HANJunghyounThesis2015

Museum Online Learning:
Analysis and Future of Museum Online Learning
by
Jung Hyoun Han
A thesis submitted in conformity
with the requirements for the
Master’s Degree in Art Business
Sotheby’s Institute of Art
2015
13,082 words

Museum Online Learning:
Analysis and Future of Museum Online Learning
By: Jung Hyoun Han
From the beginning of museums in the United States of America, there has been a
mission to educate the public. Unlike more traditional societies in which museums had a
more traditional role as repositories for viewing aesthetic objects, American museums
want to spread art appreciation to as many of the public as possible. In order to do this,
they have tried to utilize technology to further the mission of reaching people who cannot
get to the actual museum. This thesis will explore the history of the museum education in
the United States and its mission to reach out to the American public.
I will evaluate new models of technological innovation that museums and
educational institutions are using to accomplish this goal. The main focus of
technological tool is museum online learning. I will use the case studies of the Museum
of Modern Art and its online learning program to assess the successes and challenges, as
well as the business model for this type of program. I will also study the North Carolina
Museum of Art and their online learning collaboration with North Carolina Virtual Public
School for reaching a remote audience within the state. There will be a comparison on the
online courses offered by a private educational institution, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and
evaluate the characteristics of its online course offerings and business model. Finally, I
will discuss some observations about the future of online learning programs for museums
and educational institutions for the future.

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Table of Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction – History of American Museum Education ................................................................1
Chapter 1 – History of Museum Education .....................................................................................3
Chapter 2 –Museums Go Online: Digital Technology ..................................................................11
Museums and New Technologies...............................................................................15
Chapter 3 – Case Studies ...............................................................................................................22
Modern Museum of Art and Online Learning: MoMA Courses Online ....................22
North Carolina Museum of Art and Online Learning.................................................29
Chapter 4 – Case Studies: Sotheby’s Institute of Art Online Learning Business Model ..............37
Chapter 5 – Measuring the Success of Museum and Online Learning..........................................43
Pros and Cons of Museum Online Learning..............................................................44
Ideal Museum Online Learning .................................................................................48
Museum Online Learning Evaluation Tool ...............................................................51
Conclusion – How to Plan Museum Online Learning into the Future ..........................................53
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................56

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Introduction: History of American Museum Education
There are approximately 11,000 Starbucks and 14,000 McDonald’s in the United
States; however, even the combined number of the two chains does not come close to the
number of museums in the United States, which is 35,000.1
Moreover, there are roughly
850 million visitors to museums in the states each year, which is more than the
attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined.2
People are
more interested in going to the museums than to sporting events or theme parks. These
statistics show the great accomplishments of museums in the United States, and also
reflects the importance in popular culture of museums for Americans. Museums have
already thrived through out the states and the number of museums and visitors are
steadily growing.
Although museums in the Unites States are enjoying great success, it was not easy
to brand and establish them in the beginning. Museums have traditionally been brick and
mortar institutions where people come inside to engage with objects and learn through
direct experience. It is the object that is the central element of museums and it is the place
that defines the meaning of museum. John Dewey, an influential educational reformer of
the United States and early thinker about the role of museums, advocated in his book, The
School and Society (1915), that “experience has its geographical aspects, its artistic and
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1!Christopher Ingraham, “There are more museums in the U.S. than there are Starbucks
and McDonald’s – combined,” The Washington Post, June 13, 2014, accessed August 3,
2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/
2014/06/13/there-are-more-museums-in-the-us-than-there-are-starbucks-and-mcdonalds-
combined/.
2
“Museum Facts,” American Alliance of Museums, accessed August 3, 2015,
http://www.aam-us.org/about-museums/museum-facts.

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its literary, its scientific and its historical sides.”3
This most important thinker about the
America’s education system and the role museums play in it, believed in the power of the
place in creating influential educational experiences.
Then why are museums spending time, effort and money to develop online
learning? What are pros and cons of museum online learning? How can we evaluate the
success of online learning? Moreover, why are museums going online?
This thesis seeks to discuss the development of museum education, the history,
technology, and its unique position in the world. I hope to demonstrate the new
phenomenon of museum education in the United States, museum online learning, through
the introduction of two case studies of MoMA’s and NCMA’s online learning programs
and coursework. The following chapter will discuss the online learning program from a
non-museum educational institution, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, which is a Global Art and
Its Market Institution. Through these case studies, I hope to demonstrate the ideal model
and potential for future development for museum online learning.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3
John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1915), 80.

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Chapter 1: History of Museum Education
The first public natural history museum in the United States was founded in June
1794, when Charles Wilson Peale’s private collections moved to Philosophical Hall in
Philadelphia and merged with the collections of the American Philosophical Hall.4
Before
opening the first museum in the United States, Peale gathered a select group of America’s
prominent political and social leaders to promote private financial support and the idea of
a future American museum.5
Even after the opening of the museum, Peale continuously
expressed and advertised its purpose through visual representations, such as in newspaper
advertisements, broadsides, statements addressed to government bodies, lectures, short
articles, and pamphlets.6
Peale had to make these efforts because people were not familiar
with the concept of a museum and they felt unsure of the need for one. The effort to
promote the new concept to every social class helped the founding of the museum.
In Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, Peale exhibited collections ranging from art to
nature and many subjects that were important to early national life, by offering various
strategies for appreciating the displays: “to serve economic, social, intellectual, or
spiritual concerns.”7
Because Peale’s Philadelphia Museum was the first American
museum, the museum also had an ambiguous status as a public or private institution.
Peale worked constantly to create a museum exhibition of his collections and build up a
museum philosophy. He presented collections with a strategy of wider meaning to build
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4
Hugh H. Genoways and Mary Anne Andrei, Museum Origins: Readings in Early
Museum History and Philosophy (Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2008), 23.
5
Ibid.
6
David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic Peale’s Museum and Its
Audience (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1995), 34.
7
Ibid., 50.

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an audience that consisted of people with various interests.8
His efforts reflect creativity
and experimental characteristics of museum thinking in order to display and transfer what
is best for the public. This also reflects American museums’ efforts to exhibit the
collections and convey ideas in new and creative ways.
Peale did not focus on one particular group but to various classes of society. Most
importantly, Peale emphasized and insisted on providing moral education throughout the
museum experience.9
The start of the museum in the United States focused on exhibiting
the objects for the public, and educating the public through these museum exhibitions.
Education was emphasized the most and this was the beginning of museum education in
the United States.
Education has been from the start at the core of American museums. Many early
museum philosophers have thought of and desired museums to be educational
institutions. Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Frederic A. Lucas, Herbert Bolton, Anna Billings
Gallup, and Carolyn Rea were early philosophers, thinkers, and educators who conceived
of, thought of, and acted in creating the American museum as an educational institution.
Each of them had interesting ideas and voices, but what they commonly emphasized for
the museums in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was that the
museum should be a place for educating the public.
Theodore Lewis Low, visionary Directory of Education at the Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore, wrote in The Museum as a Social Instrument, that “The purpose and
the only purpose of museums is education in all its varied aspects from the most scholarly
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8
David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic Peale’s Museum and Its
Audience (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1995), 34.
9
Ibid.

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research to the simple arousing of curiosity…and it must always be intimately connected
with the life of the people.”10
Theodore Low’s words express how he was determined to
shape the early museums as educational institutions and his theory of the purpose of
museums as “arousing of curiosity” connects to the role of the museums in current
society. In his other work, What is a Museum, Low said:
“Certainly it is indicative of the American spirit that education forced its wall into
the museums to the extent that it did. Europe never has had education in our sense in its
museums, and it has always been the educational aspects of American museums which
have distinguished them from the European ones which they have tried so hard to
imitate.”11
His passion for a place for education in the museum is prevalently expressed in his
writings, and his eagerness in education has helped setting American museums apart
from European museums, which focused more on exhibition and less on education.
Winifred E. Howe, an editor of publications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, made another important step in the history of education for American
museums. She wrote a document called The Museum’s Educational Credo, in The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, which had a wide and lasting impact on museum
education. One of the examples is, “We believe that the Metropolitan Museum has an
important role to play in the education of this innate love of beauty in all who come to its
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10
Theodore L. Low, The Museum as a Social Instrument (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1942), 21.
11
Theodore L. Low, “What is Museum,” in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham:
AltaMira, 2012), 32.

