Designing websites for learning and enjoyment: A study of museum experiences

The aim of this study was to investigate how a special type of learning, learning for enjoyment, can be encouraged through suitable website design. The phenomenon was investigated in the context of museum websites that offer educational material. Museums have the mission of providing for study, non-profit making education, and enjoyment for the general public and are making increasing use of the Internet in support of their mission. Museum websites offer an excellent opportunity to study E-learning for enjoyment, which needs to be interesting and engaging. Computer-supported learning of various types has been studied over a considerable period of time, including computer-aided learning, computer-aided instruction, computer-managed learning and now learning via the Internet (eE-learning). The concept of E-learning for enjoyment, when learning is not-for-profit and not part of a formal instructional undertaking, has, however, been relatively little studied and is not well understood. Some relevant work appears in the literature on flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1990), although this work has not been integrated well with the concept of learning for enjoyment. The current study takes up this challenge. It involved a number of semi-structured interviews with museum and educational experts in Taiwan. This process identified a number of characteristics required of E-learning websites and a number of guidelines for developing an E-learning website for enjoyment.