Learners

Target audience

Our target audience are college students in New York who are interested in art-related areas. They have visited museums or art galleries in the past, and they might come from different academic backgrounds, ethnicity, and races. They have experienced online learning in the past.

Needs Assessment

We conducted interviews with our peers to ask about their attitudes towards museum learning and education. Most of them like to visit museums in their spare time, but we found out that there are some common problems:

There are some materials for them to learn, such as texts on the wall and museum maps, but readers can get confused by directions on the map and feel bored by reading texts for a long time.

So we think it would be appropriate to adopt the discrepancy model to bridge the gap between existing learning methods and people’s expectations.

We also found that there is gap existing because college students don’t have enough prior knowledge before going to museums. If we can help to provide sufficient information related to art or artwork beforehand, their learning experiences will likely be enhanced when visiting museums.

Learner characteristics

Cognitive & Prior knowledge

• • • Have none or basic prior knowledge in arts either from school or from informal learning

    • Have prior experience in online learning or have used educational apps

    • Have basic technology literacy

    • Memory level may vary for different people

Affective

• • • Might or might not comes from an art background

    • Show interest in arts or related areas

    • Intrinsic motivation - want to gain knowledge towards the subject matter because they enjoy doing it

    • Want to visualize the process of learning

    • Willing to put more effort and time into the subject matter, believing in their abilities and take initiatives in the subject matter.

Metacognitive

• • • Poor linkage between conceptual to practical

    • Limited knowledge to how to approach art learning

    • Limited ability/unable to make connections among different art pieces

Socio-cultural factors

• • • Higher educational level

    • Various ethnic and racial backgrounds

    • Value arts, humanities, cultural content

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