ENCOURAGING MUSEUM VISITOR ENGAGEMENT USING

SPONTANEOUS TALK-IN-INTERACTION AUDIO GUIDES

Brian Elliston

and Elizabeth FitzGerald

Horizon DTC, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, U.K.

Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K.

Keywords: Audio Guides, Mobile Learning, Conversation Analysis, Footing, Human-computer Interaction, Informal

Learning.

Abstract: We describe the building and testing of a museum audio tour with content recorded as spontaneous

interactive dialogue between two curators as they walked around an art gallery. The aim was to produce a

guide which would increase the amount of topically relevant talk shared by people visiting a museum in

groups of two or more. Conversation analysis is used to show how a pair of visitors engaged more with the

content of the guide than they would have with audio produced as traditional scripted monologue. Examples

of a variety of engagement types are detailed and a supporting rationale drawing on Goffman’s theory of

‘footing’ is discussed. The approach potentially offers a low cost way for organisations involved in informal

learning to produce flexible in-house audio content for mobile and e-learning, which improves visitor

engagement both with the content and with one another, and leads to a more enjoyable visitor/learner

experience than traditional forms of audio.

1 INTRODUCTION

We describe the development and testing of a

museum audio guide with content recorded as

spontaneous, interactive dialogue between two

curators as they themselves walked around an art

gallery. This contrasts with the traditional content of

such guides, where a script is pre-prepared then

recorded as a monologue. The aim was to increase

the quantity of talk which those visiting the museum

with friends or family would have together, as well

as its ‘quality’, in terms of the engagement it

demonstrated the visitors to be having with the

exhibits and the content of the guide. ‘Engagement’

is taken here to mean a combination of attention,

interest, enjoyment and implied learning (Falk and

Dierking 1992; 2008); (Allen 2002); (Vavoula and

Sharples 2009). The research links to aspects of the

Sotto Voce project (Grinter et al., 2002); Woodruff

et al., 2002); (Woodruff and Aoki, 2004), which

used audio guide content designed to mimic the short

turns of natural conversation with a view to

facilitating interaction within visitor groups. It also

responds to Heath and vom Lehn’s (2004, 2008)

criticisms of the design of museum exhibits and

guides as failing to account for visitor groups’ actual

experience of these institutions; that for people

visiting with others the social and learning

experience are closely linked.

We begin by describing the aims and rationale

for the study and go on to describe how the audio

guide was produced and tested. Using conversation

and discourse analysis, we then detail how

engagement with (and through) the guide was

manifest in visitors’ talk. Goffman’s theories of

footing and participation (Goffman 1974, 1981);

(Levinson, 1988) are then drawn upon to provide an

explanatory framework for the interaction, from

which the study’s findings can be generalised. We

finish by discussing some of the limitations of the

study, pragmatic issues in deploying such audio

guides and the broader implications that emerge for

audio in mobile and other forms of e-learning.

2 THE STUDY

Vom Lehn et al. (2002:15) argue, “Despite the

acknowledgement of the importance of social

interaction for the museum experience, research of

visitor behavior tends to concentrate on the cognitive

aspects and the learning outcomes of museum visits

363

Elliston B. and FitzGerald E..

ENCOURAGING MUSEUM VISITOR ENGAGEMENT USING SPONTANEOUS TALK-IN-INTERACTION AUDIO GUIDES.

DOI: 10.5220/0003889303630372

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 363-372

ISBN: 978-989-8565-07-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

and pays less attention to the social organization of

communication and collaboration at the ‘exhibit

face.’” It is as part of redressing this balance that this

study can be viewed. Recent research has often

blended analysis of visitors’ spoken interaction with

that of their embodied action (vom Lehn, 2006);

(vom Lehn and Heath 2007); (Heath and von Lehn

2008) with the emphasis increasingly being on

engagement with the exhibit directly (with a view to

improving the design of ‘interactive’ exhibits) rather

than through the mediation of an audio or other type

of guide. However, such research has limitations

when applied to exhibits which in and of themselves

do not provide a learning element; unlike the

interactive exhibits in many museums, a painting in

a gallery, or a tree in a nature reserve lack an

intrinsic ability to teach about themselves, and

require some form of guidance for learning to occur.

