During the pandemic of COVID-19 in-place lessons at museums were stopped and a remote, live-streamed lesson format was developed and launched.The learners, their teachers, the museum teacher, and the objects of learning are roomily separated, and the lesson takes place on a screen. With that in mind, I have surveyed how live-streaming shapes the instruction of animals at a natural history museum. The research questions were:

1. What experiences do learners, class teachers and museum teachers have with a live-streamed lesson? 
2. What affordances of resources allow or constrain the teaching and learning of animals in a live-streamed museum lesson?  
3. What, if any, impact does a class teacher have on the interactions between learners and the museum teacher?

The first research questions aimed to investigate participants' experience of the activity and learning outcome of a live-streamed lesson as a new lesson experience, with the second research question to see possibilities or constraints in remoteness and the use of didactical resoursec (affordances).The overarching aim of this study is to investigate how a live-streamed museum lesson formats through material and didactical affordances. 

The objects were 76 learners in ages 9 to 12 years in grades 3 (n=27), grade 5 (n=27) and grade 6 (n=21) from five classes in three municipal schools in Sweden, their class teachers (n=3) and one museum teacher who led the lessons and two other museum teachers.

The lower age limit was at grade 3 to be sure the learners could read and write independently to answer the questions. The higher age limit was at grade 6 as the lesson content on animals aligned with the curriculum contents up to grade 6. I selected two lesson themes for my study: "A giraffe, an elephant and a rhino" and "Wild animals in Sweden ".

The theoretical framework is rooted in a sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) and Designs for learning (Selander & Björklund Boistrup, 2021). The sociocultural approach comes with the concept of appropriation, making words into somebody's intellectual and cultural property. The sociocultural theory and designs for learning perspective point out that communication is mediated by semiotic modes of speech, gestures, objects, or environments. The theoretical background is complemented by the ecological approach to visual perception (Gibson, 2015) and the concept of affordances (Gibson & Pick, 2000) as resources in the learning environment. either allowing or constraining activity. ‘When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides and from one vista to another.’ (Gibson, 2015, p. 2). Moreover, the use of senses, not only the audiovisual but also touch, is lacking in live-streamed lessons. Still, there is a need to actively engage learners in a live-streamed lesson, for example hands-on (Gaylord-Opalewski & O’Leary, 2019).

The study uses qualitative and quantitative methods. Data comes from a questionnaire to the learners and their teachers, written interview questions to the three museum teachers that have been involved in the planning of the lessons and five screen recordings. Learners and their class teachers filled in the questions directly after live-streaming. The museum teachers answered the written questions about their experiences after one and a half terms of experiences of live-streamed lessons. The questionnaire to the learners and their teachers had closed-ended questions which I analysed for the percentage distribution of the learners’ audiovisual experience, and used a 4-Point Likert Scale (Likert,1932) without a neutral choice for their selfestimation of their activity level. The open-ended questions of the learners’ own appreciated learning outcomes were grouped in two main categories that I found in their answers. I analysed the interactions in the screen recordings using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2020). The themes developed from open coding of the teacher's interactions with participants and artefacts, as seen in the transcripts of the screen recordings and the open-ended questions. I transcribed the screen recordings following the correct Swedish everyday language. I started studying the data in the video recordings with an inductive bottom-up approach to understanding what happened in the lessons, and what means of instruction about animals were performed. The themes showed patterns of behaviour that could be explained by the analytical perspective of multimodality (Kress & Selander, 2012; Selander & Björklund Boistrup, 2021). The analyses showed signs of design to overcame a roomy separation. To analyse the learners’ responses and initiative-taking I used the Interaction analysis of Amidon (1968) that I modified by adding the class teacher as a participant in the matrix. According to the method records of actions are taken every 3:rd second and made notes for in the matrix. The counts of interactional acitivities gave a quantitative description of the participants responses and initiatives. NVivo was used to tag and name data items.

The museum teacher mediated the biological content by semiotic modes of speech, gestures, objects, positionings and the environment. Findings showed that the perceptions of the mounted animals were impacted by the limitations of the flat screen, for example, the lack of the objects' three-dimensionality. The learners showed engagement in the lesson by expressing joyfulness and activity by asking and answering questions. Yet there were differences in the learners' response and initiative. The class teacher type 1 engaged by asking questions and suggesting ideas and the teacher type 2 mainly helped learners to speak louder. It showed that the teacher type 2 had learners who took more initiative, while the learners of the type 1 teacher were more responsive. One finding was about lacking the possibility to look around and examine an object from all sides. However, the museum teacher’s responsiveness is critical to help learners to perceive the objects through the handling of space and surfaces to help distinguish the details and sizes of the objects. Generally, the learners desired to use more senses. The learners’ assessments of their learning outcomes showed mostly single animal names, but there were fewer examples of deep factual learning. The analysis showed that the learners’ expectations were high of the museum as an expert institution and the museum teacher as more knowledgeable than their science teacher. The participants appreciated the knowledge contribution and the possibility of ‘visiting’ the museum but preferred to visit the museum in place, to stroll around, see more animals, see details and touch. There are misconceptions about what a visitor can do at a museum, which indicates that many learners have never visited a museum. The live-streamed lessons allow a broader audience to get knowledge of species not acquainted with and contribute to understanding biodiversity conservation in a European context.

Amidon, E. (1968). Interaction analysis. Theory into Practice, 7(5), 159-167. Braun, V., and Clarke, V. (2021). Conceptual and design thinking for thematic analysis. Qualitative Psychology (Washington, D.C.), 9(1), 3-26. Gaylord-Opalewski, K., and O'Leary L. (2019). "Defining Interactive Virtual Learning in Museum Education: A Shared Perspective." Journal of Museum Education 44.3 229-41. Web. Gibson, J. J. (2015). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Psychology Press Classic Editions. Web. Gibson, E., & Pick, A. (2000). An ecological approach to perceptual learning and development. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Kress, G., and Selander S., (2012). "Multimodal Design, Learning and Cultures of Recognition." The Internet and Higher Education 15.4 265-68. Web Likert, R. (1932). "A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes." Archives of Psychology 22:5-55. Selander S., and Björklund Boistrup L. (2021). Designs for Research, Teaching and Learning. Taylor and Francis. Web. Vygotskij, L., and Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.