Just when I thought I was finally able to grasp what was going on, it turns out I'm still not interpreting these seminar projects accurately! I was under the impression that yesterday's virtual tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was to create an online counterpart to the in-person experience of the Permanent Exhibition and the space's architecture, and that the "automated" tweets were a workaround for the fact that within the exhibitions, the onsite visitors wouldn't be able to communicate with the online audience.
Surprise, the onsite JHU group evidently never went into any of the exhibitions, and were left feeling that the online audience might have gotten a more thorough experience. It seems there was also a lot of confusion all around about what to say on Twitter and when. The explanation provided beforehand to the online audience informed us that "the onsite group will have limited access to twitter, so please save your comments and reactions for the live discussion at the end" (which I took to mean that they would be inside the Permanent Exhibition for much of the visit). So, I avoided tweeting anything directly to the group, even though the same explanation concluded with "onsite visitors will be tweeting answers to these questions throughout the tour as well," and I did see a number of people from the onsite group posting on Twitter. Apparently some seminar participants felt that it was out of place or disrespectful to be on their phones at all in this museum, and I don't blame them.
So despite the success the USHMM group had in creating an evocative online tour, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that there are still issues with communication, clarity, and balance - between the onsite and the online experience, and between being present, attentive, and appropriately respectful in a museum and being connected to a virtual audience.
Great feedback, Jessica. We really didn't know who would feel comfortable tweeting from within the space so we didn't want the online audience to have expectations of a twitter conversation. We also thought that it might be better to save the comments towards the end for the live dialogue. This didn't happen as well as we thought (per our analysis) and we wished that would have been a more seamless transition. I also will include that my narrative wasn't clear that we weren't in the exhibit space and that we were all on the same tour. This is all really helpful and I am so appreciative of your feedback as an online audience member. I hope you can join us Saturday for the call. I will be incorporating your comments into my presentation and sharing with my group!
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