This study analysed the engagement visitors

exhibited with the content of an audio guide through

their verbal interactions (Stainton, 2002); (His,

2002; 2008); (vom Lehn and Heath, 2007), (Falk

and Dierking, 2008), (Smith and Tinio, 2008), the

rationale being that ‘on-topic’ interactions naturally

reflect visitors’ engagement with the content of the

museum itself. In assessing spontaneous dialogue

guides (hereafter SDGs), we looked for points in

visitors’ talk which linked directly to the

spontaneous, interactive nature of the talk on the

guide. Such points were taken as instances of

engagement that would not have occurred when

using a scripted monologue guide (hereafter SMG).

3 BUILDING AN AUDIO GUIDE

WITH SPONTANEOUS

DIALOGUE

3.1 Participants and Process

Two knowledgeable volunteers, referred to in this

paper as ‘commentators’, were recruited from the

Museums and Art Galleries Service of Nottingham

City Council in Nottingham, UK. Each selected four

paintings in Nottingham Castle Museum’s Long

Gallery and were recorded walking round and

discussing the paintings together. The commentators

were briefed beforehand that they could (indeed

should) speak about whatever came to mind (facts,

opinions, anecdotes, “anything at all”), but that their

aim was to record a commentary together for a non-

expert first-time visitor. It was stressed that they

could talk as informally and casually as they liked,

were free to interact with one another “as felt

natural” and that they could say as much or as little

as they wished about an exhibit.

3.2 Product

The recording was subsequently divided into

discrete painting-by-painting commentaries varying

in length from 3.54 minutes to 6.24 minutes (mean

4.44 minutes, median 4.41 minutes). Each track was

analysed to identify sequence endings (Schegloff

2007) or points of topic change (Brown and Yule,

1983); (Gardner, 1987) and between three and six

pauses of two seconds each were inserted in each

commentary at such points. This was to enable

listeners to pause the recording without disrupting

the content, but not disrupt the flow of the dialogue

if left running. It is notable that the short sequences

of talk commonly found in states of incipient talk

(Schegloff and Sacks, 1973) are naturally amenable

to this process. No other editing took place. Each

track was labelled with an identifying picture

number and transferred to a handheld device

(Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA) with integrated

speaker to enable participants to hear the audio.

4 TESTING AN AUDIO GUIDE

WITH SPONTANEOUS

DIALOGUE

4.1 Participants and Process

Two adult volunteers were recruited from the

University of Nottingham as example visitors. Both

were occasional (but infrequent) museum visitors

and both had in the past used SMGs. They visited

the Nottingham Castle Museum, were provided with

the PDA audio guide, shown its operation and how

to locate paintings through the track numbering

system. They were briefed that they could listen to

as much or as little of each commentary as they

wished, could pause and restart a commentary at will

and could talk together when and as they chose.

Both participants were given lapel radio

microphones that recorded their spoken

conversations with each other during their visit.

Immediately after the visit, a semi-structured

interview was held in which they were asked for

their impressions of the experience and the content

of the audio, pros and cons of this type of content,

and anything they felt particularly memorable.

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4.2 Data Analysis

This study aimed to go beyond a user feedback

approach, and to identify engagement primarily from

the language data obtained during in situ use of the

guide. The recording was transcribed into

approximately 7700 words, using notation based on

that of Gail Jefferson (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984).

In the transcription given in this paper, speakers A

and B are the visitors, C and D the two

commentators on the SDG. Extracts are numbered

with the title of the painting under discussion.

Conversation analysis (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973);

(Sacks et al., 1974); (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984),

(Schegloff, 2007) was used to identify visitor talk

structurally dependent on the guide’s content being

spontaneous talk-in-interaction. 4000 transcribed

words from a pair of visitors using a SMG in the

same gallery some years previous (developed for the

CAGE project described below) further informed the

study by identifying certain interactions not

particular to SDGs.

