College Students’ Views on Museum Learning: A Sustainable Aesthetic Education Perspective

Abstract

Museums are important educational platforms in informal learning environments, offering essential off-campus venues for university-level aesthetic education. Over half of students’ independent off-campus art appreciation activities occur in museums. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to analyse students’ general impressions of museums using the TF-IDF algorithm. Additionally, the specific feelings of university students participating in self-directed museum learning were explored through focus groups, and differences between learning in museums and appreciating other art forms from the students’ perspectives were analysed. The results show that museums provide students with profound cultural and artistic knowledge. Students prefer museums for independent art appreciation because of the freedom, control, and safety offered in that learning process. In terms of interactivity, comprehensiveness, and repeatability, clear differences exist between museum art appreciation and other art disciplines. Overall, museums are important and sustainable off-campus aesthetic educational resources for universities.

1. Introduction

The 2030 Agenda reflects the importance of an appropriate educational response, with education explicitly formulated as a stand-alone goal in sustainable development goal 4 (SDG 4) [1]. Beyond being a goal in itself, education is a means of attaining the other SDGs [2] and a driver of progress across all other SDGs, forming the foundation for a better future [3]. Aesthetic education, as a crucial part of quality education, fosters the holistic development of individuals by nurturing noble aesthetic sensibilities [4]. Aesthetic education is defined as “an intentional undertaking designed to nurture appreciative, reflective, cultural, participatory engagements with the arts by enabling learners to notice what is there to be noticed, and to lend works of art their lives in such a way that they can achieve them as variously meaningful” [5]. Museums, as essential platforms for informal aesthetic education, shoulder the educational responsibility of encouraging students to form aesthetic experiences and improve their aesthetic qualities [6]. Global research has confirmed the important role of museums in education, most of which have been organised, that is, collective activities organised by schools or classes and led by teachers. For example, Spanish studies have demonstrated how museums can support English education [7]; Slovenian researchers have used new methods for history education through museums [8]; and Greek researchers have highlighted the significance of university students’ diverse understandings on works by artists with disabilities in relation to their reflections on art and education [9]. Museums have been widely recognised as ideal venues for fostering aesthetic experiences in informal learning settings [10,11]. However, limited research has explored museum aesthetic education conducted independently by college students within the framework of university education goals.

While the United States and European Union formulated school-based aesthetic education policies [12], China issued a new aesthetic education reform policy in 2020 [13]. This policy, issued jointly by the highest organ of the state ruling party and state government, marked a shift from arts to aesthetic education. In 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Education expanded on this reform by introducing a directive requiring artistic experiential learning in schools for the first time [14]. The directive encouraged schools to use public cultural venues, including museums, concert halls, and theatres, for that purpose. However, there have been few definitive cases of this initiative and limited reports on its effectiveness.

To explore effective methods for collaborative arts experiential learning between schools and social and cultural venues, the authors of this paper applied the constructivist learning theory to organise independent art appreciation activities outside schools using digital tools in 2022 [15]. The participating students came from the college where the first author is located, and their majors included engineering, science, literature and art. In 2023, the authors further strengthened this research [16]. An interesting phenomenon identified from this large-scale implementation was that over half of art appreciation activities were museum studies, which piqued our interest. This study was conducted to understand why museums are the first choice for students to learn about art appreciation off-campus. This study investigates three key questions:

RQ1: What are college students’ general impressions of museum learning?

RQ2: Which factors influence college students to independently choose museums for art appreciation learning?

RQ3: How does museum learning differ from other forms of art appreciation from the perspective of university students?

This study began with a review of existing literature on museums and aesthetic education, followed by a mixed-methods approach to understand students’ perceptions of museums. This included analysing students’ general comments through computerised natural language processing via focus group interviews to determine students’ specific perceptions. The findings will enhance interactions and collaborations between universities and museums in the field of aesthetic education [17]. In the Chinese context, the term museum specifically refers to cultural heritage museums (not art museums or museums featuring modern artwork), and the museums described below are scoped as such.

