Kirsten Butcher

Kirsten Butcher is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah. Her work focuses on the design and evaluation of digital technologies for learning, with specific emphasis on interactive learning environments that promote cognitive processes for critical thinking and deep understanding. Dr. Butcher has collaborated with educators and scientists from the Natural History Museum of Utah for over a decade, exploring when and how digitized museum collections can support meaningful education and outreach.

Kirsten Butcher will be speaking at the Digital Learning Summit 2026 :

Beyond Access: What Can Digitized Collections Do for Learning?

Museums have invested enormous resources in digitizing their collections. But what happens when we move beyond making collections accessible and start designing with them for learning? In this fast-paced conversation, the Natural History Museum of Utah’s Research Quest team will share what they’re discovering through a decade of designing digital investigations with authentic natural history collections. Through examples from Research Quest, we’ll explore how digitized specimens can become more than objects to view: they can become evidence to investigate, patterns to uncover, and tools for building explanations. Join us to rethink what digitized collections can make possible for learners—and imagine what could happen if more museums explored these possibilities together.