This course provides an intensive overview of the educational approaches found in Australian museums and heritage sites through an experiential learning approach. In general, the course will be run as a five-day intensive in Canberra, and will consist of visits to at least seven cultural institutions and heritage sites, with discussion and learning activities led by each institution’s education and public programs staff (in consultation with ANU staff). Through action learning opportunities, students will be guided into developing analytical, synthetic and evaluative skills that allow them to observe, assess and compare audience-centred learning in a diversity of museum/heritage exhibitions and programs. (Students unable to visit Canberra during the main intensive may request an alternative opportunity to investigate authentic situations with museum/heritage professionals in either a self-paced mode in Canberra or in another mutually acceptable location.)

Students who fully satisfy the assessment requirements of this course will have the knowledge and skills to:

• Observe, report and reflect on teaching and learning practices observed in a range of national cultural and collecting institutions and sites.
• Demonstrate conceptual engagement with the diversity of audience-centred approaches to learning settings in museum/heritage contexts
• Engage in discussion with specialists in the field, and reflect on educational perspectives and the different types of learning that are employed by diverse cultural and heritage institutions with a view to developing new learning activities for use in such settings.

In keeping with the flexible learning and professional development context of this program, assessment tasks will be tailored to suit individual students’ needs and interests. In general, however, assessment is expected to include:

• Contributions to pre- and post-intensive online discussions (15%; 800-1000 words)
• Learning journal to demonstrate reflective practice in engaging with observed programs/exhibitions (35%; 1000 words).
• Reports of observational exercises in authentic settings (25%; 1500 words, or equivalent as digital presentation)
• Written or digital presentation demonstrating a creative response to a learning opportunity at one of the institutions visited (25%; 2000-2500 words, or 5-8 minutes finished product)

Students are expected to spend approximately 120 hours on this course, attending the on-campus intensive, working through self-paced pre- and post-intensive modules, contributing to online discussions and completing the assessment tasks.

For the Graduate Certificate Museum and Education and Heritage Interpretation Program, students must complete this course, and both:

• MUSC Understanding Learning in Museums (to be approved)
• MUSC8004 Internship 1

And at least one course from:

• other courses that may become available within the MEHI program 
• MUSC8009 Museums and Collections: Research project
• MUSC8006 Indigenous Collections and Exhibitions
• MUSC8003 Museum, Collection, and Heritage management
• MUSC8007 Museums and Collections: Key concepts and practices
• MUSC8005 Internship 2
• (with permission from the MEHI Program Convenor) other courses in the College of Arts and Social Sciences that can be shown to have direct relevance to museum and heritage education and interpretation in a specific context.

Students must have a Bachelor degree, or equivalent work experience in a museum, heritage or educational setting. Given the focus on online learning, and the content emphasis on the use of digital media for learning in museums and heritage sites, students are expected to demonstrate an existing high level of digital literacy, or a capacity to gain such during the course. In addition students are expected to travel to at least one major museum or heritage site during the course

Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. (2007) Museums and education: purpose, pedagogy, performance. Routledge, Oxon & New York.

The online components of teaching will be accomplished using the ANU’s current LMS, Wattle, which can provide the required opportunities for online discussion and rich media use. Students are expected to have the necessary support (usually broadband access as a minimum) to allow them to access large online audiovisual files and the Internet.