2. Literature Review and Preliminary Work

2.1. Museum Education and School Aesthetic Education

The importance of museums as places of informal knowledge dissemination and educational platforms is constantly increasing [18,19,20,21]. As powerful authorities for appreciating the aesthetic value of art exhibits [22], museums have become indispensable resources for aesthetic education, offering high-quality materials for art appreciation. Research by Pelowski and Forster [23] highlights the dynamic interaction between art, audiences, and the physical space of the museum, creating an aesthetic ecology that is difficult to provide in the school education environment. In addition, appreciating artworks in museums can enhance the cognitive and emotional processes in art appreciation and enrich long-term memory [24]. The main dimensions of aesthetic experiences in museums, such as current fashion (based on beauty and harmony) and elegance [25], align closely with the goals of school-based aesthetic education.

From the perspective of school education, museum education is a rare and high-quality educational resource for art and cultural heritage learning [26]. English education [7], visual art education [27], and educational technology researchers [28] have explored the effectiveness of museum education from distinct perspectives. However, some studies emphasise the unique nature of museum education while acknowledging its challenges and uncertainties [29]. Hein argues that museum education should focus on all aspects related to tourists [30], whereas Illeris advocates for greater interactions between museum educators and audiences to promote the effectiveness of museum education [31]. However, defining the informal learning environment that fosters aesthetic development is complex. It is less about the physical setting [32] and more about whether the learning is a collective activity organised by the school or independent exploration by the students [33]. Understanding college students’ genuine perspectives on museum learning may provide more reference for museum educators, which is a key purpose of this study.

2.2. Artistic Experience and Aesthetic Experience

As philosopher Dewey argues in Art as Experience, aesthetic experience is a process of appreciation, perception, and enjoyment of works of art, driven by hobby and interest [34]. Lader claims that people’s processing of information in the aesthetic process includes perception, implicit classification, explicit classification, cognitive mastery, and evaluation. Through these five steps, people produce aesthetic judgements and emotions, forming an aesthetic experience [35]. Artistic experience is an interactive process between top-down attentional orientation and bottom-up perception promotion [36]. Differences in personal aesthetic experience, artistic knowledge, and other characteristics lead to different emotional [37] and evaluative responses to the same work of art [38].

In China, the scope of art and aesthetic education differs. Art education emphasises developing artistic skills, such as drawing and singing [39], whereas aesthetic education focuses on accumulating aesthetic experiences through extensive art appreciation and practical engagement. This requires educational thinking to gradually shift from the original behavioural paradigm to the constructivist paradigm [40], promote students actively participate in discovery-based learning, building upon existing knowledge to learn new concepts. However, it is difficult for conventional university classrooms to meet students’ needs to accumulate aesthetic experiences due to limitations in facilities, space, and the influence of teachers’ subjective opinions [12]. Similarly to the experience gained from the cultural backpack and gallery experience in Europe [41,42], off-campus artistic experience plays a positive role in expanding students’ artistic horizons and forming personalised aesthetic experiences. Museums are crucial platforms for art exhibition and cultural education, with innate advantages in promoting the formation of aesthetic experiences through artistic experiences [6].

2.3. Preliminary Work

Since 2020, our research on off-campus aesthetic education has focused on recording the off-campus art appreciation behaviours of college students through an ICT education platform used for the process evaluation of students’ art appreciation learning. As this mechanism evolved, we identified a strong preference among students for off-campus art appreciation activities in museums. In the first stage, 32 students performed 32 art appreciation activities, with 56.3% taking place in museums [15], primarily for art appreciation. In the second phase, 67 students performed 119 art appreciation activities, with 38.7% conducted in museums, making it the second most popular venue after galleries [16].

During the large-scale implementation from March to September 2023, students conducted 844 art appreciation activities, with 52.8% occurring in museums, the largest percentage. In addition, museum learning had the broadest geographic reach, spanning 22 provinces in China (Figure 1). The red markers in the figure represent museum visits, with multiple markers in some provinces representing frequent students’ visits to different museums. This research aimed to reveal students’ overall impressions and specific feelings about museum learning through data from the education system and interviews. It seeks to determine the reasons for students preferring museums for off-campus art appreciation and explores avenues of support from digital education technology for off-campus aesthetic education. Our findings will provide valuable insights for museum administrators and educators to enhance museum education endeavours.

