RML: Design Thinking + Digital Media: A Model for Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences in the 21st Century Museum

The New Learning Institute delivers engaging, personalized, project-based digital media programs to young people and educators. We work in classrooms, after-school centers, museums, and cultural institutions, or wherever learning takes place. Using the latest mobile technologies and digital media practices and tools, we help young people explore their interests, direct their own learning, and better prepare themselves for living and working in the 21st century.  New Learning Institute programs help young people transfer the digital media, social, and technological skills they have developed on their own and turn them into authentic catalysts for learning, sharing and participating.

Museums and other cultural institutions are important sources of scholarship, research, and the exhibition of historical and cultural artifacts. While they are the bastions of informal learning experiences for adults and youth alike, museums and cultural institutions are also striving to make these experiences richer and deeper in the context of 21st century shifts around who defines knowledge and how visitors participate. They are grappling with the challenge of encouraging youth visitors to interact with concepts and content, not just consume them.

Inspired by what takes place at the intersection of pedagogy and practice, NLI programs in museums and cultural institutions directly address this challenge by creating learning spaces where participants engage in new ways of experiencing the museum and integrate digital media as tools to collaborate, participate, and remix content.

Working closely with partners at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the YOUMedia ArtLab@The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, The Field Museum in Chicago, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, NLI programs share a common objective: to put young people in the role of designing experiences for other young people.

NLI programs at the Smithsonian, The Field Museum, and California Academy of Science focus on giving teens the opportunity to (1) design digital media experiences that will further engage themselves and others in the museum’s collections (2) engage in authentic work for a real audience, and (3) use digital media tools in ways that allow them to participate in the world in new ways. Youth designers who participate in NLI programming become contributors to the museum ecosystem by producing mobile videos, podcasts, games, etc. that will be made available to youth visitors, thereby playing a central participatory role in shaping a museum experience that blends content and collections with new media devices and practices of the 21st century.

Through interactive presentations and discussions, the Design Thinking + Digital Media panelists will describe the NLI programs at their respective institutions, focusing on how the design-thinking process has created learning spaces where youth are active participants and problem-solvers, where adults play the role of facilitators and experts, and where teens use digital media as tools to authentically collaborate and participate. Focusing on both participant experience and teen work, panelists will share their program frameworks and describe how their practices respond to the localized needs and interests of the stakeholders at their institution.