Supporting Family Scaffolding and Collaboration Through Digital Interactive Tabletop Exhibits

Abstract This article presents a qualitative analysis of family interaction around digital interactive tabletop exhibits. Parents play a teaching role in museum visits, using strategies from encouragement, to giving directions about using exhibits, to offering explanations that connect an exhibit to children’s previous experiences. Touchscreens and touch tables offer different ways of engaging families in museums, raising questions around how these interactive tabletops support family collaboration, specifically their role in fostering scaffolding forms of activity. A multimodal analysis using video data of family interactions around three tabletop exhibits examines the role of digital exhibit design in fostering family collaboration and adult scaffolding behavior. Findings show that particular design elements in exhibit set up, expert video/audio and touch interaction influenced family formation around the exhibit, adult scaffolding and family engagement with the exhibit activity. The article draws on these findings to inform the design of interactive tabletop exhibits for family collaboration.