3. Methodology

3.1. Overview of the Study

This study employed a mixed-methods approach to explore students’ perceptions of art appreciation in museums. Quantitative analysis was conducted on keywords from students’ evaluations phrased in the digital learning system, and qualitative analysis was performed on focus group interview data. In the first phase, students’ short evaluation texts after studying at the museum were exported from the digital learning system and analysed for keywords to discover their general impressions of museum learning. In the second phase, focus groups were organised to obtain students’ specific perceptions related to research questions. Thematic analysis was applied to interview texts. The two phases complemented each other, offering an in-depth understanding of students’ art appreciation in museums. This study was approved by the Teaching Steering Committee of the Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai (202206). All participants signed an informed consent form prior to their involvement.

3.2. Participants

Phase 1 participants were selected from students who had undertaken independent art appreciation as recorded in the off-campus aesthetic education system. These students engage in art appreciation activities based on their interests during their spare time. There is a statement made in the system that data on students’ art appreciation, including reflections on appreciation, would be used for research analysis. Only data from those who agreed with this statement were used in this study. A total of 446 student reflections on museum learning were analysed for this phase.

In the second phase, focus group participants were recruited through an off-campus aesthetic education system. As our research questions included the reasons why students chose museums as their first choice for art appreciation and the differences between learning and appreciating other art forms in museums, we adopted a purposeful sampling method [43] to set restrictive conditions for participants and obtain accurate opinions. Participants were required to have experience in museum-based art appreciation and in other art forms, such as dance and concerts. A total of 21 people participated in the focus group, with seven in each group. Sampling considered gender, age, and academic discipline to ensure diverse representation.

Table 1. Demographic statistics of participants.

Items	Option	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	8	38.1
	Female	13	61.9
Discipline	Engineering	5	23.8
	Science	3	14.3
	Management	4	19.0
	Linguistics	3	14.3
	Art	5	23.8
	Law	1	4.8
Age	18	1	4.8
	19	5	23.8
	20	8	38.1
	21	6	28.5
	22	1	4.8

shows participants’ demographic information. Participants were labelled using a combination of group designations (A, B, or C) and serial numbers (1–7). For example, the sixth student in the first group was marked as A6.

3.3. General Impressions Analysis

Keywords were extracted from the museum learning impressions actively submitted by students in the educational system. The widely used natural language processing Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) algorithm [44] was employed for this analysis. An example of the learning impression texts are as follows:

‘The Guangzhou Maritime Museum displays and collects artefacts from the development of the Maritime Silk Road and foreign trade in Guangzhou over the past 2000 years, which allows me to see the glorious achievements of Guangzhou in the history of the Maritime Silk Road and makes me marvel at the greatness of history’.

The TF-IDF algorithm evaluates the importance of words in a document relative to a corpus. The importance of a word increases proportionally to the number of times it appears in the document but decreases inversely with the frequency of its appearance in the corpus. We took 446 students’ impressions on museum learning, with a broader corpus of 6755 reflections on various arts (e.g., music, dance, drama, and painting) submitted since 2020. From this, the top 20 high-weight keywords were extracted, representing students’ key impressions of museum learning based on conventional analytical habits.

3.4. Focus Groups

Focus group discussions [45] were conducted to gain deeper insights into the research questions. The semi-structured discussion topics were developed collaboratively by the authors based on research questions and study objectives (

Table 2. Focus group topic.

Subject	Topic
Attraction of museums	1. Tell us how you felt about your visit to the museum, for example, how the mood was.
	2. Tell us about the part of the exhibition that strikes you the most right now, the design of the exhibition area; the exhibits can be described.
	3. On multiple visits to a museum, do you have the same focus? What impressed you the first time? Do you spend a long time thinking about it afterwards?
Difference	4. Please comment on the difference between studying in the museum and enjoying the performance.
	5. Do you feel the same degree of pleasure after enjoying different types of art?

