Justification for Assignment #4

Assignment #4, which entails most of the zoo visit synthesis, is really a capstone project for what has been studied up to that point in the course. Two days have been spent moving the student into the position of zoo visitor, and understanding that the 21^st century zoo visitor is a multi-zoo tourist, a digital roamer, and not necessarily a heterosexual white middle class family. This being established, the zoo visit assignment adds another layer of digital literacy by positioning students to roam around a web page from a naïve visitor’s perspective, then going into that exhibit area in the actual zoo and discovering what the experience is, compared to the promised experience from the internet. The goal is for students to see the break between imagined and real zoo representation, and look for concrete ways that digital visitors’ needs can be met.

After they have generated ideas, and discussed them with other students, the students are sent out again, restored to their more comfortable place as “institution professional,” to act as zoo researchers. They will be asking other visitors what they are seeing, and if these impressions match their own, for purposes of self-critique and assessment. Have they truly repositioned themselves as a tourist, or are they are still blinded by professional experience? If they haven’t imagined visitors accurately, this data gathering becomes an exercise that increases the accuracy of their data and shows them where they haven’t looked clearly through the visitor’s lens.