5 RESULTS

5.1 Overview of Visitors’ Talk

Visitors attended to seven of the eight painting

commentaries for their full duration (the eighth

painting they talked off topic over the end of the

commentary). They frequently also engaged in their

own talk before, and during pauses in the

commentary. A limited amount of visitor talk did

overlap talk on the guide, but was always ‘on-topic’;

related to the guide content, the viewing experience,

or comprising visitors’ topical expansions. Talk

accounting for the technicalities of the guide

(agreeing starts, stops and volume changes) were not

counted as on-topic. In related work, the CAGE

project, aimed at encouraging visitor movement

within a museum (Lonsdale et al., 2004; 2005),

(Rudman et al., 2008), had tested a location aware

SMG in the same gallery, audio recording visitors as

they went around the paintings listening to the guide

and talking together. For each painting, the content

of that guide became increasingly ‘detailed’ as it

went along, and finished with a prompt for visitors

to look at similar or related paintings in the same

gallery. Rudman et al., (2008:156) report of the

CAGE project, “One group of participants was

observed to spend over three minutes (a long time to

spend in front of one painting) pointing out details to

each other and discussing what they were hearing”.

The same painting was included in the SDG with

audio commentary lasting six and a half minutes.

Visitors were seen to attend throughout, adding 30

on-topic ‘turns’ of their own talk to the experience,

both before and during listening (turn here refers to

the successive individual contributions that go to

make up a conversation, where the speakers ‘take it

in turns’ to talk).

The number of on-topic turns produced in front

of a painting by visitors using the SDG ranged from

8 to 61 (mean c.35, median 39). In contrast, a very

talkative pair of visitors using the CAGE guide

produced around 14 to 32 turns, in front of the eight

paintings they talked most about (mean c.20 turns,

median 17.5). Furthermore, these turns tended to be

markedly shorter than those produced by the visitors

with the SDG. While suggestive of possible future

results with a larger participant sample, this limited

comparison cannot be claimed to be truly

representative; it is notoriously difficult in any event

to quantify ‘engagement’ in anything more than a

supporting role to more foregrounded qualitative

methods. Moreover, factors such as visitors’ time

pressure, preconceived interests and the precise

chronological point within a visit have hard-to-

observe effects on the kinds of measures used in

quantitative analyses of engagement.

5.2 Visitor Engagement

5.2.1 Multiple Voicing as Engagement

At the beginning of Extract 1, speaker C at lines 1-3,

5, and 7-12 puts forward an argument, but voicing

the assertion as from an ‘unattributed other’ with “I

read about”. The position is weakened (“maybe”,

“kind of”) suggesting a limited alignment of the

speakers ‘personal’ voice with this ‘other’. However

this is seemingly contradicted by the gentle closing

laughter at turn end, signalling at least sympathy

with the idea; incorporating the assertion into her

‘personal’ voice (see Goffman 1974:531 and

Bakhtin 1981, 1986). In response at lines 13-19

speaker D at first makes an agreeing token, then

backtracks qualifying this as “maybe”, then proposes

an alternative rationalised position (a common

progression in spoken interactions) emphasised as

personally voiced (“but I would have thought”) and

finishing with a strong assertion (“must”).

Commentator C’s response in line 22 mirrors the

personal nature of the talk (“I’m”), but as a gentle

contradiction of D’s view. It prompts a strong

overlapped response beginning as double voiced

presentation of the speaker’s voice through the

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artist’s ‘voice’ (line 23, “or he was fairly sure”).

Line 25 has speaker D shifting into his personal

voice again which is more conciliatory (“I don’t get

the feeling”).

Extract 1: From ‘Homer Singing his Iliad at the Gates of

Athens’.

