Call for Research Volunteers

Spare an hour and receive a £10 book voucher

 
Are you an Egyptology, Shakespeare Studies, or Digital Cultures postgraduate student or recent MA or PhD graduate of the University of Birmingham? Can you spare an hour to take part in some new research on how we use museum artefacts in learning?
 
What's involved?
The purpose of the research is to discover what effect different learning environments have on how we interact with artefacts (items from museum, library and archive collections). To answer this question, volunteers will spend an hour examing artefacts in four different learning environments (two digital, two physical), answering a number of task-based questions in each. The session will be video recorded and transcribed but the identity of  volunteers will not be disclosed.
 
What's in it for me?
As well as being able to cite involvement in the research, and receive a copy of the findings report, you'll receive a £10 Waterstone's gift voucher for your efforts.

Interested?
Email David Hopes at d.hopes@bham.ac.uk before 12 noon on Friday, 10th May. Test sessions will be arranged at a mutually convenient time on the main campus during May.

Actors and Academics

A short paper delivered at the Shakespeare Institute on Thurs 7 Feb based on the Digital CoPs and Robbers project. The paper communicates the main findings from the AHRC funded project and focuses on two communities of practice who took part: actors and academics. It suggest that the ways that actors and academics use museum artefacts reveals different ways of seeing the same material. Moreover, usage behaviour depends not only on an individual's membership of a community of practice but on the medium in which the artefact is engaged: physical or digital.