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galleries or within the range of its influence.”12
From the beginning of the first American
museum to the present museums, education has been at the core and a feature of
distinction for museums in the United States. Many early museum thinkers have
advocated for the importance of museum education and they have shaped the American
museum as an educational institution. How has education in the American museums
evolved over time?
In the1920s and 30s, there was much progress in and expansion of museum
education. It was no longer just ideas and thoughts, but actual growth and expansion.
Corporations had begun to support the expansion of museums, and for example,
beginning in the late 1920s, the Carnegie Foundation financed educational experiments in
museums and distributed art appreciation kits including slides, reproductions, and books
to help students appreciate museums.13
Government also financially supported the
teachers and docents at the museums and this increased the number of museum educators
in the United States, which grew unevenly and often without design.14
Because the work
of museum education was still very new and unprecedented, museums achieved
expansion by responding to public demand, instead of through long-term planning.15
In the 1940s and ‘50s, American museum education was based on volunteerism
and experiments in programming. While there was an increase in art history education
throughout the universities in the United States in the 1930s, there had not been a proper
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12
Winifred E. Howe, “The Museum’s Educational Credo,” The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Bulletin 13 (1918): 192-193.
13
Elliot Kai-Kee and Rika Burnham, Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as
Experience (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 25.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid., 26.

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training of museum educators by the 1940’s.16
Without sufficient training in museum
education but an increase in art history education in the universities, there were increases
in the number of visitors who were interested in museum education but not assisted by
enough educators at the museums. Therefore, in the 1950s, museums started the use of
the volunteer system to meet the demands of curious visitors. Moreover, in the 50’s,
museums started various experiments to enrich their visitors by creating museum games
and activities for children, and aesthetics and art appreciation education for adult
visitors.17
Although it may seem that the museums have finally begun to establish education
programs, in the1960s and ‘70s they faced a struggle for funding. During this period, for
most of the museums, education remained a minor mission and therefore, despite the
widespread allocation of staff and budgets to educational services in museums, museum
educators received a low budget.18
Because curators were more important in the ‘60s and
‘70s, museum educators could not be involved in exhibition development and they had
little or no voice concerning museum affairs.19
This meant that curators would display the
exhibition geared more towards scholars than to public visitors. By the end of the1970s,
museum educators achieved parity within the museum because there was pressure
mounting on museums to address a variety of public issues, such as aiding school
systems, diversifying audiences, undertaking community outreach, and demonstrating
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16
Elliot Kai-Kee and Rika Burnham, Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as
Experience (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 29.
17
Ibid., 31.
18
Lisa C. Roberts, “Changing Practices of Interpretation,” in Reinventing the Museum:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson
(Lanham: AltaMira, 2012), 216.
19
Ibid.

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public service.20
Because of this pressure, museum educators began again to explore
ways to create effective interactive teaching based on communication and educational
psychology.21
In the 1980s and ‘90s, museum education was expanding and reaching the wider
public. Wilcomb E. Washburn, an American historian and Harvard University PhD, and a
director of the Smithsonian’s American Studies Program, wrote an interesting comment
in his book, Education and the New Elite: American Museums in the 1980s and 1990s:
“It is often said that museums have moved from an elitist philosophy, reflected in the
origin of many of our great museums, to a more democratic philosophy, reflected by the
museum’s doors being swung wide open to a mass audience. Indeed, with the emphasis
on education, “outreach,” traveling exhibits, and CD-ROMs, museums are increasingly
carrying their message directly to the people.”
In 1980s and 1990s, museums have become more educationally centered institutions for
the public rather than storehouses of culture for scholars or elites. Just like Wilcomb E.
Washburn had remarked in his comment that museum education emphasizes outreach to
the public, 1980s and 90s museum education had begun the era of opening to the public.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
20
Lisa C. Roberts, “Changing Practices of Interpretation,” in Reinventing the Museum:
21
Melinda M. Mayer, “Bridging the Theory-Practice Divide in Contemporary Art
Museum Education Source: Art Education,” National Art Education Association Stable
58 (2005): 13-17, accessed August 20, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27696060.

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Beginning in the 1980s at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, volunteer educators
sent booklets of color reproductions of works of art to senior citizens who were unable to
visit the museum, and then the educator had a one-on-one telephone conversation with
the viewer about the works of art.22
It was later in the early 90’s, that videoconferencing
began to be used by a number of museums.23
Museums had begun going beyond their
physical space in order to bring art to those who cannot actually make a visit. When
prints were first produced from the museums, there may have been some disputes over
whether the museum should put a copy of object’s image on paper or not. If printed
books were the prevalent solution in the 80’s, and videoconferencing in the 90’s,
museums going online and providing online learning will be a new educational remark in
the twenty-first century.
In the twenty-first century, American museums underwent many positive
changes. While twentieth century museums were primarily content-driven with tangible
objects and one-way driven presentation, twenty-first century museums focus both on
their content and audience, and their objects are not limited to tangible arts but digital and
online as well.24
Twenty-first century museums began to emphasize the importance on
audience engagement and enhancing knowledge on twenty-first century skills.25
In the
twentieth century, museum education’s learning outcome was assumed but in the twenty-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
22
William B. Crow and Herminia Din, Unbound by Place or Time: Museums and Online
Learning (Washington D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2009), 9.
23
Ibid.
24
“Museums, Libraries, and 21st
Century Skills,” Institute of Museum and Library
Services (2009): 7, accessed August 13, 2015, http: //www.imls.gov/assets/1/
AssetManager/21stCenturySkills.pdf.
25
Ibid.

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first century, museum educators purposefully plan their learning outcomes.26
Museum
educators are really promoting “collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and innovation,
and communication outside the school walls” in the twenty-first century.27
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26
“Museums, Libraries, and 21st
Century Skills,” Institute of Museum and Library
Services (2009): 7, accessed August 13, 2015, http: //www.imls.gov/assets/1/
AssetManager/21stCenturySkills.pdf.
27
Marsha L. Semmel, “Advancing 21st
Century Learning: The Role of Museums and
Libraries,” Partners for 21st
Century Learning, October 29, 2012, accessed August 10,
2015, http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1095-advancing-21st-century-learning-
the-role-of-museums-and-libraries.

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Chapter 2: Museums go online: Digital Technology
In defining a museum, there is an importance on utilizing the objects for
educational purposes. The museum is “a public or private nonprofit agency or institution
organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes which,
utilizing a professional staff, owns or utilizes tangible objects, cares for them, and
exhibits them to the public on a regular basis.”28
Objects and education have been two
essential elements for museums in the United States. If museums focus only on holding
objects, they will be more like galleries, and if museums focus only on education, they
will be more like educational institutions. It is the balance of both object and education
that makes a good museum.
Museums have started to go online, which can be controversial to the traditional
status of an American museum. What has been essential for the museums was the
collection, which is comprised of their accrued aesthetic or historical significance.29
If
museums digitalize every art object, art becomes less real. Objects will appear as digital
reproductions, instead of as real paintings or sculptures, which will naturally become less
relatable than in the real world. However, it is also true that even if the objects appear on
the web as digitized pictures, museums can still build great online collections, which can
carry aesthetic and historical significance. Museums have begun to put their collections
and exhibitions online.
On March 29, 2006, a New York Times article reported that three out of every
four visitors to the Met never make it to the front door; instead they visit the museum’s
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28
The definition of the museum according to the Museum Services Act of 1977.
29
George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998), 4.

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website, which provides images of art objects in the collection.30
This statistic highlights
the popularity of online museums’ online presence, the increasing significance of
museum websites, and the growing importance of online images for another form of
museum visitors. In addition to the images of artworks, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art
History by Metropolitan Museum of Art, even curated the timeline of art history and
wealth of scholarly information. Museums have not only begun to put images of their
artworks online, but also started to provide academic resources to the public, free of
charge.
Museums also put digital images online for preservation purposes. As the impact
digitized collections make on online visitors grows, museums have begun to increasingly
value the digital surrogate.31
One of the ways to preserve a digital collection was a
museum’s effort in putting every art object online. Many artworks are exposed to
deterioration and as time passes by, many of the artworks will look different from how
we view them now. However, with the original appearance of arts saved online digitally,
digital images online is one form of conservation. In order to record the appearance of an
object in its best condition, museums should keep on putting digital images of art works
online.
Museums are not the only institutions that have started to show images of works
of art online; other various organizations have created online platforms to display art as
well. Artstor is a scholarly site used to search for paintings simply by putting descriptive
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30
Carol Vogel, “3 out of every 4 visitors to the Met Never Make It to the Front Door,”
New York Times, March 29, 2006, accessed September 3, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/arts/artsspecial/29web.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
31
Gunter Waibel, “Stewardship for Digital Images: Preserving Your Assets, Preserving
Your Investment,” in Digital Museum: A Think Guide, ed. Herminia Din (Washington
D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2007), 1.