1 C The other thing that I read about

2 this I don’t know if you’ve

heard 3

this Da[vid but e:rm is that] but=

4 A [quite a nice factoid]

5 C =maybe [Lethiere] was was erm kind

6 B [Mmmmmmmm]

7 C of having a bit of a go at his

8 patrons that he was a a poor

9 neglected artist outside hhhhhh

10 the the gates of Paris maybe and 11

no one appreciated him very much 12

hhhh hhhh

13 D ahhh (.) well y- yeah maybe but I

14 would have thought a painting of

15 this this (.)scale e::r detail and

16 complexity which is a huge amount

17 of work I can’t believe how many

18 hours that took (.) must have been

19 a commission

20 B Mmmmm

21 (1.0)

22 C I’m not [sure ]

23 D [Or he] was fairly sure

24 that he could flog it to someone

25 (1.0) I don’t get the feeling that

26 this is something he did just for

27 himself

28 C Don’t you think so=

29 D =I don’t

This segment highlights how talk-in-interaction

incorporates more ‘voices’, or positions within the

talk than a scripted monologue could hope to, where

it would be unusual to attribute a personalised voice

to the narrator (who claims no ownership, or

responsibility for their talk). While such narration

may state differing opinions and identify their

origins, the subtle shifts and negotiations of voice

whereby position is developed and becomes

established across turns in talk, are missing. The

range of voices in dialogue guides (in addition to the

dialogic relationship visitors find themselves in with

the painting under discussion itself (Bakhtin, 1981))

increase the opportunity for visitors to develop their

own voice through the range of positions they are

offered (representing degrees of opinion and

authority) and on which they can draw, and because

listeners experience the development of ideas, rather

than having established opinions presented in a

‘final formulation’. The interactive elements of

negotiating agreement and disagreement enable

listeners to engage with the process of coming to a

position and thus their ability and willingness to

develop and express their own position.

5.2.2 Engagement through Personalization

In Extract 2, the responses of visitors at lines 6 and 9

to the preceding piece of commentary are significant

in that they show incorporation into visitors’ talk not

only of the informational content of the guide, but

the presentation of that content.

Extract 2: From ‘In Love’.

1 C ((continuing)) putting his bow

2 away (1.0) you’ve got these kind

3 of over ripe apples on the table

4 and falling to the ground

5 B (ye the) apples

6 A She’s [spotted them too]

7 C [and you’ve kind ]of got

8 some brown leaves as well

9 B Yeah (.) sharp

Visitor A’s response, “She’s spotted them too”,

begins with an explicit third person orientation to the

previous speaker as a person rather than ‘presenter’

(Heritage 2007) which reflects the commentators use

of “you’ve got”, linking the visitors with her own

talk. Prior to this extract the visitors had discussed

the apples in the painting, and line 6 references an

informal activity (“spotted”) applied by the visitor

both to his own previous talk and that of the

commentator (“too”). Thus the commentator is

‘personally’ made part of the mutual participation

framework in which the visitors are currently

engaged (namely, following the guide’s

identification of various features in the picture). This

response from the visitors implicitly makes relevant

the voice of the commentator in a way that she is

personally accountable for her words.

Extract 3: From ‘In Love’.

1 C Well I think descriptively we’ve

2 got erm we’ve got a lovely garden

3 it’s er looks like summertime to

4 me (0.5) erm (0.5) a girl who to

5 me looks er

6 A Nowt gets past this lass

A related example (Extract 3) appears earlier in

the dialogue on the same painting, where the

commentator’s self reference (twice in a single turn

saying, “looks to me”) reinforces that she expects

her words to be attributed to her personally. Visitor

A’s response accepts and builds on this framework

by referencing her talk as personal.

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Such response has a ‘knock on’ effect as

engagement with the guide continues, insofar as

visitors may build up a sense of a commentator’s

‘approach’ or ‘character’. This can itself provide a

resource for comment, as in Extract 4.

Extract 4: From ‘Bistre 2’.

1 A He’s disparaging of anyone who

2 says anything about a painting

3 isn’t he

4 B Yeah

In this case, the visitors go on to expand this

sequence opening to discuss their own reactions to

his view, but its origins remain in an assessment of

the personality of one of the commentators, built up

over the course of the guide speaking about more

than one painting.

