A Model for Creating an Art Museum-University Partnership to Develop Technology-Based Educational Resources
In D. Willis, J. Price, & N. Davis (Eds.), Information Technology and Teacher Education Annual 2001. (pp. 11-15). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Bernard Robin, University of Houston, Instructional Technology Program
Sara Wilson McKay, University of Houston, Art Education Program
Beth Schneider, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Education Department
Sara McNeil, University of Houston, Instructional Technology Program
Donna Odle Smith, University of Houston, Instructional Technology Program
Abstract
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the University of Houston (UH) have
collaborated on the design and development of multi-faceted web sites related to
both permanent and traveling exhibitions at the museum. In this paper,
stakeholders from the museum and the university will describe the web sites and
their various educational resources, including multimedia games and activities
for K-12 students. The authors discuss the collaborative efforts from their
individual perspectives, including the UH Instructional Technology (IT) program,
the UH Art Education program and the MFAH education department. The paper also
includes an examination of the development of online educational resources for
K-12 teachers and students and describes how students and instructors in two
graduate IT courses participated in this partnership. Students in the courses
came from not only the IT program, but also from art and art education programs.
The paper also includes an overview of the role of technology in art education
in general and in art museums specifically to suggest the importance of context
in the development of art educational materials. Preliminary evaluation data
that describe student perceptions of multimedia resources are also reported.
The two graduate IT courses at UH use community-based content and resources as
the foundation for the technology-based projects that student teams design and
develop. In the first course to be discussed, Project-Based Web Design &
Development, the entire course deals with the planning and creation of a web
project for the MFAH. In the second course, Collaborative Design & Development
of Multimedia, students also work in collaborative teams, but these students
design and develop multimedia resources for stand-alone kiosk presentations and
web-enabled content.
Collaboration between the university and the museum has been a tremendously
beneficial experience for both institutions. Being able to work with so much of
the museum’s rich and diverse content has elevated the courses to more
meaningful and fertile educational experiences for all involved—the students,
the instructors and the museum’s education staff. Recruiting additional museum
staff members to serve as course facilitators and consultants will add even more
value to the partnership since they help articulate the goals and objectives of
the museum and provide insight and expertise related to works of art and how
they are exhibited, both in the physical museum and online.
The University Perspective – Part I: Creating a New Kind of Instructional
Technology Course
In the fall of 1997, faculty from the University of Houston (UH) met with
representatives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) to discuss how the
museum could take a small amount of grant funding and develop innovative uses of
new technologies that would enhance public access to the arts. Since
Instructional Technology (IT) faculty members at the university were searching
for authentic and meaningful projects that students could work on as part of
their course of study, it was decided that the museum would provide the content
that students would use in a web design course. Project-Based Web Design and
Development is the name of a graduate IT course which is offered twice a year in
the UH College of Education. In this course, students work in small
collaborative teams to design and develop online educational resources that the
museum wants to make available to a larger audience. Students are challenged to
explore authentic investigation techniques and, working with museum staff
members, they attempt different creative approaches to presenting museum content
online.
The first museum/university collaborative project in which students used content
from the museum was the development of a web site for Bayou Bend, the American
decorative arts wing of the MFAH. In this project, student designers created the
overall appearance and layout of the site. Students worked with museum content
experts to develop site navigation, page design, and educational resources to
showcase Bayou Bend and its collection. Student teams created searchable
databases, produced virtual room tours, and integrated streaming media content
into the site. In addition, several students conducted research to evaluate the
effectiveness of these technological components as educational resources. The
Bayou Bend project is described in greater detail in the paper, A
Museum-University Partnership to Develop Web-Based Educational Resources (Robin,
Jenkins, Howze, & O’Connor, 2001).
Over the last three years, the structure of the course has undergone significant
changes and revisions as the partnership between UH and the MFAH has evolved.
