April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

worldviews are socio-cultural-historically negotiated and formed through interactions (Engeström, 1987). For this
reason, the views and opinions of the participants in our study helped us to understand the phenomena under
investigation. A case study was used because it is an empirical investigation done in real life conditions using
multiple sources of data. The qualitative data (e.g., open questions from questionnaires and informal interviews) was
analyzed using content analysis, and the close-ended type of questionnaire section was analyzed using a quantitative
analysis. Mixed methods were used to support a complementary view of the study (Saunders et al., 2009).
Figure 2. Data collection supports two processes: understanding the needs of the Pielinen Museum and concretizing
LieksaMyst as a product
Data was collected from 2007 to 2010 (Figure 2). Each year’s data collection supported two processes, namely the
understanding of the different context aspects relevant to the Pielinen Museum and the actual design of the
application.
Participants
The objective was to involve all the stakeholders, which included curators, visitors, and educational technology
researchers, in a common aim of developing a new application for the museum. Every stakeholder’s contribution was
documented and taken into account. Due to the diverse roles of the stakeholders, their participation in the decision
process differed.
Visitors’ opinions and expectations are crucial to the application but their stay in the museum is temporal. Visitors
also hail from different backgrounds, genders and nationalities. The sample of the 476 feedbacks gathered is
described in Table 4.
Curators are museum and content experts who are knowledgeable and passionate about their museum. They have
resource expertise, content knowledge and are preoccupied with the learning experience of their visitors. Their
contribution is fundamental to the creation of a relevant and well-structured application.
Educational technology researchers supply the expertise and skills needed to bridge the gap between the curators,
visitors and resources available (information, object and technology). In this case two of the experts were Finns (one
native to the region) and the third Mexican.
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