5.2.3 Engagement through a Shared

Environment

Extract 5: From ‘The Imposition’.

1 D What’s not often considered

2 looking at paintings is what size

3 they are cos we’ve got some here

4 which are huge it’s not the

5 biggest one we’ve got but this is

6 ye know five [foot square more or

7 less]

8 C [five foot isn’t it

9 yeah]

10 B Mmmmm

11 D Another painting down there (1.0)

12 tiny just a few inches and what

13 determines the decision to do that

14 now it may be where they’re going

15 to hang it if it’s a commission ye

16 know we’ve got a damp patch about

17 so big

18 C Yeah

19 D can you help cover it hh[hh]

20 C [hh]hh=

21 =[hhhhhh]

22 A [hhhhhh]

23 B [hhhhhh]

24 D But why is this absolutely so vast

25 because it must limit (.) unless

26 it’s a commission it must limit

27 what you can do with it

28 B Mmmmmm

29 D it limits who you can sell it to

30 B I think it needs to be that

31 [big though]

32 D [if it’s up] for sale

33 C yeh [I kept asking whether she=

34 A [it wouldn’t have the same=

35 C =did small ones hhhhh]

36 A =impact if it was] small it

In Extract 5, commentator D (lines 1-27) raises the

question of how artists choose the size for a

painting, and does so in a way which generates a

shared participation context by referencing

deictically the immediate physical environment

within which both the commentators and the visitors

experience the painting (“we’ve got some here

which are huge”, “another painting down there tiny

just a few inches”).

In line 24 the commentator poses the question

directly (almost in exasperation), “but why is this

absolutely so vast”. Visitor B (lines 28 and 30) and

A (34 and 36) do offer answers, also drawing on the

shared environment. In this sequence of dialogue the

visitors incorporate the guide as first pair part in

their own dialogue, providing a second pair part and

sequence closing third (Schegloff, 2007) – hence the

‘dialogic’ nature of the guide institutes, both in

terms of content and structure, the talk between the

visitors.

5.2.4 Engagement through Assessment (1)

Extract 6: From ‘Violas’.

1 C ((turn continues)) and I think

2 what I like about it is its

3 simplicity which makes me feel I

4 could live with it I suppose that

5 in in my house I might always find

6 something different in it it’s

7 quite strange

8 (2.0)

9 D Yes well for me it’s one of those

10 paintings that could slide into

11 interior decoration (1.0) there’s

12 there’s plenty in this gallery

13 which I like but I would not want

14 to have every day on my living

15 room wall

16 C Yes

17 D Not that my living room’s big

18 enough for [some of these but=

19 B [It’s a very modern=

20 D =but that one certainly yes]

21 B =( ) ye could see it fitting into]

22 ye

23 D it’s very calm soft shades

24 A Ye toilet

25 D e:rm

26 B Yeah

27 D Very [very attractive ]

28 B [well considering] the art

29 collection of my landlord

Dialogue in guides has the potential to encourage

visitor engagement with paintings which may not in

themselves be immediately ‘interesting’, by having

commentators bounce personal reactions to the work

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off one another (Extract 6 lines 1-16) and so

implicitly encouraging visitors to do the same, either

by having provided a starting point, or being

suggestive that there is value in such talk. This we

see in the visitors’ responses in lines 19, 21/22, 24,

26 and 28/29.

It appears that when guides successfully engage

in this kind of activity, they are inspiring a particular

topicality in the participation framework built

around a shared experience of ‘standing before a

painting in a gallery and assessing it with a friend’,

and a situation where both visitors and

commentators assume the same role and status.

5.2.5 Engagement through Assessment (2)

Related to the previous two sources of engagement,

first where a question from the commentator projects

an ‘answer’ from the visitors, and second where

assessment talk in the commentary stimulates such

talk in the visitors, is the situation of visitors

responding by directly linking their assessment to

one on the guide, as in Extract 7.

Extract 7: From ‘The Imposition’.

