#EDENChat: MUSACCES a Multidisciplinary Project for the Development of Inclusive Museums Through Innovative Technologies

The next #EDENChat will take place on 26 September 2018, at 20:00 CEST and will be hosted by Covadonga Rodrigo San Juan, from UNED, Spain. We will be discussing the “MUSACCES a Multidisciplinary Project for the Development of Inclusive Museums Through Innovative Technologies”. Please join us using the hashtag #EDENChat!

The MUSACCES Project

One of the great challenges of 21st Century Museology is the attention to and integration of the least favoured and disconnected social sectors with our museums. Modern museology has made it a greater and more varied dynamic reality to the service to the public, becoming new living spaces whose managers try to bring about a more dynamic and open participation. The interest in educating and socialising culture has endowed the museums with human resources, etc., and diverse strategies for attracting the public. However, accessibility is an essential right and a fundamental tool to support social inclusion, non-discrimination and equality of opportunity and treatment, especially, after ensuring accessibility to physical environments, information and communications, processes, products and services. After all, universal accessibility, as a fundamental variable for achieving equality of opportunity, it is a basic criterion in the management of public action.

The MUSACCES project began its progress in 2016 with the consolidation of a Consortium which operates in the Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) and which proposes museology activity and social integration in an environment of interdisciplinary work, seeking to bring the Museo del Prado to collectives of special accessibility (blind, deaf and dumb and imprisoned people) supported by ICTs. The researchers have compiled and analyzed the interests and needs of each of the three collectives with special accessibility as regards the artistic heritage of the Museo del Prado and organised several thematic lines along with interactive itineraries about Goya, Velazquez and Fra Angelico paintings. Augmented reality, virtual reality and gamification features have been selected and currently three different mobile app prototypes for delivering the user through the learning itineraries are being developed, based on inquiry-based design and multi-sensorial approach and compiling all levels of accessibility.

Covadonga Rodrigo San Juan

Covadonga Rodrigo obtained her Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering degree in 1999 from the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid (UPM) and is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Systems and Languages at UNED. Since 1998 she has held different teaching and management positions at university level, i.e. being Pro-Vice Chancellor for Technology at UNED (2010-2013). At the moment she is director of the  Research Chair Digital Inclusion co-financed by the university and Fundación Vodafone España.

Since long, she has researched on various topics related to the assessment and development of high quality products and systems for distance learning. For the past few years her research interests have been focused on developing systems with a high degree of usability and accessibility for eLearning deployment. Specifically for multimedia user-generated resources, open educational resources, MOOCs, learning object repositories architectures and application profiles, and more recently mobile learning context. She is been involved in European co-funded projects such as OpenScout, EduTubePlus and more recently Spanish projects as MUSACCES and SO-CALL-ME.

She has also experience in quality of e-learning ad blended models, evaluation and auditing systems, being a member of the Task Force for Quality in eLearning at EADTU.  Working for the E-xcellence label she’s been Team member in the pilot studies in Spain (UNED, 2009) and member of review teams in Sweden (Dalarna, 2012 and 2014). She is also being expert member of quality assessment of Computer Science Degrees in Costa Rica (SINAES, 2016). She’s participated in the development of related standards at the national level in AENOR (Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification, a member organization of the International Standards Organization – ISO), i.e. UNE 66181 “Gestión de la calidad. Calidad de la Formación Virtual” (A Standard for Quality Management and Conformity Assessment of e-learning) and recently part of the working group for standard draft PNE 71362 “Calidad en materiales educativos digitales” (Quality in digital learning resources).

In 2012 she was also appointed to the Executive Group at the Sectorial Committee of Information Technologies and Communications of the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE-TIC), leadering the working group on “Virtual Campuses and University Web Portals”.

 


#EDENChat is an online discussion event on Twitter initiated by Steering Committee of the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP). It is mediated by members of the NAP community and runs for approximately 1 hour. Anyone can join in and contribute to the discussion which is presented in a Question and Answer format, and focuses on current issues in distance, open and e-learning. All sessions start at 20:00 CEST.

Previous #EDENChats are listed on the EDEN website according to topics.