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words in the search engine. Google Art Project shows digital images of works of art both
inside museums and on the streets. For instance, just by going to Google Art Projects,
Internet users can view every image in MoMA’s collections.
The original definition of objects inside the museum is real thing that is objects
collected for the museums were within the natural, cultural, or aesthetic history of the
known world.32
If museums or other art institutions display images of objects prevalently
on Internet, perhaps the current notion of objects inside the museum is representation of
or real stuff that is objects collected within the natural, cultural, or aesthetic history of the
known world. There is another good comparison made by scholar Gunter Waibel, who is
also a director of the Digitization Program Office at the Smithsonian Institution. Waibel
argued that, “If the physical collections are the main building block of a brick-and-mortar
museum experience, digitized museum objects are their equivalent in the online space”.33
In the twenty-first century, when so many people are living online, digitized museums are
needed for the online visitors.
Many issues can be raised concerning museums straying away from their
traditional path; however, museums have evolved and transitioned as society has
changed. Robert Sullivan, Associate Director of Public Programs at the National Museum
of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, argues that as educational institutions,
museums are necessarily agents of change, not only changing the knowledge, beliefs,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
32
Elaine Heumann Gurian, “What Is the Object of This Exercise? A Meandering
Exploration of the Many Learning of Objects in Museums,” in Reinventing the Museum:
33
Gunter Waibel, “Stewardship for Digital Images: Preserving Your Assets, Preserving
Your Investment,” in Digital Museum: A Think Guide, ed. Herminia Din (Washington
D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2007), 1.

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attitudes, and feelings of our individual visitors but also affecting the moral ecology of
the communities that they serve.34
For the past thirty years, museums have used various media to reach out to
visitors who cannot visit the museum in person. Most museum professionals believe that
museums are for everyone and because of this, museums have searched for and utilized
the most efficient tools to reach out to everyone.35
Graham Black, a professor of Nottingham Trent University is a scholar who has
explored the issue of how to best evaluate the history of museums in the twenty-first
century. He found the overarching goal of a museum is to create something that could be
shared with the public and that the twenty-first century museum should transform and
implement new technologies to do so. In addition to Black’s argument, William B. Crow
studies show that as museums draw power from their physical locations and collections
as places of unique experience, so too should they consider the potential of online
learning as a means to expand the museum’s place in society, locally and globally.36
Museums going online is an adaptation to the twenty-first century where digital
life and the online world have played a greater role. Museums have been a symbol of
education throughout their history; therefore, coming to terms with visitors’ needs and
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
34
Robert Sullivan, “Evaluating the Ethics and Consciences of Museums,” in Reinventing
the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail
Anderson (Lanham: AltaMira, 2012), 257.
35
Mary Ellen Munley, “Is There Method in Our Madness? Improvisation in the Practice
of Museum Education,” in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham: AltaMira, 2012), 245.
36
William B. Crow and Herminia Din, Unbound by Place or Time: Museums and Online
Learning (Washington D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2009), 9.

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interests is at the heart of an attempt to expand and diversify audiences.37
As new
technologies emerge, how have museums taken advantage of them? How does online
learning fit into the pattern?
Museums and New Technologies
Along with museum websites and digital preservation, museums have developed
other programs through technology, to enhance museum experience, education, and to
reach out to various audiences. What is Art? Why do we look at art and want to learn
about it? Visual language is universalizing and we choose to look at art because they
express human language. Looking at art in direct contacts allows us with some kind of
special message and it is different for everyone. Everything we see about art, everyone
sees it differently. However, in common, people feel or think of something through
physical contacts with art. Looking at art through online is different but the fact that art
speaks to the viewer is the same. It will speak in different ways, but online art still speaks
for something.
The Smithsonian Museum, the national museum of the United States, has adopted
an online metadata platform and digital interactive display to enhance the museum
experience. Smithsonian Secretary Emeritus G. Wayne Clough has said, “We’re only at
the beginning of this wave of technology, and it’s really going to dominate our approach
to learning in the next few decades… Here is a resource that’s paid for by every taxpayer
in the country, [but] you can’t expect everybody to make a trip to the Smithsonian every
year. So the way you compensate for that is you deliver the materials, the richness of the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
37
Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham: AltaMira, 2012), 245.

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Smithsonian, digitally.”38
In order to distribute rich resources to the public, the
Smithsonian has organized “Smithsonian 2.0”, which is a digital initiative to protect the
Smithsonian’s artifacts from damage and to promote outreach to a new audience. Carrie
Kotcho, Director of Education and Outreach at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
American History explained, “Access to information is not the problem anymore… All
the technologies are exciting. We need to keep track of what’s going on and stay ahead.
It’s all about using the best technology to meet the needs of the audience”.39
The
Smithsonian Museum has considered, and spearheaded, how to use technology to engage
with the visitors. As the national museum of the United States makes progress in
utilization of new technology, other museums have started to actively implement
technologies too.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has implemented an interactive media display,
or digital touchscreen, to enhance their museum education program. Interactive media
display is a technology that really meets the needs of the audience, and there is an
interesting case study. Right before the exhibition of “Treasures from Korea: Arts and
Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910” in 2014, the Philadelphia Museum of Art did
early focus groups and found out that nobody wanted to come to the exhibition because
nobody knew anything about Korea.40
To reduce the feeling that visitors needed prior
knowledge, the Philadelphia Museum of Art had built three different interactive displays.
First, there was a display that brought a book to life and in another display, there was an
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
38
Jeff Levine, “Exploding the Four Walls: Museums Face the Prospects and Perils of
Digital Learning,” Museum (2015): 31.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid., 42.

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interpretation of a 14-foot-long, folding “10 longevity symbol”. 41
Marla Shoemaker,
senior curator of education at Philadelphia Museum of Art explained, “Within this big
landscape, there are 10 symbols of longevity. You can touch one of them and find out
why it is a symbol of longevity.”42
Lastly, there was a display where visitors could write
their name in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, with their finger and print a little ticket to
take home.43
The interactive displays used by Philadelphia Museum of Art are an
appropriate example of technology to enhance museum experience and education through
interactive learning.
Tablet devices offer visitors to the Cleveland Museum of Art an interactive tour
while walking through the galleries. Visitors can take their tablets and place it in front of
a work of art to receive on-screen answers to questions such as ‘Who painted it?’ ‘What’s
it about?’ and other historical contexts.44
This technology is similar to auto audio guides
that are widely used in museums. Audio, which contains brief explanations of the work of
art, is played when the visitor stands in front of an artwork. John Durant, director of the
MIT Museum, expressed, “Notice that guests can curate their own experience. You can
do your own art show for yourself, and you can download it and take it as a souvenir of
your visit.”45
This new, tablet technology is an attempt to integrate the physical, digital
and aesthetic aspects of going to the museum into a natural experience.46
This also goes
beyond interactive museum learning. By allowing guests to curate their own experience
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
41
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid., 35-36.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.

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using tablets, visitors can walk away with illumination and their own personally
meaningful choices.
Social media, such as Facebook, are also utilized for museum education.
Museums are aware that many people communicate through social media today. The
Modern Museum of Art, in order to better reach visitors, took a further step in its online
presence with live streaming and live tweeting.47
MoMA also created mobile applications
and Google Hangouts to reach out to those who cannot physically access the museum and
to promote interaction amongst the museum visitors.48
These social media technologies
will create new kinds of museum experiences unknown to previous visitors. Moreover,
social media can encourage museum visitors to interact with one another. While visitors
focus on communicating solely with artworks in a physical museum space, social media
users have the chance to further their knowledge of artworks by sharing their thoughts.
At San Francisco’s de Young Museum, the most recent technology, a telepresence
robot, has been employed to provide a virtual tour to people who cannot easily move
inside the museum. This telepresence robot is called Beam, and it projects images in
detail, while its two-way microphone allows the virtual visitor to converse with staff or
passersby, and receive live or recorded audio commentary.49
Users can access the Beam
by logging into the machine online, where they are presented with a map that orients
them to the museum’s layout, and then to a self-guided tour through their control of the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
47
Dimitra Chirstidou, “The Educational Museums: Innovations and Technologies
Transforming Museum Education. The Benaki Museum, Athens, 17 October 2013,”
Journal of Conservation & Museum Studies 12 (2014), accessed August 14, 2015, DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021211.
48
Ibid.
49

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19
Beam.50
The Beam can provide virtual access to people with disabilities and others who
cannot visit the museums physically. In museums of the future, visitors will be able to
walk through the collections virtually by logging in online. Although Beam will not make
artworks appear as they do in person, it will enable museums to reach out to a wider
audience.
One of the areas that is highly scalable and potent, but has not yet been fully
developed, is online learning. Online courses can help students who are self-motivated to
explore their interests as a starting point for learning, enabling them to learn more
efficiently and effectively.51
Carolyn King, Digital Innovation Team Academic Lead at
the University of Tasmania, describes the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) as an
online learning tool with accessibility and with an emphasis on developing a model that
can really provide learning ‘fit for purpose’: Institutional drivers, educational objectives,
research objectives, assumed capability thresholds of intended cohort, and nature of
content.52
While successful online courses want massive crowds and highly scalable
courses, the art world is often times hard to scale and limited. The fact that the art world
is hard to scale may be both an advantage and disadvantage in starting museum online
learning. Online learning can be an opportunity for the museums to reach a larger crowd,
but it could be a challenge for the museums to maintain the learning educational quality.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
50
51
B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy Work is Theatre &
Every Business a Stage (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), 5.
52
Carolyn King, Kathleen Doherty, Jo-Anne Kelder, Fran Mclnerney, Justin Walls,
Andrew Robinson and James Vickers, “‘Fit for Purpose’: A Cohort-centric Approach to
MOOC Design,” RUSC: Revista De Universidad Y Sociedad Del Conocimiento 11
(2014): 108-121.

