Mixing it up: blending face-to-face
and online learning in first-year
Art History and Theory

Dr Jennifer Milam,
Faculty of Arts

The first-year experience in Art History and Theory aims primarily to engage students in the excitement of learning, thinking and expressing critical ideas about visual culture. As detailed in Anne Forster’s discussion paper, most students come to the University of Sydney with the expectation that their learning experience will bring them closer to researchers in the field through face-to-face contact. This contact has come under threat through the contraction of teaching assistance and the rise in student numbers. The key to the success of the first year unit of study Art History and Theory (ARHT1001) lies in the blending of the teaching and learning modes, so that students have the face-to-face contact they desire and expect, in the form of engaging lectures and museum visits. These experiences are augmented with online tasks which improve understanding and offer an introduction to the professional work of art historians.

The ARHT1001 unit of study integrates weekly components organised around three face-to-face lecture hours, a group exhibition project conducted either via the Internet or in person, and a 45-minute quiz taken in WebCT. In the middle of the semester, a concentrated period of face-to-face tutorials takes place at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Capitalising on the students’ demonstrated interest in the relationship between the discipline and museum work, I have redesigned the course to involve students in the development of online exhibitions, a relatively new trend in the museum world.

Using the Internet, students now become curators and art critics, discussing issues of interpretation relevant to their exhibition objects, writing interpretive texts about works of art and reviewing the exhibitions of their peers. The Group Exhibition Project also achieves an essential academic objective of the discipline by engaging students in the methods of art history. Over a period of six weeks, the groups are given pairs of images to discuss in light of a particular critical approach (subject, artist, form, beholder). Through discussion postings, they gradually prepare virtual wall texts for each topic and set of images, culminating in a broader introductory text in Week 5 and a critical review of another group’s exhibition in Week 6. Thus our students acquire foundation skills in interpretive practice, they learn to work together (a University generic skill) and they help each other through the pedagogical process. The Exhibition Project task also enables students to develop the teamwork skills required in the professional practice of curatorial work and art criticism.

Open-response evaluations of the course in 2002 (with 203 questionnaires completed out of an enrolment of 352) indicate that 59% of the students found the lectures to be the most enjoyable aspect of the course. This compares with the 25% that remarked generally on the course content, 6% that favoured the museum tutorial, and 10% that responded to the structure of the course, including the online components. However, more interesting than this data was the wide-spread student approval of the course (at 97%), despite the absence of regular and traditional tutorials.

A significant majority of the students described themselves as active users of the online teaching and learning materials, indicating that these components had contributed to their learning. For example, 98% of those enrolled completed most, if not all, of the 10 online quizzes. A majority of the students commented that these were an effective, enjoyable revision tool. To quote one student, the quizzes provided “a good way of making sure you were up to date with all of your work and understood what you could improve”.

The Exhibition Project, which was more time-consuming and demanding than the quizzes, was slightly less effective in terms of participation. Still, 75% of the class participated actively (a minimum of four postings with significant comment was required), with a third of this group communicating very frequently online. One of the most revealing comments came from a student who said that while it was “not easy”, the project offered a “great way to interact” and featured “qualities needed in life like cooperation and teamwork”. However, more needs to be done to make these latter outcomes worthwhile and appealing to all students from the beginning of the assignment.

In retrospect, the biggest challenge for students was learning to ‘discuss’ online. I found that specific assistance with online discussion needs to be given early, with the lecturer and/or online tutors monitoring student exchanges during the first weeks. Although it is enormously time-consuming, daily postings by the lecturer or tutor in this early period help get things off to a good start. Several of the students who found the Project useful also commented that it was “difficult to orchestrate”. A detailed timeline and clear guidelines, distributed to students in hard copy and online, are essential, particularly for first-year students. The Exhibition Project could also become more sophisticated, but no less complicated, by allowing students to choose the images for their exhibition, rather than simply writing on preselected objects.

In developing this mixed-mode structure for ‘ARHT1001’ I have experienced many of the growing pains associated with the adoption of online teaching and learning. Components need to be continually refined and modified based on student feedback. Perhaps the most gratifying comments in regards to the Exhibition Project came from students who had found similar exhibitions on ‘real’ museum sites. They were excited by the fact that they were engaged in work which paralleled that in the profession. To capitalise on this recognition, and as a form of encouragement, I will incorporate such sites into the future task guidelines. I have my students to thank for this modification to the Project design.

Dr. Jennifer Milam is Lecturer and Teaching Coordinator in the Department of Art History and Theory. She has received several grants for the continued development of her online initiatives in the first-year program, the most recent awarded by Apple Australia.
Email: jennifer.milam@arthist.usyd.edu.au

Copyright ©2002 Institute for Teaching and Learning