First, because the web projects that students create are complex and
multi-faceted, they cannot be completed in a single semester. Consequently, the
course is now offered in both fall and spring semesters to enable work to
continue throughout the school year. This poses a considerable challenge as each
new semester brings a fresh group of students into the course that must first
investigate the work done in the previous classes and then devise strategies for
building upon that work. We have dealt with this transition from one semester to
the next by employing course facilitators who work with each new group of
students. The facilitators come from a variety of sources, including graduate
students who previously took the course and want to continue working on the
project, other faculty members who are interested in the content, and museum
staff members. Facilitators are in charge of different components of the web
project and they provide guidance and continuity to the new student teams that
continue the work that previous students began. One of the interesting effects
of working with the museum is that students participate in a cross-disciplinary
exploration of such topics as history, geography, religion, economics, politics,
and other cultural influences associated with works of art and artifacts, not
the typical type of exploration normally found in a web design course.
Another modification to the course is that students from outside the IT program
are encouraged to enroll and participate in these museum-based projects. So far,
students from both the College of Education’s Art Education program and the
university’s Art Department have enrolled in the course. These students have
been extremely helpful to the success of the project and the course. Even though
they often do not possess the same level of technical skill as the IT students,
their knowledge of art and art education nicely complements the technology
expertise of the other students. In future semesters, it is hoped that students
from additional programs, such as history and social studies education, will
also enroll in the course.
The Museum Perspective
The MFAH has moved slowly into cyberspace. Developed as a pilot project funded
by a small grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bayou Bend web
site was the first effort of the partnership between the MFAH and the UH
Instructional Technology program. Brochures on Bayou Bend’s collection, founder,
and gardens, and the newly published catalogue American Decorative Arts and
Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection provided important information and
images. Also, with access to the Bayou Bend director and curator, UH students
and faculty had a wealth of information about Bayou Bend and produced an
innovative web site that featured a rich assortment of information and
educational resources.
The success of the Bayou Bend project led to discussions between the IT faculty
and the MFAH education director about future projects. In all aspects of its
programming, the MFAH education department forms collaborations with a wide
range of community organizations including libraries, schools, the city parks
department and housing authority, colleges and universities, hospitals, and
community centers. The education staff recognized the need for a greater web
presence and was eager to collaborate with the team of professors and students
at the University of Houston.
The next project the collaborators undertook was to develop a comprehensive web
site for an exhibition, The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the
Museo Franz Mayer (http://www.fm.coe.uh.edu). This exhibition from the Museo
Franz Mayer in Mexico City consists of approximately 130 works that will travel
to the MFAH and two other American venues and present the rich artistic heritage
of colonial Mexico during the viceregal period (1521-1821). The museum education
team and faculty from the university mapped out the following components as the
focus students would work on over four semesters:
This latest project presented a major challenge–a lack of
readily accessible information about the Franz Mayer collections and few images
of the works of art in the exhibition. Museum staff members know that images and
texts relating to exhibitions often are not available far in advance. However,
the students, who began working on this project in the fall of 2000, and newer
classes of students who continued this work, needed images and content in order
to design and develop the basic structure of the web site as well as the content
pages and educational resources. At the beginning of the project, the exhibition
curator gave presentations to all classes and discussed a small number of works
of art for which the museum had slides. The education director was responsible
for providing as much information as was available and researching additional
background information. Late in the spring semester of 2001, students had access
to catalogue essays and entries and a complete set of exhibition images which
greatly facilitated the project.
For the museum, this collaboration has built stronger ties between the
university and the museum; introduced students to the museum as a resource for
learning; provided web site design services; and supported the museum’s
commitment to education. The potential of the web site to provide information
about the exhibition to a very large audience is of great importance to the
museum. The collaboration with the university has further enabled the education
department to put its teacher resource center catalogue online, to work with
middle school students on a pilot museum web site for kids, and to be a partner
in a major grant-funded project developed by UH focusing on teaching American
history.
The strength of the partnership, its educational focus, was also its major
drawback. The students who worked on the project, with a new class arriving each
semester, were a very diverse group with little or no background in art or art
history. The pace of progress was often slow and frustrating from the museum’s
point of view, although necessary for the students’ learning. In the educational
setting of a graduate course, students need to learn to assess their own work
and try several approaches before reaching a solution. The museum is both client
and teacher, which sometimes becomes a conflicting role. But overall, the
project has been a success, as measured by the quality of the web site and the
eagerness of students to enroll in a course. In the future, it will probably
make sense to focus the museum/university partnership on the museum’s own
collection for which images, publications, and research materials are readily
available and deadlines are not as critical.