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20
G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of Smithsonian Museum and also president at
Georgia Institute of Technology, said “museums have had a tough time adapting to the
digital environment, partly because of limited technology… and a culture that is built
more around curated exhibitions than open access…Either institutions embrace [digital
technology] or they risk being marginalized.”53
However, through previous examples of
technologies used in the museums, we can see that there has been progress in
implementing the technologies. With improved technology, museums can adapt more
easily to the digital environment. We now live in a digital environment where accessing
museums online is more natural. Just as there are museum educators inside the museums,
online learning is needed for the virtual museums. Museums will either embrace new
technology for education or risk being marginalized.
Digital museums are good, but what use is it when what people really need is how
to appreciate art and how to look at them? Museum online learning can give access to the
online museum and a key to appreciation and application techniques. People, who are
interested in exploring the art world and want to learn the basics of the arts while in the
middle of their career, can approach museum online learning more easily than any other
institutions such as universities or other art’s academies. It is also the characteristic of the
museums that makes it more approachable than other academic institutions to learn the
basics about arts.
There is no agreed definition of what constitutes museum online learning. This
paper’s definition of museum online learning is a set of online learning courses that is
well developed and delivered to students by the instructors using artworks from the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
53
G. Wayne Clough, Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital
Age (Washington D.C: Smithsonian Institution, 2013), 2-6.

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21
museum collection. For example, the Metropolitan Museum has begun to build their
special collections online for their online visitors by even providing short video clips of
living artists talking about their experience in engaging with the artworks of the Met. The
“Artist Project” is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies and will be presented in fives
seasons of twenty episodes each over the course of one year.54
Even though the Artist
Project is educationally informative and provided by the online learning by the museum,
it does not have instructors and curated courses; therefore it is not museum online
learning.
Other museums have started online learning programs with slightly different
missions but with the common goal of reaching out to visitors who cannot visit the
museum. MoMA and the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) have developed
groundbreaking educational program. Outside the United States, the Tate Modern and the
Victoria & Albert Museum have taken lead on museum online learning. Their new
programs are very innovative and challenging. Because museum online learning is a new
thing and because it is still in the exploratory stage, each museum has different business
payment mode and course delivery system.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
54
“Metropolitan Museum Launches Season 3 of The Artist Project, an Online Series
Featuring 100 Artists and Works of Art at the Met That Spark Their Imagination,” The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed September 3, 2015,
http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2015/the-artist-project.

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22
Chapter 3: Case Studies
Modern Museum of Art and Online Learning: MoMA Courses Online
Background
Modern Museum of Art (MoMA) is one of the world’s largest modern art
museums, containing more than just paintings and sculpture. MoMA has departments
devoted to Architecture and Design, Film and Video, Photography, Prints and Illustrated
Books as well.
The founding director of MoMA, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., envisioned the museum to
be a place to help people appreciate modern art and wished it to be the best modern
museum of art in the world. Barr’s “Cubism and Abstract Art” and “Fantastic Art, Dada,
Surrealism” exhibition in MoMA made a genuine historical impact and was a precedent
for many other museums.55
Because these two exhibitions were something very new at
the time, Barr created catalogues that were meticulously written to sharply define
concepts to a public that needed understanding of new art and to move beyond their
“prejudices.” Barr explained, “Art teaches us not to love, through false pride and
ignorance, exclusively that which resembles us. It teaches us rather to love, by a great
effort of intelligence and sensibility, that which is different from us”.56
Following the
philosophy of the founding director, which is to move beyond the prejudices and to love
what is different, MoMA has aimed to be innovative.
The Museum of Modern Art maintains an energetic schedule of exhibitions and
programs in modern and contemporary art. The museum highlights recent developments
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
55
Sybil Gordon Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of
Modern Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 315.
56
Ibid., 327.

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23
and historical movements. There are also ongoing programs of classic and contemporary
films, which range from retrospectives and historical surveys to introductions of the work
of independent and experimental film and video makers.57
The museum also offers live
music performances that reflect the modern era. Visitors can enjoy access to bookstores
offering a collection of publications and reproductions, and a design store offering
objects related to modern and contemporary art and design.58
According to MoMA’s website, “The Museum is dedicated to its role as an
educational institution and provides a complete program of activities intended to assist
both the general public and special segments of the community in approaching and
understanding the world of modern and contemporary art.”59
In addition to lectures and
guest speakers, the museum offers variety of educational programs for children, adults,
teachers, international visitors, and people with special needs. The museum has important
archives on modern art and encourages scholars and researchers to use the library.
MoMA has been and still is a museum that seeks to grow and expand. In 2000,
MoMA made affiliation with P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, which is now called
MoMA PS1. This partnership has been successful in expanding outreach and offering
collaborative exhibitions, educational programs, and collections. MoMA continuously
seeks to collaborate with other institutions in order to promote art, culture, and education.
MoMA’s museum online learning is currently collaborating with Coursera, a Massive
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
57
“Museum History,” The Museum of Modern Art, accessed August 10, 2015,
http://www.moma.org/about/history.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.

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24
Open Online Course (MOOC).60
MoMA Courses Online is a great fit for MoMA’s
mission of expansion and education.
MoMA has expanded its collection and exhibition space due to its recent
renovation in 2006; but also has great online displays. Many of the artworks are
digitalized and accessible to the public for free through Google Art Project.
MoMA Courses Online was conceived in 2010 with Beth Harris appointed as the
inaugural Director for Digital Learning. Under Harris’ supervision, MoMA created six
online courses of eight to ten weeks, that are self-guided or instructor-led. Instructor-led
courses offer socialization and personalization, while self-guided courses are about
individualization. The course enrollment reached as high as sixty students per course, but
on average there were around thirty-five registered in the beginning.61
Museums
providing art education online was a very new phenomenon with no prior model to
follow; therefore, MoMA experimented to find a model that meets the needs of online
visitors.
When Beth Harris first started MoMA Courses Online, she focused on
accessibility. According to Corey D’Augustine, one of the instructors at MoMA Courses
Online, accessibility of learning was what he found most rewarding. D’Augustine had a
chance to meet one of his online students in Spain, and when he found out that the
student was disabled and never had a chance to travel around to see art, nor to learn how
to paint, he discovered the power of museum online learning.62
In fact, most of the
students who took MoMA’s instructor-led courses had no chance to either visit nor learn
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
60!Sara Bodinson, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 9, 2015!
61
Ibid.
62
Corey D’ Augustine, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 9, 2015.

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25
how to appreciate or make art. The initial model for MoMA Courses Online gave
students around the world accessibility to modern art.
After the successful inaugural, Deborah Howes, the second Director of Digital
Learning, produced MoMA’s free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through
Coursera, an online learning platform. Her mission was “making world-class educational
opportunities accessible to anyone, anywhere and forging sustainable and mutually
beneficial partnerships across cultural and academic institutions.”63
A MOOC is an online
educational model that allows anyone to participate, usually at no cost with theoretically
no limit to enrollment and with a course that is structured in a defined area of study.64
What is great about a MOOC is that it puts the power of education in the hands of the
consumer, and opens opportunities for people to take a course of their interest without
having to attend an academy.65
Through MOOC, educators can also reach out to a
massive audience and in fact MoMA has accomplished this while promoting the presence
of the museum. Around 90% of people who took MoMA’s courses in Coursera had not
heard of MoMA before taking the MOOC.66
Deborah Howes started this MOOC collaboration with Coursera because she
believed museum education and online learning conceptually aligned. “Museum
education is based on the curiosity of people who come from all different walks of life
and have any number of questions about what excites them. Teaching online, we offer
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
63
“Deborah Howes,” LinkedIn, accessed September 5, 2015,
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/deborah-howes/2a/926/65a.
64
Kevin Thomson, “7 Things You should Know about MOOCs,” EDUCAUSE Learning
Initiatives, November 9, 2011, accessed September 5, 2015,
http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-moocs.
65
Lynda Kelly, “Learning in 140 Characters: The Future Museum Learning in a Digital
Age” (paper presented at Museums and the Web Asia, December, 2013).
66
Sara Bodinson, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 9, 2015.

