Chapter 7 of the textbook brought up a very crucial point that needs to be addressed when studying the effectiveness of informal learning settings. Chapter 7 discusses the obstacles that culture proposes in the field of informal science. Museum exhibits sometimes tend to isolate those of different cultures and those who are first generation immigrants as they are not able to relate to exhibit nor can understand the text that is associated with the exhibit. Therefore a case study was conducted in which an exhibit was created that used symbols of Vietnamese culture and included text translated into Vietnamese in order to attract the people of that culture. Results showed that the Vietnamese visitors no longer felt isolated from the exhibit and felt more welcomed which increased their interest in learning.

In addition to making the exhibits more accessible to people from various cultural background, museum exhibits are also trying to make it more accessible to people with disabilities such as amputees and those that are vision impaired. However this case study had less of a success. Although, the amputees found it easier to move around the exhibit they thought that it needed more places to sit. Whereas the vision impaired visitors had trouble listening to the audio and was frustrated by the inability to touch the objects.

I agree that museum exhibits do need to be improved in order to connect with a variety of people. I have visited few exhibits in which I was not able to understand the concept behind the exhibit since the idea was foreign to me and I could not relate to anything in the exhibit. Furthermore, exhibits which require less interaction and activity, in which the learning is mostly visual, tend to be more daunting and less interesting to those who have no connection to information being displayed.