What Makes Learning Fun?: Principles for the Design of Intrinsically Motivating Museum Exhibits

Although much has been written in recent years on what museum visitors actually experience, there is little research-backed guidance available for developing meaningful exhibits and programs for specific educational purposes. Deborah Perry looks at what we know about the experiences of people in museums and other informal learning settings, and then shares a set of tested principles and strategies—known as the Selinda Model—for the design of effective museum exhibits. Along the way, she showcases examples of both effective and ineffective exhibit designs drawn from two decades of work in the field.

Table of Contents:
List of Strategies List of Figures Introduction PART I: Understanding Visitor Experiences 1. Visitors, Conversation, and Learning 2. Interpretive Activism 3. The Selinda Model of Visitor Learning PART II: Designing Visitor Experiences 4. Communication Principle 1: Collaboration Principle 2: Guidance 5. Curiosity Principle 3: Perceptual Curiosity Principle 4: Intellectual Curiosity Principle 5: Interest 6. Confidence Principle 6: Success Principle 7: Expediency 7. Challenge Principle 8: Expectations Principle 9: Uncertainty 8. Control Principle 10: Choice Principle 11: Power 9. Play Principle 12: Imagination Principle 13: Sensory Exploration Appendix A: Descriptions of the Colored Shadows and The Color Connection Exhibits Appendix B: Overview of Original Research Appendix C: The What Makes Learning Fun? Framework Appendix D: Sample Knowledge Hierarchies Acknowledgments References Index About the Author

About the Author :
Deborah L. Perry is the director of Selinda Research Associates in Chicago. She specializes in research on and evaluation of the museum visitor experience.

Review :
[T]he greatest strength of the book is its focus on application of the principles. Each of the six chapters in Part Two addresses one of the motivations listed along the base of the Selinda model and provides strategies for implementing each principle. ... As she presents each new principle or strategy, she revisits the earlier cited exhibit redesign and discusses how her redesign employed that principle or strategy. This helps illustrate her ideas, and her explanations are generally very helpful. The inclusion in Appendix A of photos and illustrations of that exhibit before and after the redesign also proves helpful. This book is. . . well written and it is a fairly quick read. ... It was refreshing to read a book in which someone borrowed from instructional design to enhance practice in her field. Deborah Perry's interesting, accessible, and highly useful book, What Makes Learning Fun?, provides insights into how museums can design and evaluate for learning. ... What Makes Learning Fun? is thought-provoking. ... Perry has written a highly accessible book grounded in both theory and practice. The field will benefit from her expansive view on learning and comprehensive ideas about design. . . . The Selinda Model is an exceedingly useful professional tool for discussion, debate, and design, especially recommended for staff, both veteran and novice, looking for new ways into thinking and talking about learning in museums. What Makes Learning Fun? does the museum field a great service by broadening and deepening the conversation about our work. Deborah L. Perry has taken a fresh look at an old question—how visitors learn in museums—and given us a set of very practical strategies and tools for designing exhibits. This is no ordinary how-to guide, however. One of the great strengths of the book is that it is grounded in a whole history of solid research. Making learning fun is serious business, but Perry manages to practice what she preaches, giving us a book that is engaging, easy to use, and eminently applicable to museum work today. The Selinda Model of visitor learning provides a powerful, robust, and flexible construct for considering and facilitating learning that is useful for the ambitious and often nuanced aspirations of professionals working in informal learning environments. I’ve followed the development of Deborah Perry’s ideas and her model of learning for decades and am thrilled that I can finally share her ideas with colleagues and students. Deborah Perry’s book offers a coherent approach to designing engaging learning experiences in museums, science centers, zoos, and the like. The book lays out a clear design process and offers, within this design framework, a series of applied principles that are well supported in the visitor studies literature. Deborah’s years of experience in combination with thoughtful analysis of the learning process have resulted in a useful manual for practitioners, be they educators, exhibit designers, or evaluators.