As museums and cultural organizations push forward in their efforts to adapt to coronavirus closures, many are striving to redesign programming and educational resources for digital platforms, stay community-oriented, and embrace digital transformation across all departments. At this moment, many museum leaders, educators, curators, and other professionals are working collaboratively with their colleagues in digital and social media to usher in a new digital era at their institutions, and many may be in search of guidance and best practices to help navigate these changes.
On April 22, 2020, over 3,000 people joined Brendan Ciecko (CEO & Founder @ Cuseum), Marie Vickles (Director of Education @ Perez Art Museum Miami) & Liz Neely (Curator of Digital Experience @ Georgia O'Keeffe Museum) as they discussed the ways that organizations can implement digital changes in education, programming, curation, and other departments. This webinar strived to address the topics of sustainable digital transformation, as well as best practices for engaging and supporting your community in light of coronavirus.
Watch the full recording here.
Here are a few of the biggest takeaways from the conversation.
Open Yourself to Experimenting with Virtual Learning
One of the main reasons museums exist is to educate and serve. With school closures continuing across the nation, institutions are stepping up to facilitate learning for students of all kinds.
Many museums are experimenting with various platforms in order to provide digital resources to teachers and students. One such platform that is being widely adopted is Zoom as an online classroom. As Marie noted, the Perez Art Museum Miami has had great success over the past two weeks bringing virtual classroom tours to students from kindergarten through high school. Virtual tours offer museums the ability to continue their school programs while providing teachers an opportunity to enhance their lessons through interactive material.
“Not everything has been 100% successful, but we're doing something. Teachers, students, families are able to access the materials that we're sharing and it's providing some joy during this really rough time. That's success.”
– Marie Vickles
As learning needs vary vastly by age group and community, understanding what teachers need can be difficult. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s Education Department is working closely with the community educators network to engage teachers by asking them specifically what they want. Institutions can also gather data on what educators are looking for by running post webinar surveys and listening on social media channels. Although learning needs vary from community to community, Liz stressed the value of maintaining the role that museums have in informal education and keeping it fun!
Collaborating is Key
The sudden move to digital has caused museums to focus on inter-departmental collaboration more than ever. Producing educational material demands the collaboration of different departments under normal circumstances. With many teams forced to now work remotely while developing new digital resources, communication between departments has become increasingly challenging. Liz stressed the importance of putting a process in place where departments can co-create.
“We have a Curator of Fine Art, a Curator of Education & Interpretation, a Curator of Digital Experience, and then the Head of Research, Collections and Services - the idea being that we are thinking about content from all these different perspectives from our different areas, so that we can collaborate and see where expertise from digital can and media can add to what we want to do in education or what we're trying to do in the galleries.”
– Liz Neely
The push for virtual resources has put a strain on many digital and social media teams with each department thinking of new ideas for digital engagement. Liz suggested the best way for departments to collaborate with the digital team is to provide them with content and let the digital team focus on the delivery. Documenting as you move along with projects can help create repeatable workflows that can be followed by anyone on your team.
Create Decision-Making Frameworks and Repeatable Workflows
As there is no shortage of new virtual education ideas that departments are currently looking to implement, organizations must assess which ideas can be turned into actionable programs.
The demand for digital content continues to grow, but many organizations are struggling to identify which projects should be prioritized. Liz suggests using an action priority matrix to better understand which projects will have the greatest impact.
“If it's high impact and low effort, do it now. If it's high impact but high effort, then let's build a project around this and it will be something that gets worked on. Build a project team and build a way around it.”
– Liz Neely
With museums working on multiple new digital projects involving cross-departmental teams, there is a tremendous need for efficient project management. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has always put an emphasis on quality project management, but after the first day of working from home, they quickly realized it was going to be essential in this new environment. They established a cross-departmental team that was specifically to look at how they change called #TeamPivot. By using project management tools such as Wrike and Trello organizations are able to establish workflows and make them repeatable by people throughout the organization to help facilitate digital change that will help improve the organization in the long run.
Facilitate Sustainable Digital Transformation
Many organizations are looking to capture the momentum that digital has gained during these times and turn it into a more permanent feature at their institution.
The sudden shift to digital has provided many institutions with the base they need to continue building. Both panelists agreed that now is the time to experiment with small projects and to learn as you go. As you build, it is important to develop organization around the way you share and document the processes that are having success.
“In the future, there may be groups or classes that cannot come to a museum for one reason or another. Now with the things you might be trying in your museum in this ‘virtual-only’ space, you may be able to actually extend your museum's reach permanently. Think of it more as a bonus as to learning how digital spaces become a part of what your museum offers.”
– Marie Vickles
For many organizations this time has been an opportunity to demonstrate the value that digital can bring. Many digital projects that have been talked about for some time have been able to start to take shape as there is now an organizational wide emphasis being placed on digital content. Sustainable digital transformation is an ongoing process but these past few months have given many organizations an opportunity to experiment and lay the foundations necessary to continue building on what could become an integral part of future programs.
The new era of digital transformation has been put in motion and now is the time to start to strategize around what is having success, build upon what you have already created and remember to always make it true to your mission and values no matter how big or small.
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