The Ways that Digital Technologies InformVisitor’s Engagement with Heritage Sites: Informal Learning in the Digital Era

Abstract

Heritage sites are typical informal learning spaces, which play significant roles in promoting the cultural and historical knowledge to the visitors (Wenger, 1999). Visitor's engagement with heritage sites is a traditional view to explore the informal learning spaces in the cultural sector (Budge & Burness, 2018). Informal learning within heritage sites, however, has been informed and changed by the digitization and virtualization in the cultural sector (King, Stark & Cooke, 2016). But this generates new research interests to establish links between the traditional and the digital cultural studies (eg. Turkle, 2013; Bland, 2014; Fitzgerald, 2015). This paper discussed several cases to show how digital technologies inform visitor's engagement with heritage sites. In this way, this paper also explores the informal learning in the digital era. Keywords: Engagement, informal learning, digital heritage sites, digital technologies in cultural sector.