Author Description

Collaborative online teaching and learning offer exciting potential for exchange among museum professionals, content experts, and visitors, and can lead to cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary content development and new ways of maximizing the institutions' role in society. Through this new, shared model of meaning-making, and by re-framing our museum collections in a highly connected, global world, online collaborative learning offers museums and visitors new possibilities for learning, both in small, "narrowcast" groups and also at the larger institutional level. As digital artifacts are created and improved by co-experts working together online toward a common goal, the larger public may benefit from a shared content model, or "digital commons," thus shifting museums from their roles as cultural competitors toward a new model of cultural collaborators. Includes extensive case studies and practical advice for museum educators. Endorsed by EdCom and the Media and Technology professional networks of AAM.