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26
different kinds of learning experiences–videos of behind the scenes tours, slide shows of
art works, DIY experiments–and students explore this variety according to their own
interests to create meaning.”67
MoMA’s launch of their MOOC through Coursera made
another inroad for museum online learning.
The third Director of Digital Learning, Sara Bodinson, and Allegra Smith,
Associate Educator, Interpretation, Research and Digital Learning, are currently focused
on developing museum online learning materials to distribute free of charge through
Coursera and YouTube.68
They are working to promote art and culture, and to spread
education to the public. MoMA is still in the stage of creating new models for museum
online learning. MoMA’s program provides courses for adults, and especially for
teachers in K-12 schools. After learning from the survey that the 90% of students taking
MoMA’s course had not heard of MoMA before, Bodinson and Smith are hoping MoMA
Courses Online will not only give increased exposure to MoMA but also to deliver
modern art to those who do not have access.
For instance, using MoMA’s self-guided online learning videos, on-site
educational programs were created for small communities where people have an interest
in art but do not have access to it.69
Trained instructors are using MoMA’s materials and
then leading group discussions or classes with what they’ve learned through the video.
This is an innovative model because it incorporates the advantages of online learning and
on-site learning.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
67
Emily Kotecki, “Why Museums can Excel in Online Learning,” Art Museum Teaching,
May 4, 2013, accessed August 10, 2015, http://artmuseumteaching.com/2013/05/04/why-
museums-can-excel-in-online-learning/.
68
69
Allegra Smith, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 9, 2015.

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27
Course Description
Courses created by MoMA in MoMA.org, through the MoMA Courses Online
program, curate their own collection are art history, studio art, and survey courses. Art
History courses contain short written lectures, readings, and discussion forums. Most of
the short lectures are shot inside the MoMA galleries, and there are great captures of
works of art in close detail. These are followed by videos that introduce the techniques of
the artists covered in the other formats.
The Studio Courses introduces the techniques of the famous artists of the
twentieth century and contain lectures and demonstration videos of how some of the
masterpieces in MoMA’s collection were created. They feature weekly assignments for
which students have to take pictures of their final works of art, share, and criticize other
student’s work. Finally, the survey course allows online learners to travel around the
museum space virtually with access to virtual zoom in, and at the end, to select favorite
works and curate their own collection digitally.
MoMA’s online learning courses in collaboration with Coursera are targeted
toward art educators who teach K-12.70
They are self-guided videos broken down into
five-week courses. Each video lasts less than five minutes, but are supplemented by
reading sources and quizzes. Even though courses provided through Coursera are short
and extremely introductory, they are a good place to promote MoMA and its brand.
Museum online learning through Coursera is also a good start for students who have little
previous exposure to art.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
70
Allegra Smith, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 9, 2015.

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28
There are students taking MoMA Courses Online all over the world. In order to
expand more globally, MoMA’s Digital Learning team is planning to translate their
current videos.71
Initially, MoMA plans to record and translate spoken word and reading
materials in Spanish and Chinese. They hope to be able to translate into multiple
languages in the future.
Business Model for MoMA Online Programs
MoMA’s online learning project is sponsored by Volkswagen. The costs of the
courses in MoMA.Org range from $150 to $350. Self-guided courses are $200, and $350
for instructor-led courses.72
Although courses provided through Coursera are free of
charge, MoMA offers printed certificates of completion for $49.
How is online learning quantifiable, and what is the benefit? Museums are non-
profit organizations with a mission to spread culture and the arts, but they should be also
thinking about the commercial products. It is not just about tracking the money they are
making through museum online learning, but do people follow up by coming to the
museum after or during the courses? How can MoMA track the influence of MoMA
Courses Online on visits to the museum and sales levels during visits? MoMA has the
MoMA Store where there are designed goods with paintings from MoMA galleries. Are
museum online learning students buying museum catalogues or other goods after taking
the courses? What are the financial connections? These points should be considered in
the future for MoMA Courses Online and for other museums as well, because after all,
museum shops are an essential part of museum visits.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
71
72
“MoMa Courses Online,” The Museum of Modern Art, accessed July 3, 2015,
http://www.moma.org/learn/courses/online#fees.

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29
MoMA is looking for ways to further develop their planned MoMA Courses
Online global language project.73
Many other companies such as Hyundai Capital
America, Forbes, Goldman Sachs, and Samsung Electronics America also sponsor
MoMA. For global language projects in the future, companies that sponsor MoMA, and
origin of that company could sponsor for translating and promoting MoMA Courses
Online into their language. For instance, for Korean language, Samsung or Hyundai can
sponsor translation of MoMA Online Learning into Korean and to promote the site in
Korea.
Future Plans
MoMA wants to provide courses that can help people understand modern art, and
plan to create courses that can assist people in this respect. Through collaboration with
Coursera, MoMA hopes to reach out to audiences who are not familiar with the museum
and to promote it. The Digital Learning team from MoMA will take the results of course
surveys into consideration when developing new online programs.74
MoMA Online
Learning is a great tool for making modern art accessible; therefore the museum will
strive to create other online courses that can increase access to the museum.
North Carolina Museum of Art and Online Learning
Background
North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), located at the capital city of North
Carolina, Raleigh, is one of the first museums in the United States to be formed by State
legislation and funding. Noted for holding great artworks from antiquity to the present,
North Carolina Museum of Art is also known for its nation’s largest 164-acre museum
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
73
74
Ibid.

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30
park. In the year 2012, NCMA’s new building received international honors for its
energy and environmental enhancement and innovative building design.75
In 1924, the
North Carolina State Art Society formed to generate interest in creating an art museum
for the state and in 1956, the North Carolina Museum of Art was opened to the public.76
Since the initial 1947 appropriation that established its collection, the Museum has
continued to be a model of the benefits of enlightened public policy, with free admission
to the museum and grounds.
Michelle Harrell is an Associate Director of Education and Emily Kotecki is a
Distance Learning Educator at North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA). While going
over a study, Framework for 21st
Century Learning, they found a few interesting facts
that eventually led to the creation of museum online learning. Framework for 21st
Century Learning was developed with input from teachers, education experts, and
business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge students need to succeed
in work, life, and citizenship, as well as the support system necessary for twenty-first
century outcome.77
According to the online study Framework for 21st
Century Learning,
there are skills, knowledge, and expertise students should master to succeed in work and
life in the twenty-first century. Among them are Information, Media, and Technology.
“To be effective in the 21st
century, citizens and workers must be able to create, evaluate,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
75
“N.C. Museum of Art Wins International Honor,” NC Headlines, accessed June 23,
2015, http://www.ncheadlines.com/releases/nc-museum-of-art-wins-international-honor.
76
“History of the Museum,” North Carolina Museum of Art, accessed July 15, 2015,
http://ncartmuseum.org/about/history/.
77
“Framework for 21st
century Learning,” Partnership for 21st
Century Learning,
accessed July 20, 2015, http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework.

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31
and effectively utilize information, media, and technology”.78
NCMA considered ways to
shape students in North Carolina as effective citizens in the twenty-first century.
In adhering to NCMA’s founding mission, to serve all people in North Carolina,
Harrell and Kotecki wanted to focus especially on high school students all over North
Carolina. With the passion for high school students and Framework for 21st
Century
Learning in mind, Harrell and Kotecki made contact with North Carolina Virtual Public
School (NCVPS) in 2008. NCVPS is an online course site with a mission that “NCPVS
shall be available at no cost to all students in North Carolina who are enrolled in North
Carolina’s public schools, Department of Defense schools, and schools operated by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs”.79
NCPVS is part of the North Carolina Public School System
where all NCPVS teachers must hold a Standard Professional II NC Teaching License, 9-
12 certification in their area of instruction, and more than four years of teaching
experiences.80
North Carolina Museum of Art and North Carolina Public Virtual School are both
owned by the state of North Carolina. Also operated by the state, collaboration of the two
institutions was natural and synergizing strategy. Perhaps, the collaboration of NCMA
and NCPVS illustrates the point Elaine Gurian, a museum advisor, has made in her book,
Civilizing the Museum. “Museums are not unique in their work. Rather, they share a
common purpose with a host of other institutions. We need museums and their siblings
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
78
“Framework for 21st
century Learning,” Partnership for 21st
Century Learning,
accessed July 20, 2015, http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework.
79
“History of the Museum,” North Carolina Museum of Art, accessed July 15, 2015,
http://ncartmuseum.org/about/history/.
80
Katie Ericson, “The Art of Collaboration and Virtual Learning A Look At the Creation
& Implementation of the Online High School Art Courses by the North Carolina Museum
of Art and North Carolina Virtual Public School,” ISSUU, accessed August 10, 2015,
http://issuu.com/kericson/docs/capstone.