). Focus groups were conducted iteratively; one group was analysed before organising the next to ensure data saturation. Three sessions were organised on 22, 24, and 26 November 2023, lasting between 60 and 90 min (average: 73 min). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview text data, following the steps of initial coding-forming themes and examining theme-defining themes. The first and second authors analysed and cross-validated the data simultaneously.

4. Findings

4.1. Results of General Students’ Impressions

The analysis of the feeling text of museum learning, conducted using the TF-IDF algorithm, is shown in Figure 2. The words ‘museum’, ‘visit’, and ‘culture’ have higher weight than the other words, reflecting students’ basic understanding of museums as platforms for displaying their cultural heritage. In contrast, the remaining keywords had relatively lower weights and mainly included subjective and objective terms. Subjective words describing students’ feelings included ‘experiencing’, ‘benefiting’, ‘profound’, ‘learning’, ‘good’, ‘shocking’, ‘gaining’ and ‘deepening’. The vocabulary that students pay attention to in museums from an objective perspective includes ‘development’, ‘exhibition’, ‘knowledge’, ‘art’, ‘display’, ‘display enrichment’ and ‘exhibition halls’. The results showed that students’ views on museum learning were key.

4.2. Results of the Focus Group Analysis

4.2.1. Reasons for Choosing Museums for Art Appreciation

Considering the question of why they chose museums for off-campus art appreciation, students unanimously pointed out freedom, control, and security.

Freedom. Students felt that museum art appreciation was free to organise in terms of theme selection and scheduling (planned or random).

‘I can choose to visit some theme pavilions in the museum according to my own interests and skip the content that is not interesting or familiar’.

(A6)

‘Sometimes, if there is no class in the afternoon, you can go to the museum randomly or go in and enjoy it after spending time there. It is very free. Even if you do not finish visiting the museum, you can continue to enjoy it next time’.

(A5)

Control. Students’ expectations from learning at the museum were perceived to be manageable for three main reasons: the manageable level of artistry in the museum’s art exhibits, the ability to use the museum’s website to obtain a general idea of whether the content of the exhibits matched their interests, and a high level of tolerance for the content of the exhibits.

‘Museum exhibits are generally appraised by the government, and the artistic level is definitely relatively high and reliable’.

(B4)

‘The publicity of museum websites lets us anticipate what can be appreciated and there will be an expectation in mind’.

(C4)

‘Museum art appreciation covers a wide range and different people may find a section that they are interested in, with a wide audience coverage’.

(B7)

Security. This thematic keyword was raised by Participant B5 during the interview and was widely recognised and discussed in depth in the second group. After analysing the text of the three focus group interviews, we found that the sense of security was mainly reflected in the venue environment, cultural identity, and sharing on social media. Hence, this theme was created separately.

‘The facilities of the museum are designed safely, and children do not have to worry about running around. The facilities of drinking fountains and toilets are perfect, and the temperature is well controlled. In short, it feels very comfortable’.

(B7)

‘Do not worry about being difficult to understand. When I visit the Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I have a strong sense of belonging and feel the resonance with the exhibits’.

(C4)

‘I think visiting the museum is a neutral art appreciation activity, and the exhibits are recognised by most people. There is no pressure to share the photos of the museum with the circle of friends (Chinese version of the WeChat media function), and there is no need to worry about other people’s comments’.

(B3)

4.2.2. Differences Between Museum Learning and Appreciating Performing Arts

During the discussion, students identified three key differences between visiting museums and appreciating performing arts, such as dance and concerts: interactivity, comprehensiveness, and repeatability.

Interactivity. Current professional art venues that host high-quality concerts and dances offer audience interaction elements, such as actors getting off the stage to dance with the audience or using large props that extend to the audience area. However, compared to the interactive design of museums, obvious differences exist. Students highlight the ability to engage with static exhibits from multiple angles and the flexibility to discuss their observations during the visit, which contrasts with the constraints of silence in theatres.

‘I experienced a picture of a field scene 30 years ago at the museum and was amazed to see through a telescope the ancient vs. modern design of the scene now’.

(A1)

‘Actors sometimes come off stage to interact with the audience but only stay in the front row’.