1 C I::: er what I really like about

2 it is the amount of different

3 materials and texture that she

4 uses in it as well as this really

5 kind of dynamic sweep I guess and

6 I really like black and white

7 paintings I don’t know if that

8 says something about my character

9 does it hhhh

10 B Yes she’s right it has got quite a

11 kind of variety of textures in

12 something seemingly quite simple

Visitor B, in response to factual detail (though

couched in terms of an assessment (“What I really

like about this is...”) makes an agreeing assessment

(line 10) which aligns his position with that of the

commentator, not merely in terms of rephrasing the

informational content to agree with ‘the assessment’,

but also explicitly agreeing with the commentator as

an individual (“she’s right”). The visitor responds

here to the way the information is presented as well

as the informational content itself.

Orientation of visitor talk to the speakers on the

guide as well as to one another is also evident in

Extract 8.

Extract 8: From ‘A View of Nottingham from the East’.

1 D Fantastic (0.5) love it

2 B I do like it [as well] actually

3 A [Mmmmmmm]

In response to D’s assessment, visitor B shows

the conventions of turn projection at line 2 not only

by producing his own assessment but also by

orienting it back to D’s turn (“as well”).

Prior to Extract 9 the commentator states that she

likes the painting, but then explains why she thinks

many people don’t. She here employs considerable

equivocation (“I think”, “maybe”) and casual

language (“grubbier”), for a perception she does not

herself share. The visitor’s contrastive response

assessment in line 7 (“I like

”) therefore serves to

contradict these ‘other visitors’, agreeing with the

commentator’s earlier positive personal assessment.

Extract 9: From ‘Violas’.

1 C I think one of the things people

2 maybe don’t like is the white

3 frame which is e::r maybe a bit

4 grubbier than it would have been

5 done (0.5) would have been in in

6 its heyday

7 A I like

the white frame

8 B Yeah

5.2.6 Engagement through Laughter

A further example of engagement with dialogue

guides is visitors responding with and to the shared

laughter on the guide (Extract 10). Coates (2007)

argues collaboratively-negotiated laughter signals

appreciation and amusement, generates mutual

solidarity (through the shared knowledge or

experience needed to appreciate the humour on

which it is based) and also marks the ending of

particular frames of experience.

Extract 10: From ‘Violas’.

1 D Hhh I don’t trust experts

2 C Don’t you hhhh[hhh hhhhhh]

3 D [No hhhhhhh]

4 B [hhhhhhh]

5 A [hhhhhhh]

So laughter becomes a signal of engagement not

only with overt jokes, but with a participation

framework shared by visitors and commentators. See

lines 19-23 from Extract 5 for a further instance.

5.2.7 Engagement through Revoicing

In Extract 11, visitor B’s agreement (line 17) both

reflects the content of the commentator’s assessment

(lines 1/2, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 14/15) and echoes her

words (“quite tempting”). Such ‘revoicing’ (Tannen

1989) shows the natural, spoken language of SDG

talk providing a resource for visitors to incorporate

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into their own talk, something far less available in

the more formal, written English of a SMG text.

Extract 11: From ‘The Imposition’.

1 C =[painting so I know it’s

2 probably]

3 A =[this if you don’t have an audio

4 guide]

5 C [really]

6 B [ye:ah ]

7 C [quite tempting to try and to]uch

8 A [cos that’s quite interesting]

9 C [this kind of touch]

10 B [there’s the book]

11 C [This kind of textured ( )]

12 A [No one’s gonna look at the book]

13 B I know

14 C but then we have to try and stop

15 people touching aswell

16 (2.0)

17 B And (that’s) right it was is er

18 quite tempting to go and

5.3 User Feedback

A semi-structured interview was conducted with the

test visitors prior to analysis of the language data so

linguistic findings would not interfere with the

interview process. Nevertheless, many of the users’

reflections correspond to the findings discussed

above. Both participants had previous experience

with SMGs and reported “enjoying” the SDG more;

they recalled that in their experience SMG content

rapidly became boring. “Stories” and “natural

language” were expressed as particular positives of

the SDG, and that the commentators “did not know

everything”, so the visitors did not feel obliged to

accept their interpretation. They also reported that

the guide “informed your understanding” and that

they felt they and the commentators were “having

the same kind of conversation”. Certain

‘coincidental’ talk (not described above) was said to

be particularly memorable, one example being when

a visitor, looking at a painting stated “I could have

painted that”, which was moments later echoed by

one of the commentators on the guide. Visitors also

liked when, “what the guide was saying and what

we’d said came together or contradicted each other”.