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32
because we need collective history set in congregant locations in order to remain
civilized. Societies build these institutions because they authenticate the social contract.
They are collective evidence that we were here”.81
The collaboration of NCMA and
NCPVS created powerful learning tools for students to learn art in the twenty-first
century.
It was difficult for the museum to reach out to all the students in the state to visit
the physical building. The online learning program was an effective bridge for the
Museum to reach out to those students who could not physically visit the museum.
Similarly, museum online learning was a great opportunity for NCPVS to create variety
within their courses. NCMA is renowned for its educational program and outreach in the
state of North Carolina. NCPVS is the second largest virtual public school in the country,
serving over thirty thousand high school students.82
Museum online learning was an
accomplishment for both NCMA and NCPVS.
North Carolina Museum of Art’s Education Department conceives of ideas and
develops the courses. The Museum usually has two days meetings attended by fifteen to
twenty museum staff members and high school educators, to discuss, course map, and to
fully model the outcome. Once the model is created, Ellen Hart, NCPVS Instructional
Director, puts the materials online. She provides any materials needed by the students
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
81
Elaine Gurian, “Civilizing the Museum,” in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham:
AltaMira, 2012), 283.
82

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33
taking online classes.83
Hart employs online teachers who can record the lecture, trains
them, and directs them. The collaboration has created five online art courses to high
school students in North Carolina.
Course Description
All courses created by NCMA and NCPVS are studio-based art courses. The five
courses include The Art of Photography, The Art of Game Design, The Art of Fashion,
Art of Videography, and Art of Advertising. Although art making is the main focus of
each course, theory, history, critical thinking and practical application are all emphasized
for deeper learning and understanding.84
Each course is broken up into modules, and even
though coursework can be completed any time of the day, students have live virtual class
sessions weekly for forty-five minutes.85
Through virtual classes, students can interact
with one another. Moreover, the requirement to participate in student forums and blogs
enables further interaction amongst the online classmates.86
What is interesting about NCMA and NCPVS’ online courses is that they require
special technologies to participate in the course. For instance, in order to take Art of
Videography, students are required to purchase the following materials themselves: a
DVD camcorder or flipcam, firewire cable (IEEE 1394), an external hard drive, access to
a video editing program, and finally, ability to access manipulate and store video files on
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
83
Emily Kotecki, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, June 30, 2015.
84
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.

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34
Kaltura.com.87
Other courses also require special technologies including digital cameras,
graphic design software, Microsoft Office, scanners, and printers.88
By using these
technologies to create artworks for themselves, students can really engage in learning and
have better perspectives on appreciating the art works.
Emily Kotecki and Michelle Harrell, focused on creating online learning that can
really connect art to student’s lives. They hoped museum online learning would increase
students’ ability to think more critically and creatively. In order to provide an enhanced
environment for the courses, they also encouraged the discussions amongst the peers.89
For some of the courses, on-site learning is combined with the online-learning platform,
so that students can connect what they have learned virtually to reality.
Business Model
NCVPS is a state-run institution where those enrolled in NCVPS, Department of
Defense Schools, and schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs may take the
courses free of charge.90
However, students in North Carolina who are attending private
or homeschool are charged $420 for a semester-long course, $510 for a year-long course,
$310 for summer courses, and $640 for world language classes.91
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
87
“Course Descriptions with Prerequisites, Textbook, and Tech Requirements,” North
Carolina Public Virtual School, accessed July 20, 2015,
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ycvAQANAAywtWtxcpSJjw_OM_9PP31mldcTr
a6kc_A/edit.
88
Ibid.
89
Emily Kotecki and Michele Harrell, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, June 30, 2015.
90
91
Ibid.

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35
The online learning project was funded through a five-year, $5 million grant by
Wachovia Banking Corporation, which has been acquired by Wells Fargo. The museum
mainly relies on grant funding to sustain and grow the online courses, equal to
approximately $200,000 per year. There is an additional $50,000 from other sources such
as endowments and small gifts. North Carolina Museum of Art used the funds for the
following expenses: three full-time museum staffs, advisory panel and think tank,
learning management system, In-house revisions by NCVPS Teachers and NCMA Staff,
heuristic evaluations performed by an external provider, graphic designer, video producer,
additional course writing employee, and supplemental programs.
Sufficient funding and collaborative work between NCMA and NCVPS allowed
the museum to explore and be creative with online learning. Museum Online Learning is
a new concept where the attempt could have been risky. However, with sufficient funding
and adequate planning online learning NCMA has made a good start, offering education,
culture, and art, online for young people.
Future Plans
North Carolina Museum of Art and North Carolina Virtual High School will
continue to reach out to the students in the state of North Carolina. With the great
success of online learning for high school students, there are plans to develop online
courses for middle school students as well.92
Moreover, NCMA and NCVHS will
continue to help other museums or online course institutions develop online art education
and promote online education throughout the state and beyond. Both of the institutions
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
92
Emily Kotecki and Michele Harrell, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, June 30, 2015.

!
36
are constantly researching better technologies to implement museum online learning.
Technology is constantly changing and it is important to be current with the changes.

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37
Chapter 4 Case Study: Sotheby’s Institute of Art Online Learning Business Model
Many Universities in the United States are employing online learning as their
educational tools. Some universities are partnering with Coursera or other MOOC
platforms to provide free or affordable education to both the students and the public.
These are interesting phenomenon of the society and online learning platform is a
growing field for all the educational institutions. Sotheby’s Institute of Art’s Online
Learning is an interesting Case to study and to compare with the rest of Museum
Online Learning because it is an Art academic institution that provides both graduate
degrees and also online learning.
Although Sotheby’s Auction House and Sotheby’s Institute of Art does not
belong under the same company, in some ways the institute can be compared to the
education department of museum. Museums display their exhibitions where visitors
come inside to engage with the objects and education department helps the visitors to
understand better about the art and expand their knowledge about the artworks, artists,
and the background histories. Auction Houses also exhibit their exhibitions where
buyers come to view the objects for purchase. Sotheby’s Institute of Art does not
necessarily educate the buyers at the Auction House, unless they come to the institute
for the education, but many experts in the Auction Houses have gone through the
Institute’s education and more and more buyers are going through the Institute’s
education as well.
Many buyers in the Auction House are busy that they may not physically
make presence at the day of Auction. They may not even make a visit to see the art
objects for themselves, instead viewing the art works through catalogues or online.

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This can be compared to people, who cannot physically make visits to the museums,
viewing images of the paintings or going online to have a virtual tour of the museum.
For those who cannot attend educational program in the museums, few museums in
the world have started online learning to provide virtual classes. Likewise, for those
who want to learn about the art market and the world, Sotheby’s Institute of Art has
started online classes to provide art education for people all over the world.
Background
Sotheby’s Institute of Art (SIA) is a graduate school of art and the art market.
The Institute started with a connoisseurship program with Sotheby’s Auction House in
1969. David C. Levy, the president of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, has set the vision for
SIA. He said, “At Sotheby’s Institute of Art, we believe it is essential to educate
professionals who combine art historical scholarship with market savvy, ingenuity and
a profound belief in the power of art to change and enhance lives.”93
The institute
aims to achieve this vision through a multidisciplinary approach by providing
curricula that range from social, cultural, economic, and object-based perspectives.
Sotheby’s Institute of Art has campuses in London, New York, Los Angeles, and
Beijing.
Sotheby’s London campus offers six master’s degree programs in Art
Business, Contemporary Art, Photography, Fine & Decorative Art, East Asian Art and
Contemporary Design. The New York campus offers three master’s degree programs
in Art Business, Contemporary Art and American Fine and Decorative Art. In Los
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
93
“Sotheby’s Institute of Art About,” Sotheby’s Institute of Art, accessed August 24,
2015, http://www.sothebysinstitute.com/About/About.aspx.

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39
Angeles and China, Sotheby’s Institute of Art collaborates with other universities to
offer a master’s degree in Art Business. Sotheby’s Institute of Art provides
professional education for art in the global market by providing exposure to
specialized topics in the international art world.
Sotheby’s Institute of Art also has non-degree programs including Summer
study, executive education, short courses, and online courses. While master’s degree
requires three semesters of learning in order to finish the program, non-Master’s
programs are for students who are eager to learn about the art world but who cannot
afford the time, money, or effort that the master’s degree requires. Non-degree
programs are a way to get exposure to the real art world and market. In fact, a few of
the master’s degree students in the Sotheby’s Institute of Art have taken non-degree
programs first, before deciding to commit further.
Joanna Bernett, the Director of Online Learning, and Michael Chung, the CEO
of the education group of CIG, conceived and started Sotheby’s Online Learning.
Through doing market research, Sotheby’s Institute of Art found that there were many
students who were interested in learning about the art market, but did not have the
time or money to take graduate courses. Therefore SIA proposed the idea of online
learning as part of a continuing education program in 2010, and the program was
developed and launched in the spring of 2011.
The target demographic of prospective students are those who are primarily
interested in art business. Because it is a continuing education program, the average
age of the online learners is mid 30s. Some of the students are taking the course as a
career change, or to gain knowledge about the business of the art world. Interestingly,

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40
three to four percent of the students come to join the Master’s program at Sotheby’s
Institute of Art after finishing the Online Courses.94
This is a small number, but it
definitely demonstrates that online learning draws a turnout as well. Another
demographic fact is that many of the students taking the online courses live in the
cities where the institutions are located: London, New York, or Los Angeles.95
This
fact reflects that the marketing of online courses starts from the physical presence of
the institution and that interest in art business education is high among people in these
three cities.
Course Descriptions
Sotheby’s Online Learning provides various courses in arts ranging from
history to the art market. Sotheby’s Online course offerings include: Art as a Global
Business, Art as an Alternative Investment, Introduction to Art History: Renaissance
Art – Present, Introduction to Contemporary Art: 1980 to Present, Writing for the Art
World, Art as a Global Business: The Value of Art, and Impressionism to
Conceptualism: 1860 – 1980. Renowned experts of the art world teach each course.
Some members of the online faculty also teach the master’s degree students and
Summer study students at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Many faculty members also teach
at other universities and museums, such as the Modern Museum of Art and the Tate.
Many of the students beginning Sotheby’s online learning do not start out with
previous knowledge of the art world, so courses are mainly introductory.
Online courses at the Institute are six weeks in duration, plus a one-week pre-
course online workshop where students can familiarize themselves with the online
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
94
Joanna Berritt, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 24, 2015.
95
Claire Hoover, interview by Jung Hyoun Han, September 23, 2015.

