were exploring together at the museum. Another use of the PDAs I observed were instances of Explainers in groups of two or three using their PDAs in different ways while they were co-located in the museum. In these cases all of the Explainers would be using their own PDA while in the presence of other Explainers and then would share or show what they were doing, or had discovered with the group. The most interesting use of the PDAs and the Q&A application I saw was the creation of a strand of Explainer Haiku. It was something that no one would have envisioned the Explainers doing with the devices, writing Haiku about their day. A creative commentary about their work to an audience of insiders.

The results of my research show that the Explainers used the PDAs to enhance their work, I observed that, for some of them, this kind of web-enabled technology could be useful. Of the Explainers who used the technology the most, there were two primary user groups. The first were new Explainers who had worked at the museum less than a year that used the PDAs as a tool to help in their own learning at the museum. The second group of Explainers who used the PDAs were more seasoned Explainers who recognized the fact that sometimes you can’t answer all of the questions that a visitor has, and that being able to find out one definite answer can lead to a greater understanding of what an exhibit or demonstration has to offer.

Future Research

I believe that there is still more research to be done with the use of mobile technology at the Exploratorium, and with the Explainers. For those Explainers who started to adopt the technology, some continued using the devices even though the experimental research had ended (the PDAs remained available for the Explainer to use). The Explainers who use the PDAs to effectively enhance their work, either through personal enrichment or by facilitating the immediate access to additional information are creating ways of integrating the PDAs into their personal work practice and how they are an Explainer. In my observations of the Explainers using the technology effectively, I believe that it’s use is a skill that can be developed, like doing an engaging demonstration, or learning how to silently interject with a visitor at an exhibit.