Increasing attention is being paid across the education literature to learning in the digital age; however, how do these principles apply to museums as they struggle to provide rich learning experiences for increasingly technologically savvy visitors? What does participation and facilitation look like, and what platforms do museums need to focus on? This paper outlines issues facing twenty-first-century learners in museums through analysing three key trends—gamification, multiscreening, and massive open online courses (MOOCs)—and then considers a theory for learning in the twenty-first-century museum.

Keywords: museum learning, digital learning, MOOCs, gamification, constructivism