(A5)

‘Watching a performance is appreciated from a fixed angle in your seat, but the museum allows you to adjust different angles around the exhibits you are interested in to appreciate the details’.

(C2)

‘Watching a performance can only be discussed with peers after it is over, sometimes forgetting some of the ideas they had while watching; in the museum, you can talk at any time’.

(B4)

Comprehensiveness. Museums differ from the performing arts in terms of their contextualisation of art exhibits, coverage of art interests and authenticity of art and culture. Thus, museum learning enables students to have a more comprehensive art experience.

‘The museum has detailed text introduction labels for exhibits, as well as electronic interpreters, which can give a comprehensive understanding of the exhibits. Generally, the main introduction of the performance is the program list’.

(A6)

‘Everyone can enjoy the museum, but the stage performance still has a lot to do with personal interests, and programs that are not of interest will not be seen’.

(C5)

‘The same historical theme, the opera is designed, and the museum is real’.

(C4)

Repeatability. Public museums in China, being free of charge, enable students to visit repeatedly without financial strain. In addition, the temporary theme exhibitions in the museum foster students’ interest in revisiting and studying in the same museum, which is considerably different from performing arts, such as concerts.

‘The museums I have visited are free; I may visit the same museum several times. The exhibits are ticketed, and I usually do not repeat them after seeing them once’.

(C6)

‘I have been to my local museum many times and have enjoyed a gallery of interest many times because I find the exhibit so informative that it is difficult to fully appreciate it at one time’.

(A5)

‘Stage performances are usually very thematic, and museums often have temporary exhibitions on other themes that are new’.

(A4)

5. Discussion

College students’ impressions of museum learning (RQ1) were reflected in their general evaluations and analyses. The three high-weight words from the first phase, museum, visit and culture, reflect the cultural influence experienced during a museum visit. Subsequent keywords demonstrate the benefits of receiving cultural and artistic knowledge during the visit experience, indicating that museums foster a rich, in-depth cultural and artistic experience. Environmental factors, including display design and venue facilities, also contribute to students’ evaluation. This analysis aligns with widely discussed characteristics of museum education [18,19,20,21]. Unlike organised museum studies at the K12 stage [7], college students demonstrated more independence in learning, thinking, and action strategies. The data for this study stemmed entirely from students’ independent activities, with no unified organisation. The findings confirm previous studies, underscoring the effectiveness of museums as informal learning environments for the dissemination of cultural knowledge.

The focus group analysis showed the main reasons for students to choose museum learning as their preferred choice for an independent art experience (RQ2): freedom, controllability, and a sense of security, which involved aspects such as museum location, exhibits, and the environment (tangible and intangible). Museum learning supports open-ended art appreciation, allowing students to take ownership of and control their learning [46]. Museum art appreciation meets these learning requirements by creating a free and easy process for students to accumulate aesthetic experiences. The artistic authority of museum exhibits [22] is generally recognised, and the expectation of a manageable level of artistry in the exhibits is one of the factors that make students engage in museum learning. In the interview, one student (B7) suggested that the safety of the facility was also one of the factors that motivated him to choose a museum for art appreciation. This provides evidence for Hein’s [30] argument that everything in a museum contributes to education. It also expands on the elemental composition of physical space in Pelowski et al.’s [23] aesthetic–ecological view of museums. From an educator’s perspective, factors that facilitate students’ learning behaviours and the acquisition of knowledge through the environment are included in educational elements, such as safeguarding factors. Schools are recognised as one of the safest places to be, regardless of the country. The sense of security provided by museums mirrors the safeguarding nature of schools, making them more suitable to collaborate with universities.

