Situational Interest and Interactive Media in the Natural History Museum St. Gallen. An inquiry into the effectiveness of interactive media components in triggering situational interest in museum visitors

The importance of Natural History Museums as an out-of-school learning environment for Natural Sciences is hardly disputed. Natural History Museums have made continually an effort to maximize the visitor’s interest in the exhibits and the latest trend has been the implementation of interactive media components. The research presented examines if the presence of interactive media influences the visitor’s situational interest positively and how this manifests. To examine this influence, an interactive exhibit was compared to a static exhibit by observing visible and subjective manifestations of situational interest in museum visitors. The visitor behaviour data was collected by direct observation and by interviewing visitors. The results do not show a significant difference in visitor engagement between the two exhibits. This concludes that the interactive media components as they are used today in the museum do not influence the development of situational interest in visitors