Visitor Insights
The Attitudes of University Students with Dual Hungarian Citizenship towards Museums
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anita Hegedus
Museums provide an excellent teaching site for higher education and a visitor base for higher education students. In Hungary, however, there is typically a low amount of university-museum cooperation at the institutional level, and a low proportion of university students visit museums. Szeged, Hungary (the third largest town in Hungary near the Serbian border) has an active museum scene and a large university. Therefore, we conducted a questionnaire survey among students at the University of Szeged to find out what kind of museum image they have, how often they visit museums, and whether they use museums during their studies. We surveyed Hungarian students, students with dual Hungarian cityzenship, and international students. In this presentation, we examine the attitudes of students with dual Hungarian citizenship towards museums. The vast majority of this group are dual Hungarian citizens from Serbia, so we were able to study a group from a minority background. The results show that they do not tend to visit museums frequently and are less familiar with university-organized museum programs. They also do not make much use of the opportunities offered by museums in their studies.
Cultural Linguistic Diversity in the Museum: A Museum Educator's Guidebook
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session McKenna Jackson
Museums, as cultural institutions, play a vital role in fostering inclusivity and accessibility for all visitors, including English Language Learners (ELL). This guidebook, inspired by insights from a course on Cultural Linguistic Diversity, explores how museums can implement practices that support ELL visitors. Rooted in scaffolding theory, the guidebook emphasizes temporary supports that enhance meaning-making and learning within museum environments. Key recommendations include leveraging culturally relevant artifacts, interactive labels, and multilingual resources to create accessible exhibitions. Hands-on engagement with artifacts is highlighted as an effective method for connecting prior knowledge with new learning, fostering deeper understanding. The guidebook also underscores the importance of providing pre- and post-visit resources, such as vocabulary packages and digital tours, to reduce anxiety and enhance engagement for ELL visitors. Additionally, examples of successful museum initiatives, such as the J. Paul Getty Museum’s culturally relevant programming and the Buffalo History Museum’s “Museum Introduction Program,” illustrate practical applications of these strategies. These programs demonstrate how exhibitions can embrace diversity and encourage ELL visitors to engage meaningfully with their cultural and linguistic identities. This guidebook is a call to action for museum professionals to integrate equitable, diverse, and inclusive practices into all facets of their work, ensuring that museums, galleries, and science centers become welcoming spaces for learning, dialogue, and cultural connection for ELL visitors and their communities.
A New Guided Tour for Generation Z: Perceptions of Experiential Guided Tours in Museums
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dalma Lilla Dominek
This study explores the impact of traditional and experiential guided tours, as proposed by the author and implemented by guides, and to present the views of museum visitors. By focusing on guided tours for Generation Z in a selected museum, our presentation investigates whether guided tours in museums can help to enhance the experience of returning to museums. The final outcome of the research is the presentation of a new tour methodology. The research was divided into two parts: 1. The results of the questionnaires are analysed using SPSS software, based on a total of 86 questionnaires. The aim of this research is to find out if they prefer a more experiential or a more traditional informative type of tour, or if other types of tours can achieve their main objective. 2. the results of the focus groups (64 participants) were analysed through content analysis, where the aim of the study was to present the detailed perceptions of a small group of participants about museum tours, the tours they had seen and their perceptions of the tours they had experienced so far, through a focus group interview with the participants. The aim of the tour is to familiarise Generation Z with the values of national cultural heritage, which can contribute to the development, preservation and strengthening of their national identity. It is important that innovative approaches to guided tours for Generation Z are used to give this generation an active role in the museum process.
The MiniMuseums Companion: Designing for Interaction, Emotion, and Immersive Aesthetic Experience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Renata Keck, Greg Walsh
This research focuses on new strategies for participatory, inclusive design engagement and the creation of an augmented reality interactive exhibit companion for MiniMuseums, a mobile public art installation. Over the course of four months during the COVID-19 pandemic, this project incorporated qualitative artist interviews and user-generated data from a series of three dialogic, asynchronous time-released design probes in-situ to understand the emotional, perceptive, and immersive qualities necessary for exhibit companions to drive interaction and engagement with public art. Rather than situate the AR MiniMuseums companion within prescriptive models of understanding and appreciating art, this study focused on how to design a discrete, open framework that allowed for many realism of interaction and interpretation that are otherwise closed off by other forms of digital experiential art. Drawing on the conceptual public art used for these mobile installations, as well as a deep study of the overlapping heuristics of human-computer interaction, neuroaesthetics, and interactive art, the MiniMuseums companion also considers the minimum level of immersion within the exhibit necessary to elicit an understanding of the public art and drive multisensory, embodied aesthetic experience without overwhelming or distorting the purpose and function of the exhibit. This study includes the resulting design artifact (the MiniMuseums Companion) from the design probe series, as well as the implications of using design probes as a technique for facilitating distributed, asynchronous participatory design for museums and public art.
