artyfacts: designing an online learning environment for art objects claire bradley learning...
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ARTyFACTS: Designing an online learning environment for art objects
Claire Bradley
Learning Technology Research Institute, University of North London
Co-authors: John Cook, Peter Oriogun, Kathleen Henderson, Anne Baker
Introduction
ARTyFACTS - an online learning environment for
users to engage with art objects
An on-going research project
Funded from a small grant from the Arts and
Humanities Research Board in the UK
A collaborative team-based project comprising artists,
lecturers, software engineers, multimedia designers,
musicians, pedagogical scientists and learning
technologists
Project goals
Could we apply digital technologies to provide a rich and multisensory experience for remote users to engage with art objects?
Allow users to get under the skin of culture by offering simultaneous layers of meaning and supplementary contextual data
Provide a system which galleries, museums or owners of collections could use for their own artifacts
Meet the needs of a range of users– formal learning - students, art historians, curators, etc.– informal learning - art lovers, tourists, etc.
The scope of the project
The project focussed on 4 areas to explore if these goals were achievable:– the design of the learning environment– system architecture and design of a customisable
multisensory toolkit (CM toolkit)– development of a small prototype to be able to test the
environment design and architecture– evaluation of the prototype
This presentation will focus on:– design considerations– the prototype learning environment created– areas identified for further development
Design considerations 1
The design of the environment centred on a key research question:
can extensive information, sound, media, images, data and hyperlinks relating to an object be successfully interfaced to give a sense of that object to a remote viewer?
Pedagogic approach:– based on constructivist principles - enabling rich
user-centred interactions and the social construction of knowledge via a multimedia learning environment
Design considerations 2
Applying digital technologies– current digital imaging techniques - reveal the
layers of detail and information normally invisible in artworks
– by digitising available records and constructing models we can contribute to the digital preservation of artworks and provide richer contextual information
• e.g. photos, video clips, press articles, critiques• virtual models, reconstructions and simulations
Design considerations 3
– The integration of databases and knowledge-based systems - enable objects and information to be classified, stored and retrieved via user choice or a computer-based agent
– The Internet as a delivery platform allows:• access to everyone with an Internet connection (no
physical distribution)• delivery of multimedia content (Flash-based
animations and interactive movies, streaming media, QuickTime VR panoramas or models)
• access to further Internet-based resources
Design considerations 4
Development of user profiles – the aim was to base the presentation of content and
its retrieval from the database upon user profiles– so that data components presented are more closely
related to user’s interests– initially 7 user types were identified– for the prototype these were narrowed down to 3
profiles:• art historian, artist and tourist• each was outlined in a specification
Design considerations 5
Architecture of the Customisable Multimedia (CM) Toolkit– the main objective of the toolkit design was to devise a
system design that would allow components to be re-used - by the developers or museum/gallery curators
– the architecture was specified using software engineering techniques
– 6 modules were identified: web page and service manager, web services, user manager, object handlers, search engine, database management
– the result is a generic architecture for generating multisensory learning environments
The ARTyFACTS prototype system
The prototype system was intentionally kept small in its scope to enable our research aims to be explored and then evaluated to gain feedback
Content selection and creation - limited to 2 art objects
Art object 1: The Doge
Portrait of Leonardo Loredan, the Doge of Venice
Painted by Giovanni Bellini
in 1501-1504
Courtesy of The National Gallery, London
Art object 2: The House
House
Site-specific sculpture created by Rachel Whiteread
Concrete cast of a 3-story terraced house
1993 - demolished in 1994
Courtesy of The Anthony D’Offay Gallery, London, and Rachel Whiteread
Entering the learning environment
Users enter the learning environment from an opening screen
From here they select a user profile and enter the environment
The user interfaceThe 2 art objects
Navigational device
Access to the available multimedia resources is via the spiral
The spiral provides a simplistic visual representation of the available resources and their contextual relevance to the central object
Resources are represented by thumbnail icons
Map of the area of Venice
Description of the Doge’s hat
The learning experience
For each artwork, a unique learning experience unfolds– the learner chooses what they want to look at, firstly
by selecting a profile that matches their interests, and then by selecting from the available multimedia resources
For The Doge painting contextual material provides examples of what 16th century Venice was like
For The House resources include press articles and photographs of the sculpture, including photos of it being demolished
Areas for further development
Usability
Test the CM Toolkit model
Incorporate metadata and comply with developing
standards for learning objects and learning environments
- will facilitate scaling-up and re-usability
Improve user profiling to utilise intelligent agents
Extend the functionality of the learning environment to
enable interaction and communication amongst users
Enhance the multisensory learning experience
Conclusions
The project has provided a vehicle for the exploration of a number of areas of interest to the project team
The goal was to try and develop online systems and multisensory learning environments, which are vital to enable the enhanced learning experiences required for engaging with art objects > e-learning, lifelong learning, informal learning
By harnessing and applying digital online technologies we can more successfully create a rich learning experience for remote audiences and provide opportunities that are not possible in the physical world
Contact details
Claire Bradley
Learning Technology Research Institute, University of North London
c.bradley@unl.ac.uk
http://www.unl.ac.uk/ltri/
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