The University Perspective – Part II: Creating Multimedia Educational
Resources
In the second series of IT courses, Collaborative Design & Development of
Multimedia, students also worked in collaborative teams, but these students
designed and developed multimedia resources using Macromedia Authorware™.
Students enrolled in two courses sequentially (fall and spring) that focused on
instructional design principles, the application of technology to multimedia
design and the use of teams to develop effective instructional initiatives. The
challenge for the student teams was to develop a learning module that could be
incorporated into the museum web site and presented on a kiosk at the museum.
At the start of the course, students completed an initial assessment of computer
skills, multimedia skills and team strategies. In addition, this survey also
asked students to rate their multimedia project experience in such areas as
designing navigational structures. Students were presented with brief
descriptions of projects by the clients and were asked to rank their first,
second, and third choices. The second week of class, students were assigned to
different teams based on a combination of factors: the skill assessments, the
instructor’s knowledge of each individual’s background, and student preference.
Teams were given the job of visualizing, designing, and developing a module to
meet the requirements of their client. The team that worked on the MFAH project
consisted of five members, each with a variety of backgrounds and experiences
ranging from K-12 teaching to corporate training.
The fall semester focused on team building and developing competencies in the
authoring software that would allow students to complete the project. The team
developed ideas and prototypes for the project and presented these to a
representative of the MFAH. It took the team several weeks of meetings to
develop a plan and direction for their project, and students soon realized that
working in a team and trying to develop a piece of software is an intensive
process that requires a multitude of skills. By the end of fall semester, the
team had decided to integrate all information in short game-like activities.
Based on the previous findings of museum visitor attention spans, and of visitor
preference for self-directed learning, the activities were designed to be short
in duration, with a menu of individual activities so they could be accessible by
choice, and in any order.
During the spring semester, six activities were developed along with a finished
menu interface with links to all activities. The activities that were developed
include Dot-to-Dot, Make a Vase, Trade Routes, Paper Dolls, Concentration, and
Story Book. In the Paper Dolls game, users may select any combination of dress
and hair taken from portraits from the Franz Mayer and Bayou Bend collections,
and drag those components onto a face on the computer screen. When finished, the
program displays the visitors’ combination, along with an image of the face in
its original portrait for comparison. The Concentration game differs from the
original in that the matched pairs are not identical but are conceptual. For
example, the cocoa cup from the Franz Mayer collection is a match for a teapot
from the Bayou Bend collection, because both beverages were extremely important
in social gatherings in their respective countries.
At the end of spring semester, seventh graders in a local school district
evaluated the six activities using a survey that included questions that might
indicate student engagement as well as the efficacy of these activities for
conveying museum content. Student endorsement of the interactive multimedia
activities was high and indicated that these users preferred this type of
activity to merely reading for content. The highest rated activities, Make a
Vase and Paper Dolls, were coincidentally the two activities that allowed the
participants the highest measure of individual choice and control. Although the
formative evaluation testing was carried out in a classroom setting as opposed
to a genuine museum setting, the student responses to the interactive multimedia
activities seems to align with the literature about visitor studies regarding
interactive experiences in museums. The students expected to learn, but they
were also interested in playing computer games to reveal the content and enjoyed
the delivery method. This experience appears to parallel the literature
indicating that museum visitors come to the museum expecting both to learn and
to have an enjoyable experience while there.
These prototypes were developed by the team in anticipation of an increasing
presence of interactive multimedia incorporated into museum exhibits. The MFAH
is still developing new concepts toward inclusion of projects like these in
museum education. The team hopes that these activities will lay a foundation
toward on-site testing and evaluation and that we will see a continued
development toward capitalizing on the growing strength of technology inside
museum exhibits.
