The Secret Lives of Digital Museum Resources and Collections: Teaching Practice and Interactions with the Smithsonian's Learning Lab

The collaborative project 'The Secret Lives of Museums' aims to further understand how museum digital learning platforms enable educational practitioners to activate the pedagogical potential of digitised museum objects in their practice.
The research will address this key question through an in-depth case study of educators' uses of the Learning Lab, a digital platform providing access to millions of resources from the Smithsonian's museums, major research centres, the National Zoo and other sources, with which users can create learning collections with a wide range of interactive features (such as quizzes, annotations and sorting activities). The platform is unique in its scope, content, tools for customisation, ongoing facilitation of professional development, continuing evolution as a platform explicitly designed for learning and status as an open educational resource which is completely free at the point of use. This project aims to develop understanding of how the Learning Lab's design and features are experienced by educators in particular contexts and the potential implications for digital platform development and pedagogical practices in museums and schools.
The research will explore learning processes, outcomes and types of student engagement facilitated by the platform's educator-users over time and the complex impacts between the platform, museum educational practices and teachers' approaches. Through better understanding experiences of the platform's use in practice, the findings will contribute to the ongoing development of both the site and potential support mechanisms for its users.
A mixed methods approach will be adopted; the main emphasis will be on qualitative methods, with quantitative analysis used to investigate trends relating to the use of museum resources and collections. Research methods will include statistical analysis of Learning Lab data, an online survey for educators who have used the Learning Lab as part of their practice, focus groups/interviews with Smithsonian staff, and in-depth qualitative research with teachers using the platform. The in-depth qualitative research will aim to better understand how teachers are using the unique features of the platform as part of their practice, investigating how museum objects and collections are translated and interpreted for educational use.
Through these approaches, the research will explore the unique capacities and limitations associated with object- and collections-based learning using museum digital learning platforms, and will reflect on how museum practices and digital platform design can be informed by awareness of these evolving perspectives.