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41
program and technology. Pre-course workshops are open one week before the actual
course, and they remain open during the six weeks of the course period. Each course
requires around eight hours of work and four to six of log-ons per week, but flexibility
is available. Students can access the course twenty-four hours a day, and they are not
required to be online at the same time as classmates or instructors.
Sotheby’s online learning program is interactive learning, where exchanges are
encouraged amongst the online students. Because of this, class size is limited to thirty
students. There is a collaborative discussion board for students and instructors.
Students come from many countries, and this diversity creates a rich experience and
global perspectives of the art world. There are various online learning models but
there are two main categories: instructor-based online learning and self-guided online
learning. Sotheby’s Online Learning is an instructor-based online learning with one-
on-one engagement between student and instructor.
Sotheby’s Online Learning courses receive highly satisfactory student
evaluations, with courses receiving ratings of 3.89 to 4.88 out of 5.96
According to the
student course evaluation, course quality is good and the courses are easy to navigate.
After or during the courses, some of the online program students even visit the
Institute to meet their instructors. The course completion rate is around 65%, and these
students actively participate not only in the courses but also in the discussions.97
Business Model
Sotheby’s Institute of Art is a for-profit institution, and therefore the institution
does not provide their courses through MOOCs or at a very affordable price. Each
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
96
97

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42
course is $1,485 and there is a $15 registration fee. Compared to online learning
courses at most museums, the price of Sotheby’s online learning is definitely high;
however, at the same time, Sotheby’s online courses are more specialized than online
programs offered by museums. It is true that the museums have the advantage of
holding numerous artworks, videos, and resources for further education, but SIA’s
programs have special resources relevant to art markets.
Future Plans
Sotheby’s Institute of Art is planning to create online courses that give
academic credits to the students.98
Courses have been successful so far, and there has
been growing demand for for-credit courses from students enrolled in the Institute
graduate programs.99
This will give more opportunities for the students outside the
Institute as well, because not many schools provide art business courses like the
Institute does. Students all over the world will be able to enroll in credit-granting
courses without having to travel to the New York, London, or LA campuses.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
98
99

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43
Chapter 5: Measuring the Success of Museum and Online Learning
Online learning is relatively new to our society. According to Jeff Levine, a
reporter from the magazine American Alliance of Museums, “While the new learning
technologies are exciting, there are relatively few metrics to define their impact, or
indeed which of the new approaches will abide while others fall away. Or whether
distance learning will prove so compelling that it will pose an existential challenge to the
very institutions that created it – in effect, becoming digital Frankenstein out of
control.”100
Does museum online learner know that they will have lesser experience with
arts than they will inside the physical museum? Or does visitor actually get better
learning and experience through museum online leaning than in the real museum space?
For example, when visitors go to the Louvre to look at Mona Lisa or to MoMA for Starry
Night, what they actually experience is the crowd of people with their cameras and
cellphones all around. They cannot actually fully engage with the painting because of the
painting’s fame. Moreover, inside the museum where there are too many people, it is also
hard to get museum education because you cannot simply hear what the educators are
saying. This may be compared to the taped performance versus the live performance of a
sporting event, parades, TV shows, or Opera. What is the trade-off for the real versus the
virtual? Why are people utilizing the virtual spaces knowing they will not get full
experiences? What is so intriguing about the virtual world that visual and performing arts
are going online?
Case studies of three institutions show evidence of great learning outcomes
through online learning. As Jeff Levine argues in his article however, we do not yet have
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
100
Digital Learning,” Museum (2015): 35-36.

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44
the tools to measure the success of virtual museum classes. How will we know if this new
distance learning will prove so compelling and that it will not pose an existential
challenge to the museum? How can we define the success of museum online learning?
What is an ideal model for online learning? This chapter will discuss pros and cons of
museum online learning, and provide an ideal model and the criteria to be considered to
evaluate the success of museum online learning.
Pros and Cons of Museum Online Learning
First, the disadvantage of museum online learning is that the students or viewers
cannot study the object in direct contact. Because the object is best observed in person,
online visitors may not be able to grasp the size and scale of the work as well as visitors
can at the actual site. Moreover, online visitors will not be able to appreciate the space
relationships between the objects onscreen as well as museum visitors do at the
collection. A solution is needed to better perceive the artworks onscreen.
Learning other academic subjects online, such as language or math, and
interactions between instructor and student can be similar to real-classroom learning.
However, art education inside the physical museum space and compared to online is very
different because of the nature of materials, which museum educators cannot transfer
readily online.
Online learning transforms the experience of perceiving art objects. Digital
objects can transfer objects in nanoseconds from museum’s website to a viewer’s screen,
while actual transportation of the objects may take a very long time. This aspect of the
digital world makes the appearance of digital objects unstable. For instance, learners can
re-format, re-align, erase and alter an artifact composed of bytes. The real object, in the

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45
museum, is in contrast with the digital object, which has, again the ‘stability of liquid.101
There will be a tension between the nature of digital and the value of the real in museum
online learning.
Another controversy concerning museum online learning is the concern of threat
to the status of museums. If museums are going online for learning, does that mean
museums are focusing more on education and less on the objects? There is a negotiation
between the relative statuses of the real and the virtual reflected across multiple cultural
domains in the digital age, and this negotiation is important because of its impact on
understanding of the primary role and function of a museum.102
However, at the same
time, education has been considered a great part of the objective from the beginning of
museum history, and changes have been made throughout history of American museum
education. In the new era, museums shifted from object to subject. Also, in the new
paradigm of museums, collected objects remain important but the ability of the museum
to provide access to the objects is considered more important.103
Even though there are
possible threats from digital objects, museum online learning is likely to be an innovative
trend in American museum education history, because the trend in the new paradigm of
museums is to provide access to the public to the objects.
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101
Sian Bayne, Jenn Ross and Williamson, “Objects, Subjects, Bits and Bytes: Learning
from the Digital Collections of the National Museums,” Museum and Society 7(2009):
112, accessed July 10, 2015, http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/objects-
subjects-bits-and-bytes-learning-from-the-digital-collections-of-the-national-
museums(53f233fe-8f5e-4732-af20-63a52221e3d1).html.
102
Ibid.
103
“National Museums Online Learning Project,” The University of Edinburgh, accessed
August 20, 2015,
http://www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/178132/58514_file.pdf.

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46
Another disadvantage of museum online learning is the need for technology.
Because virtual classes are provided online, students must have computers to access the
courses. Moreover, in some museum online courses, students must also have other
technologies such as video cameras in order to complete the course. Not many students
can afford to buy all these technological and moreover, not all the students have been
trained to utilize these technologies. Sometimes, even the instructors have difficulty
accessing the courses. While accessibility can be an advantage for museum online
learning, it could also be a disadvantage for the same reason.
The first advantage of museum online learning is that it may become the tool to
expand the demographics of museum use. Mary Russell, a specialist at South East
Initiatives Regional Technology in the Education Consortium, describes the purpose of
these programs as elements of distance learning targeted to wide variety of people with
different skills and abilities. Her studies found that online learning could help form a
strong community among the online learners.104
Not only can online learning expand the
demographics of the museum, it can also help those diverse demographics to come
together through the arts.
One of the biggest advantages of online learning is the ability to give access to
those who cannot physically visit the museum. Both MoMA and NCMA considered
accessibility as one of online learning’s biggest advantages. Through online learning,
education is more widespread and provides more opportunities for students who cannot
travel. Public schools, institutions, and museums can provide more equality of education
by offering courses online for certain groups of students.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
104
Mary Russell, “Online Learning Communities: Implications for Adult Learning,”
Adult Learning 10(1999): 28.

