Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Teachers College Educational ...

This year, the first participant group was engaged in a viewing exercise akin to White's framework comprised of
recording, conversing and categorizing at a museum. Another group viewed a sculpture through digital video
played in a loop (see Figure 1), while providing feedback of the aesthetic encounter. Individual moments are
graphed and shared. Next, surveys gathered demographics, art background, reasoning skills, perceptions, as
well as their orientation towards museum-based exhibits and technology.
Five cues guided the participants during their viewings:
• What is the significance of the artwork?
• How am I able to relate to the object?
• How can others relate to the object?
• What is the art expressing?
• What is the artist's message?
Results
The participants provided robust details about their aesthetic encounter as they shared thoughts and feelings
formed in the digitally-mediated environment. The participants were able to number and classify the sequence of
moments with ease. Information was arranged onto a graphical chart.
This analytical display, coined the aesthetigraph (Ko, 2012), was pivotal for them to visualize and discern their
own progress towards understanding and learning. Coupled by a survey, they elaborated as much as verified
the plausible transfer of content mentioned via encounters. The meaning-making process in the learning design
was instrumental for promoting critical thinking. For example, in the illustrated sequence (see Figure 2), the 9 th ,
16 th and 21 st moments for the participant convey references to “group behavior,” “cancerous cells” and “sociopolitical
movement,” respectively. Knowledge that develops from the context of social settings at the museum to
the one presented by the computer (social network) instantiates the possibilities that aesthetically doing so can
enable learners to tap into sociology, biology and politics.
Significance
The aesthetic exercises, survey responses and graphs validate that museum-based learning facilitates
knowledge creation. The technologically-induced experience has opened up possibilities, conducive to further
support multimodal learning and curricular standards, such as civic and cultural education, language arts, IT and
STEM. Repeated moments of encounter with the sculpture were worthwhile for them to articulate the “ineffable.”
In the process, they were engaged in critical thinking within the context of their exposure, and sought resolves to
social, scientific and technological problems. They applied knowledge through dialogical explorations à la
STEM-related principles.
28