Dorcas Weber

Visual Arts Online Education: Mapping the Range of Educational Actions on Brazilian Art Museums Websites

Dorcas Weber – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil

Abstract:

The understanding of learning as a continuous and hybrid process that occurs in various spaces and situations is not new, despite the prevailing idea of school as the primary place for learning. In an effort to rethink this concept, spaces for non-formal education, such as museums, have increasingly sought to collaborate with schools, fostering new understandings and achieving more effective and expanded results through their initiatives. In this context, museums have sought to propose actions that keep pace with social changes, here with particular emphasis on their integration into the online environment. Since the turn of the century, digital technologies have become more integrated into our daily lives across different areas. In terms of educational processes, there has been an increase in online courses offered at various levels, as well as the use of technological tools in face-to-face learning situations, topics that have been of interest to researchers for at least two decades. Since the early 2000s, museums have moved closer to the virtual context through the creation of websites, and they have increasingly worked to expand their online engagement with the public. This article presents a mapping of the educational actions developed by Brazilian art museums on their websites, aiming to understand their target audiences, characteristics, potential, and what they effectively mobilize in Visual Arts. There has been a noticeable increase in actions offered on museum websites in recent years, although the number of institutions that have adopted these practices is still small.