They noted the humour, and when the guide enabled

them to change or develop their own opinion. Both

respondents offered the view that if they had used

the guide on their own it would probably also have

been more engaging and that they might have been

“sucked into” the conversation on the guide.

6 DISCUSSION

6.1 Theoretical Explanation

The role of assessment as a key feature in

encouraging engagement has been shown here to

emerge as much from the dialogic form of the

assessment as from the actual content. In talk-in-

interaction, assessment is negotiated and acquires

meaning across turns, and it is this which creates

engagement. The response to assessment in audio

guides can be further explored with reference to

Pomerantz’ (1984:62) “speaker’s procedural rule”

whereby the recipient of an assessment turn of talk

has an orientation to respond to that assessment (see

also Heritage and Raymond, 2005). The conjecture,

equivocation and qualification with which

commentators interweave their assessments has both

a ‘micro’ effect on listeners’ reaction to a particular

assertion and a ‘macro’ effect on their reaction to the

overall authority of the guide; it ‘demands’ closer

attention, increasing the likelihood of the listener’s

responding to what they hear actively rather than

passively.

It is important that the engagement described is

understood as responsive behaviour which can be

generalised beyond this particular study. Goffman’s

work on ‘footing’ (Goffman, 1974; 1981 and

Levinson, 1988) provides an explanatory framework

for the nature of the spoken interactions described.

For Goffman (1981:128), ‘footing’ constitutes “the

alignment we take up to ourselves and the others

present as expressed in the way we manage the

production or reception of an utterance”. It is the

negotiation of footing across the two conversations

(the experts’ and the visitors’) that shows us the

particular engagement visitors have with a

spontaneous dialogue guide. Levinson (1988)

describes how, footing is founded on deixis; the way

language ‘points’, indexes and references, and

through which we create and demonstrate our

orientation to the people and context in which we

find ourselves. It is through deixis (for example the

way a visitor aligns themselves with a

commentator’s assessment, references a

commentator as “she” rather than “it”, or engages in

laughter based on a shared referential understanding)

that relevant, on-topic responses constitute

engagement.

Goffman describes group talk as comprising a

single addressed recipient but also ratified

unaddressed recipients; those not ‘directly’

addressed but who have the possibility of becoming

next speaker. Visitors listening to a guide cannot

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produce the next turn in that dialogue, but can and

do speak a next turn to their co-visitor. In doing this

however, they must draw on and re-relate the footing

of the guide conversation in ways such as those

described. This means the audio guide users do not

adopt a typical audience role. Goffman (1974:540)

suggests that in theatrical contexts words are spoken

for not to an audience, “appreciation not action is

their appropriate response”. This also applies to

experiences such as viewing a TV talk show or

listening to a lawyer/witness exchange as a juror.

These contexts differ fundamentally from those

where verbal response is being encouraged; where

action not appreciation is the appropriate response.

It might be suggested that engagement as it is

considered in this study will rely heavily on a

personal chemistry between the commentators. This

too would benefit from further investigation, and

empathy and affiliation may play a role. However, it

is argued here that it is structural features of

interaction that are most significant. We have

highlighted laughter for example as a function of

discourse as well as a response to humour. Unless

there is a positive dislike between the commentators,

their engagement in talk-in-interaction should

necessarily produce the structures, devices and

organisation identified here as key to encouraging

listener engagement. We therefore offer

explanations for why and how visitors have engaged

with a guide, supported by evidence from user

feedback.