Regarding the differences in artistic experiences between other art forms and museums (RQ3), students believed that there were significant differences in interaction, comprehensiveness, and repeatability. It should be noted that this study could not determine which art form was better for aesthetic education. The aesthetic education effects of various art forms are not within the scope of this study. This study focused on students’ motivation to visit museums for artistic experience learning in an autonomous learning mode. The diverse interactive design of museums is widely welcomed by students, which fosters art appreciation and produces impressive aesthetic experiences that are highly consistent with the aesthetic experience process demonstrated in the field of neuroaesthetics [35,47]. Previous studies have confirmed the key role of artistic information in artistic understanding [48]. Moreover, rich artistic knowledge and multimodal artistic information in museums and websites further strengthen students’ aesthetic experiences. An important factor that distinguishes museums from stage-performing arts is repeatability, which is the biggest advantage of museums in terms of aesthetic education. Students’ independent appreciation of art outside school is a process of forming a personalised aesthetic experience. Appreciating the same object (exhibition area or exhibit) multiple times is equivalent to iterating artistic cognition and emotional resonance, which can enrich artistic information in long-term memory and stimulate students’ deep cognition and cultural association. As Confucius said, ‘If a man constantly reviews what he has learned and keeps acquiring new knowledge, he may become a teacher to others’, which is rare and valuable for sustainable aesthetic education.

With the sudden global health crisis of 2020, the development and application of digital solutions in education have been rapid and fruitful [49]. Conclusive evidence has been found for the effectiveness of traditional didactic content on MOOC platforms [50,51]. However, hands-on learning content remains difficult to implement on online platforms. We also applied digital learning platforms to explore the practical teaching of arts, but the formation of aesthetic experiences needs to occur through live art exhibits and performances. Aesthetic education, grounded in a constructivist learning process, requires schools to provide high-quality content and scientifically designed mechanisms to achieve educational goals. Off-campus art resources, concerts, dance dramas, and other high-quality art content in the theatre can promote the formation of students’ aesthetic experience [52,53]. Fast and strong audio-visual stimulation can stimulate young people’s sense of pleasure, leading to the formation of excellent aesthetic perception and, subsequently, an aesthetic memory. However, museum aesthetics are different from the performing arts in that the clear thematic design of the exhibits can systematically and authentically present cultural and artistic knowledge, whereas the real-time interaction between students and their peers invariably establishes a ‘community of practice’ learning model for the current environment [54]. This is conducive to the formation of a more complete, contextual, and personalised aesthetic experience and lays the foundation for aesthetic education in collaboration between museums and universities. However, a recent research report from Spain found that 82.2% of students have a limited understanding of museum resources [55], which limits the efficiency and effectiveness of museum learning. To maximise the potential of museum resources, it is essential for museums and schools to establish a sustainable shared agenda and implement practical solutions. Notably, museum educators and teachers from different regions are actively working to strengthen the cooperation between schools and museums, continuously building and enhancing the sustainable bridges of collaboration [56,57].

6. Limitations and Future Development

This study analysed participants’ perceptions of museums through a qualitative analysis. The textual data were cross-validated by the authors; however, differences in interpretation due to subjective understanding cannot be entirely ruled out. Additionally, given the cultural differences across the globe, the views of students from other countries on the value of aesthetic education in museums should also be considered, especially in the context of their decentralised and self-directed museum learning experiences.

7. Conclusions

This study provides an empirical case for experiential museum learning from the perspectives of college students. It demonstrates why museums are preferred in off-campus independent art experiential learning by exploring college students’ impressions of museums, their feelings about conducting independent museum learning and the differences between museum learning and other art forms from students’ perspectives.

The analysis of students’ museum learning perceptions through the TF-IDF algorithm found that students experienced in-depth cultural and artistic knowledge in museums and benefited from it. Focus group discussions identified freedom, controllability, and security in museum learning as the main reasons for students choosing museums for independent art appreciation. They reported significant differences between museum learning and the appreciation of other art disciplines, particularly in interactivity, comprehensiveness and repeatability. The findings offer valuable insights for academics, museum monitors and curators seeking to enhance museum education, and to utilise the unique advantages of museums to promote aesthetic education cooperation with schools. Furthermore, this study provides a reference for the effectiveness of self-directed museum learning in sustainable aesthetic education. They also underline the importance of expanding research to include students from different cultural backgrounds and ages to improve the quality of museum education.

Overall, museums are important and sustainable platforms for off-campus aesthetic education. Strengthening collaboration between museum and university aesthetic educators is crucial for promoting the sustainable development of aesthetic education in museums.