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Sound Travels is a US-based, federally-funded collaboration between sound researchers, learning researchers, and educational practitioners working to understand the role of soundscapes on free-choice, out-of-school learning experiences. In this paper, members of our research team describe how we have combined approaches from acoustic ecology and visitor studies to navigate the affordances and challenges of studying sound across several complex leisure settings (a science museum, a botanic garden, a park, and a zoo). As an exploratory and transdisciplinary project, our initial work has involved significant deliberation about how to meaningfully and effectively gather data in highly variable acoustic environments, as well as what types and characteristics of sound data are most salient to understanding visitors’ experiences of sound. In addition to grappling with these technical questions, we have also worked to ensure that our research does not detract from positive visitor experiences in these spaces and that it directly engages perspectives from practitioners and visitors about cognition, affect, and culture. We will describe the logic of the methods we have used to date (stationary ambient recordings, a post-experience visitor questionnaire, and a “sound search” in which visitors record video clips), as well as our plans for further study.
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This content will become publicly available on January 14, 2026
The sound of culture: Exploring acoustical features of sounds perceived in free-choice learning environments.
The Sound Travels research team will share a recording that exemplifies affective associations made with specific sounds by visitors to free-choice learning environments (a science museum, a park, a zoo, and a botanical garden). This recording reflects direct collaboration with visitors and demonstrates the variation in how people make sense of sound, both in identifying its sources and in describing its effects on their emotional and cognitive states. Our US-based, federally funded project explores the impacts of ambient and designed sound on STEM learning and leisure experiences. Beyond addressing our research questions, we embrace the larger goals of seeking meaningful input from professionals in and visitors to these spaces and directly informing educational design practice. Our methods include multiple stationary ambient recordings within spaces of interest, a post-experience visitor questionnaire, and a “sound search” instrument in which visitors record video clips during their experience to represent sounds that make them feel curious, energized, uneasy, and peaceful. Together, the resulting data reveal not only how visitors are affected by sound but also how visitors experience and notice sound in context, and in what ways a person’s embodied and culturally informed associations with sound relate to their experiences of learning and leisure.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2215101
- PAR ID:
- 10620639
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Volume:
- 156
- Issue:
- 4_Supplement
- ISSN:
- 1520-8524
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- A37-A37
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- free-choice learning, soundscape, visitor experience
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- 10.1121/10.0035019
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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