6.2 Issues of Wider Deployment

Spontaneous dialogue guides (SDGs) potentially

offer a cheap, easy and flexible approach to

providing effective audio guidance for visitors to

museums, galleries, heritage centres, nature reserves

and other contexts of informal learning. However it

remains unclear how far one of their ‘strengths’ -

drawing on the shared, physical experience of

viewing an exhibit - might be changed if deployed

beyond this space, for example on a website. This

deserves further study as one particularly attractive

application of SDGs is precisely this area.

A potential limitation lies in using SDG audio as

a ‘minor partner’ in a multimedia context (Tellis

2004), or with technologies integrating the visiting

experience with post visit web based interactions

(Hsi 2002, 2003); i.e. where audio must be designed

to accommodate the needs of the other media. SDG

talk may be better exploited where the technology is

assembled to support its strengths.

This might include the ability for users to stop

and start the audio by voice actuation - the guide

pausing upon detecting visitor talk. The value of this

is supported by observations that users needed to

negotiate pressing the pause button with their co-

visitors, which proved disruptive to the listening.

Such technology would also facilitate the sequential

integration of visitor and guide talk since they both

follow that inherent in incipient talk.

A further mundane, but potentially significant

practical consideration is that the addition of

assessment talk within SDG commentaries makes

them relatively lengthy; in the CAGE project SMGs

were considerably shorter than the SDGs produced

here. It is likely that visitors will not wish to stand

and listen for too long, so this should be an

important consideration in designing the audio

tracks. ‘Broadcastr’ (www.broadcastr.com), a

mobile phone application designed to deliver user-

generated location-based story-telling, deliberately

limits the size (and hence length) of audio clips that

can be uploaded onto its site – they consider 3

minutes to be the optimal length of time for someone

to want to listen to an audio clip.

This small study has only been able to consider

the guide from the perspective of adults within small

visitor groups. Heath et al., (2002) discuss adult

visitor interactions with strangers in museums,

which change visitors’ relations with audio guides

(and exhibits) for, as Benford (2008) stresses, this

fundamentally alters the participation framework.

McManus (1987) describes how families with

children spend longer discussing exhibits but less

time engaging with guides, while vom Lehn (2006)

describes the importance for children of “bodily

enactment” with exhibits (see also Blud, 1990 and

Hein, 1998). Nor has this study considered student

groups, which constitute a major field within

museum guide research because of their blend of

formal and informal learning (Tselios et al., 2008);

(Reynolds et al., 2009); (Sung et al., 2010).

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

This project was designed to test the viability of

creating museum audio guides using experts’

spontaneously generated dialogue in context. It was

hypothesised that creating audio this way would

engage listeners with learning content through

discourse features within it. The ways in which such

engagement did occur have been surprisingly

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effective in increasing visitors’ spoken interactions

around the content of the guide, and their reported

enjoyment of the experience. Further investigation

beyond this initial study has much to show us, and a

larger corpus of more varied visitors will provide

further insights and increase our understanding of

how such guides achieve or fail to achieve their

goals. More varied learning contexts with different

exhibit types and client demographics, such as

natural history and science museums, zoos, botanical

gardens, or school and college field trip locations

must also be considered. It would also be

informative to investigate the functioning of a

spontaneous monologue guide, and to begin

explication of how commentators are producing

their talk, including more detail of the negotiation

process and the way the audience is conceptualised

and accounted for. With this data it may then

become possible to manipulate and ‘design’ the

production process more effectively and enable the

content to be delivered in collaboration with other

media, informing both the theory of talk-in-

interaction and the practice of automated verbal

information delivery.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Nottingham City Council Museums and

Art Galleries Service, volunteers in the user trial and

Peter Lonsdale from the CAGE Project. Thanks also

to Mike Sharples and Svenja Adolphs for their

invaluable assistance and feedback. Brian Elliston is

supported by the Horizon Doctoral Training Centre

at the University of Nottingham (RCUK Grant No.

EP/G037574/1).

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