The Art Education Perspective: How these Projects Fit into Art Education
Pedagogy
The Art Education program at the University of Houston has only recently become
a formal component of the fruitful collaboration between the MFAH and the IT
program at UH. While a few students from the Art Education program have enrolled
in the project-based web design course and have been involved in constructing
the exhibition web site, the possibilities for further contributions from the
field of art education generally and from considerations of technology in art
education specifically are yet to be realized. In light of this, this section
will:
An art educator was involved in the museum/university
collaboration from the beginning in that an Art Education Professor Emeritus
became involved in the collaboration by serving as a team facilitator in the
early days of the project. Art Education graduate students then participated in
the IT course and served as team members under the direction of the Art
Education Professor Emeritus. Additionally, the Art Education program at UH,
like the IT program, has made a commitment to focus on real-world projects
within its course structures, and students in the program have suggested that
their learning is increased because of the authentic nature of the intellectual
endeavors. Knowing that the research the students conduct and the lessons they
develop will be utilized by area arts organizations and teachers creates a level
of motivation that is unmatched by class group projects or other assignments.
In keeping with its commitment to real-world projects, the Art Education program
at UH also has a commitment to working with real works of art which further
enhances the outcomes for all stakeholders in the museum/university partnership.
Because the UH Art Education program subscribes to Discipline-Based Art
Education (DBAE) as its theoretical base for learning in the visual arts,
working directly with and through works of art in the museum’s exhibition
coincides with students’ pedagogical expectations of sound art education. DBAE
is an art teaching methodology that considers a holistic approach to the study
of art including its four disciplines: art history, art production, art
criticism, and aesthetics (Wilson, 1997). Works of art figure prominently in
this methodology asking students and teachers to engage with a work of art in a
variety of ways prompted by the strands of DBAE. For example, students expect to
consider the art historical provenance of an 18th century portrait and also ask
aesthetic questions about the difference between oil paintings and photographs.
Art Education students well-versed in these kinds of pedagogical ideas bring
depth of content and multiple layers of experience to the courses and the
collaboration.
One of the best ways to address the always expanding depth of content and the
forever bifurcating layers of experience within the visual arts is through the
appropriate use of technology. Art education has embraced technology as both an
important art medium and an important forum for considering art virtually.
Digital imagery in the art classroom is a 21st century venue for seeing and
discussing art. New communication technologies and digital media are changing
the practices of making, understanding, and responding to art (Bruce, 2000). The
computer age has created a shift from the textual to the visual. Pedagogy of
visual pragmatism acknowledges the informal curricula of the World Wide Web and
values individualized learning recognizing that the education audience is larger
than K-12 teachers and students (Stafford, 1998). The Electronic Media Interest
Group of the National Art Education Association has as its expressed goal to
promote informed and responsible applications of media and technology in art
education, and over 50 sessions at this year’s national convention of art
educators have a technological focus ranging from using basic technology in the
elementary art classroom to considering the museum as a hypertextual narrative.
Conclusion
In extending the museum/university partnership beyond the IT component to
include Art Education faculty and students, the collaboration grows in depth
through the various layers that the different content areas and viewpoints add
to the partnership. Expansion of new projects and the addition of even more
content area experts and students will also increase the number of beneficiaries
of this endeavor. The partnership has not been without its share of problems and
frustrations, it seems almost inevitable that differences of opinion will result
with this many creative stakeholders involved. But this model for creating a
museum/university partnership has been worthwhile for the museum educators who
are learning to harness the power of the web, for the students who are learning
to create real-world technology projects while working with actual clients, and
for the faculty who are learning to transform their courses into exciting new
learning environments that are more challenging and more educationally
meaningful than ever before.
References
Bruce, B. C. (2000). The work of art in the age of digital reproduction.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 44, 1, p. 66-71.
Robin, B., Jenkins, A., Howze, W., & O’Connor, K. (March, 2001). A
museum-university partnership to develop web-based educational resources.
Paper presented at the 2001 Museums and the Web Conference, Seattle, WA.
[Available online:
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2001/papers/robin/robin.html]
Stafford, B. (1998). Educating digiterati, Art Bulletin, 79, 2, p.
214-216.
Wilson, B. (1997). The quiet evolution: Changing the face of arts education.
J. Paul Getty Publications.