Introduction to Experience-Based Exhibits
When the developer's focus is on what visitors will learn, the exhibit almost always turns out to be information-based. If the goal shifts to what they may see and do, however, the exhibit will be experience-based. What is the difference? And what difference does it make?
Focus on Experience
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A two-step model helps explain how experience-based exhibits “work.” (1) Visitor interacts with Exhibit to yield Experiences; and (2) Visitor processes Experiences to yield Outcomes. Experience, here, means everything a visitor sees or does at the exhibit. Whatever the outcomes—what the visitor takes away with him or her—they will be a function of this experience. So experience—which is also the only thing the museum has control over—becomes the focus for exhibit development.
From the two-step model it becomes clear that two sets of objectives must be set for an exhibit: both the outcomes that are desired and the experiences that are desired. The exhibit experience is no longer just the means to an end, it is an end in itself. The exhibit developer’s job now is deciding what visitors should be able to see and do that may constitute the desired experiences; the exhibit designer’s/builder’s job is making an exhibit that will allow and encourage those things to happen. Success is judged by what visitors actually do see and do—their engagement with the exhibit. It is also clear from the two-step model that no two visitors will have the same experiences or outcomes because each comes with different prior experiences and different processing skills. The experience a visitor is having at an exhibit can be assessed by observation—watching what the visitor is actually doing. And this can be supplemented with interviews to find out how the visitor describes what has been seen and done. If this assessment is carried out as part of exhibit development (often called formative evaluation), the unit can be refined until its experience goals are met. A focus on the immediate exhibit experience does not mean abandoning interest in or responsibility for the longer-range outcomes, but it recognizes the value of the experience itself as well as it role as the precursor for any other outcomes. Perhaps the clearest distinction between experience- and information-based exhibits lies in their use of labels. For experience-based exhibits, educational value lies in the visitor’s engagement with the exhibit, and labels are used to facilitate and extend that experience. The label’s role is to support the exhibit. For information-based exhibits, it is the other way around. The intended learning is in the labels (or other media of information transfer), and the exhibit essentially supports the label. The experience-based approach to thematic exhibition development starts by identifying the specific experiences—what visitors will be able to see and do—that will be engaging, meaningful, and memorable. These become the core exhibit units, and the exhibition builds outward from these to create a coherent, overall theme. This can be called the “inside-out” approach in contrast to the “outside-in” approach typical of information-based exhibitions. These start with the broad theme, break it down into sections (like textbook chapters), and lastly look for exhibit units to illustrate the content of each section. |
Exhibitions that engage visitors in meaningful activity are not only enjoyable and memorable, they are also educationally effective. The experience-based approach provides both the underlying theory and practical guidelines to produce that kind of exhibition.
For a more extensive discussion of experience-based education theory and its application to museum exhibits, click on Articles below.
For a more extensive discussion of experience-based education theory and its application to museum exhibits, click on Articles below.