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47
Other advantage of museum online learning includes the opportunity to use
underutilized resources. There are many resources that museums have, other than works
of arts displayed inside their exhibition rooms. For instance, there could be X-ray photos
of certain works of art from the conservation department. Sometimes, there are even
whole pictures or videos of the conservation process, because that process itself can
change the appearance of the work of art. Maps, charts, diagrams, timelines, and
comparable works are also great resources that can help viewers understand the works of
art in a deeper way, and eventually open new perspectives on viewing the artworks.
A final example of underutilized resources is that of expertise. Museums have
connections with outside experts. These experts can include artists, renowned scholars, or
professional staffs of other museums. Through museum online learning, all these
resources can be incorporated and developed to make the viewing experience a fuller
experience. Instead of just looking at the objects, museum online learning guides the
viewers can even be guided to reproduce the work of art through artistic hands-on
practice.
Museum online learning can offer a cost efficient educational structure. In earlier
research on online education in 2009, scholars looked at the online platform as an
economic environment where little or no cost is involved. They believed museum online
courses could have a positive cost-benefit relationship, because along with freeware and
shareware on the Internet, the open source movement offers a diverse array of learning
environments and tools.105
One of the tools museums can consider is a new learning
management system that helps save the cost of having to update the existing learning
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
105
William B. Crow and Herminia Din, Unbound by Place or Time: Museums and
Online Learning (Washington D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2009), 16.

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system. For instance, the Tate chose Moodle, a free open source learning management
system widely used by educational institutions around the world. Moodle has a large
online development and support system, and Tate found it easy to set-up, organize, and
create new courses.106
When museums utilize tools such as Moodle, museums can
provide education to more people with less cost.
There is flexibility and ease of use in museum online programs. Visitors do not
necessarily have to make a visit to the museum but simply log onto the online world to
access the works of art and learn from the museum educators. Flexibility includes ease of
interaction amongst various visitors. Both NCMA and MoMA encourage their students to
interact with peer virtual students and instructors. These interactions allow students to
learn various perspectives about the object they are studying. For instance, there are
numerous global demographics for MoMA Courses Online where students can engage
global perspectives about artworks.
Flexibility and ease of use is definitely one of the advantages of online learning;
however, it can also be a disadvantage. For students, too much flexibility can reduce
enthusiasm and participation. For example, Experts from MoMA Courses Online have
found out that without giving students a deadline or reminder message to finish course
materials, they will be reluctant to finish the course on time.107
Ideal Museum Online Learning
As museums create more online courses, resources, or distant learning programs,
Deborah Howes advises they “think creatively about the unique qualities of their
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
106
“Tate Learn,” Tate, accessed August 19, 2015, http://www.tate.org.uk/learn.
107

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49
collection and what that could offer to a global audience. Anyone can do a course on
modern art if they have a collection, but how do they offer a unique look at this topic?”108
Three institutions have their own voice for museum online learning and each of them
has advantages and disadvantages. In the previous section of this paper, pros and cons of
museum online learning have been explored. Recently, a new museum online model was
developed to improve the disadvantages and increase advantageous benefits.
The new concept of online museum education is called Flipped Museum. This
model has been developed from Flipped Classroom, a model developed in early 1990s by
Eric Mazur, Professor of Physics at Harvard University.109
He realized the advantages of
“flipping” the teaching by giving students the assignment to watch recorded lectures
online at home and in the classroom, and dividing students into groups for collaborative
problem solving.110
Some of the teachers in the United States base their flipped classroom
teaching on online materials from MOOC platforms. The Royal Coin Cabinet, which is
part of the central agency National Historical Museum in Sweden, and NCMA have
implemented the concept of flipped museum.
The concept of flipped museum is similar to the flipped classroom. Students
watch the online learning course materials at home, and then have the opportunity to
experience, share and apply the knowledge in class. The final component of flipped
museum is the students’ visit to the museum. This new concept strengthened the benefit
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108
Emily Kotecki, “Why Museums can Excel in Online Learning,” Art Museum
Teaching, May 4, 2013, accessed August 10, 2015,
http://artmuseumteaching.com/2013/05/04/why-museums-can-excel-in-online-learning/.
109
Cecilia von Heijne, “The Flipped Museum,” ICOMON e-Proceedings 7 (2014): 1-7,
accessed August 21, 2015,
http://network.icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/minisites/icomon/publications/2013_
Rio/von_Heijne_2013.pdf.
110
Ibid.

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50
of museum online learning, which were consisted of making connections with other
students.
Flipped museum is also a significant way to connect between schools and
museums. Museums and schools already have connections, but using flipped museum
will bring more interaction between the two institutions, and thus strengthening museum
education for students.
Two disadvantages mentioned for museum online learning can be lessened
through Flipped Museum. By giving an appropriate amount of flexibility and inviting
students to the actual museum site, Flipped Museum creates a comprehensive learning
structure for the students. Flipped museum is not only beneficial to the students but also
for teachers in schools and museums. By taking role in what they are best at, and
distributing the roles accordingly, flipped museum can create less burdening structures
for both the instructors and the museum.
Another ideal component that can be employed in museum online learning, as
continuing education for adult learners, is social networking event. Museums can hold a
social networking night for those who have finished the museum-organized coursework.
Museums can invite online learners to the museums, and this will give them an
opportunity to make a physical visit to the museum and to communicate directly with
fellow students and instructors. In some ways, this model is similar to Flipped Museum
for adult learners.
Lastly, an ideal technology that can be incorporated to enhance the online
learning experience is virtual glasses. One of the disadvantages of learning online is the
fact that arts cannot be appreciated as fully on the computer screen as the real object.

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Virtual glasses can help viewers look at 2D objects as if they are 3D. Although it would
not be the same experience visitors would have with art objects in real space, virtual
glasses will assist in enhancing the online viewing and thus, Online Education.
Museum Online Learning Evaluation Tool
Museum online learning is a new trial for the museums; therefore there has not
been a universal evaluation tool to help measure its success. Evaluation tools are
necessary for museums because it will help them to know whether their online learning
programs are successful or not. The tools will also help identify areas for improvement.
There are two essential categories to consider: Course Material and Interaction.
What are people going to come away with by finishing the courses? Content and sources
are something to think about when making the courses. It is important for the museums to
define which age group they are targeting and to create course materials that are
appropriate for the target demographics. Each course should be clear on learning
objectives, contextualized backgrounds and summary of artists or eras, examination of
elements of works, and features that encourage the learners to form their own ideas and
questions.111
Museum online learning that includes reference readings, quizzes,
assignments, artist’s techniques, and relevant resources are other desirable elements that
should be considered when evaluating online courses.
Evaluating how well course materials are conveyed is important. Learning tools
should be easy to manage, and guidance for each lesson or assignment should be
available. Because the real objects are projected virtually on the screen, each video
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
111
“Tate Learn,” Tate, accessed August 19, 2015, http://www.tate.org.uk/learn.

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52
should also have appropriate zoom in-and-out with high definition to show the same
colors of objects as seen in reality.
The final criterion that should be considered to evaluate museum online learning
is interactivity. Modern educational theory has stressed learners’ active participation in
learning and has focused more on the processes that learners use to learn than on the
structure of the material to be learned.112
Museum learning encourages independent
thought but meaningful learning is about making connections, and it happens through
visitors creating a variety of messages and meaning.113
Museums have the capacity to
stimulate meaningful learning for their visitors especially through online learning’s
interactions. If the structure of course material is the heart of learning, meaningful
learning that comes through interactions amongst peers and instructor is what makes
good learning. Museum online learning should encourage active participation through
discussions, and also give ample attention to each individual student.
Successful museum online learning should provide complete knowledge about the
artworks, and should encourage the ability to think critically and independently, and to
absorb various perspectives from others. Desirable learning outcomes should encourage
further interest in the art world, the practice of art, and have a positive impact on the art
world.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
112
George E. Hein, “Is Meaning Making Constructivism? Is Constructivism Meaning
Making?” The Exhibitionist 18(1999): 15-18, accessed July 1, 2015, http://name-
aam.org/uploads/downloadables/EXH.fall_99/EXH_fall_99_Is%20Meaning%20Making
%20Constructivism%20Is%20Constructivism%20Meaning%20Making_Hein.pdf.
113
Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham: AltaMira, 2012), 245. !

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Conclusion: How to Plan Museum Online Learning into the Future
The history of American public museums runs parallel to the history of attempts
to educate the public. I showed in chapter 1 that American museums have been dedicated
to this mission from the beginning - they are not just galleries for viewing art. It was the
goal of educating the American public that set American museums apart from the
European models.
American museums have used technology to help spread art education to the
people. Employing technology inside the museum may have been controversial in the
beginning, because of the worries that technology had no place in the traditional museum
setting, and may even distract from the viewing of the art, but since education was as
important as exhibitions for American museums, technology has eventually been
introduced and accepted for museum education. Examples I have mentioned in Chapter 2
include interactive devices such as tablets and robots. These technical advances
demonstrate that American museums want to enhance the public’s personal engagement
with the museum.
With the growth of digital technology, museums can put their collections online,
as I have demonstrated in chapter 2. Going beyond the use of technology inside the
physical museum space only, museums have begun to go online in order to reach out to
the viewers beyond the physical museum space; it is not just about putting collections
online, but museums also have the goal of educating the public through online learning.
My case study of MoMA and NCMA shows how these leading museums have
used digital technology to bring real courses online for remote visitors to their websites. I
have also shown that schools and educational institutes such as Sotheby's have increased

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