Tag Archives: online learning

How can museums & schools continue their relationship during & after COVID-19?

April 27, 2020 Mike Murawski 17 Comments

Written by Stephanie Downey

My career began at the intersection of museums and schools, and it will always be at the heart of why I do what I do. I discovered museum education while working as a program evaluator for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). I was doing that work because of my interest in equitable public education but discovered the wonders of object-based learning while evaluating a partnership between DCPS and the Smithsonian. Through that evaluation, I found connections among my personal and professional experiences and interests that I didn’t even know existed before. That project more than 20 years ago was a critical turning point that changed the course of my career and led me to museum evaluation. To this day, even though my interests in museums has grown beyond object-based learning, and my work ranges from exhibition evaluation to audience research, it is the work focused on museum school programs that lights me up.

The title of this post is a question that slowly came into focus for me in the last couple of weeks and sent me into a premature grieving for something I worry may never be the same again. In the middle of March, we watched museums close and school districts across the country send students home. I was alarmed but assumed, like most of us, the closures would be a relatively temporary situation. Yet as the pandemic has unfolded, it has become more and more clear that things in our country will not go back to the way they were before the virus, certainly not before a vaccine is widely available.

Through word-of-mouth, I’ve heard that school programs and field trips are very likely off the table for the rest of the 2020. And two weeks ago, Hyperallergic published this news—“MOMA Terminates All Museum Educator Contracts.” We learned that the Museum of Modern Art told museum educators in an email “it will be months, if not years, before we anticipate returning to budget and operations levels to require educator services.” Their projection of “months, if not years,” triggered a great deal of anxiety in me and among many others on social media.

As upsetting as it was to read those words from MoMA, I think most of us now realize there is not going to be a quick end to this. A recent article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic quoted Devi Sridhar, a public-health expert at the University of Edinburgh:

“Everyone wants to know when this will end. That’s not the right question. The right question is: How do we continue?”

Following from this expert’s words, the question for me isn’t “will museums keep working with schools during this time?” but instead, “how do museums continue working with schools throughout and beyond the pandemic?”

I believe strongly in the power of museum visits for school children, some of whom may never have been to a museum otherwise. There is something magical for students about entering a museum space surrounded by authentic artworks, objects, or artifacts they cannot see anywhere else. But it’s not just me and my bias for these kinds of programs. Over the years, numerous evaluation and research studies have examined the impact of museum programs on school children, and results show again and again that museum programs make a positive difference in the lives of students. Most recently, two large research studies—a national study of single-visit field trips to art museums by the National Art Education Association and the Association of Art Museum Directors in 2018 and study of field trips at Crystal Bridges in 2012—both showed that a visit to an art museum has a measurable effect on students’ creativity, empathy, and to some extent, critical thinking.

But, back to the “how” question. While it is preferable for students to engage with museums in museums, I advocate for museums not to wait the many months or years it may take for things to go back to “normal,” but instead to prioritize finding alternative ways to keep schools engaged with museums during this time.

I know many museum educators are already starting to do this, but I suspect it isn’t easy. While distance learning exists in museum education, it is certainly not the norm and presents a potentially steep learning curve for both museum educators and classroom teachers. Moreover, even when students go back to the classroom, schools may operate differently and be up against new challenges. The answer to this question of “how” may require a re-imagining of the relationship between museums and schools.

I wish I had the answers, but for now, I can only emphasize that, as a researcher and evaluator, I know the data tells us it would be a huge loss not to put resources toward sustaining and building museum-school relationships—first virtually, and eventually back onsite. I’m sure many of you have already started doing that reimagining. I would love to hear about it.

Featured Image: Students in front of Damian Aquiles’ Infinite Time, Infinite Memory, Infinite Destiny, 2003-2005 at the Orlando Museum of Art. Photo by Amanda Krantz, managing director at RK&A.

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About the Author

STEPHANIE DOWNEY: Stephanie brings more than two decades of research and evaluation experience to her position as owner and director of RK&A, a museum consulting firm. She takes pleasure in working closely with museums and other informal learning organizations to help them make a difference in the lives of their audiences. Stephanie has undergraduate and graduate degrees in anthropology and ultimately is driven by her lifelong interest in how humans behave and make meaning. Prior to joining RK&A in 1999, she conducted educational research and program evaluation in public schools. Stephanie serves as treasurer on the board of the Museum Education Roundtable, frequently presents at professional association conferences like the American Alliance of Museums and the National Art Education Association, and regularly peer reviews manuscripts for the Journal of Museum Education and Curator. When not working, you can find Stephanie in the kitchen trying new recipes, cheering on her children in their various activities, and hiking trails along the Hudson River.

Museum Tech, Spotlight on Practice

We Flipped Our Museum — Here’s What We Learned

June 5, 2015 Mike Murawski 3 Comments

Written by Emily Kotecki, Distance Learning Educator, North Carolina Museum of Art.

At the North Carolina Museum of Art, we are creating a new model to activate the learning experience before, during and after a visit to the NCMA. Expanding on the online courses we’ve developed and offered for the last five years, we spent the last year piloting a new approach to distance learning. We were inspired by the educational trends of blended learning, the flipped classroom and choice-based art education. These trends aim to personalize the learning experience by providing didactic instruction (like watching videos and reading articles) at home and then have opportunities to apply new knowledge in class so the experience is collaborative and engaging; we wanted to similarly deepen and activate the museum learning experience, so we “flipped” the museum.

This spring, our Flipped Museum pilot program was called “Artists in Process.” Sixteen classes from different cities across North Carolina were paired together online to research, explore, and reflect on the artistic process. We developed an online learning platform with a company in North Carolina to support social interaction and choice-based learning. Students chose one of three concepts and numerous artists they wanted to explore while developing their own work of art and sharing their progress online with each other.

We took away four lessons from this experience and we expect to continue to learn more as we revise the Flipped Museum model.

#1 Students want to make meaningful connections to each other, not just the museum

The 16 classes were organized into pairs based on the level of the art class, geographical location and the teacher’s familiarity with blended learning and choice-based art education. Students from each pair of classes could log in to their specific group in the platform to share progress on their projects, questions and ideas, as well as ‘like’ and ‘comment’ on each other’s work. The pairs of classes also met up at the NCMA for the museum visit.

While we wanted to prepare students to come to the museum and engage with art, students were equally, if not more excited about connecting with and talking to other teens from across the state.

Sometimes we assume that because teens like sharing and communicating online via social media, they’ll automatically be motivated to share with each other. But teens are both excited and intimidated by new experiences. In future programs we will focus on developing specific activities and assignments that build a community between teens online so they are not just ready for the museum, but ready to meet and interact with each other. We would also encourage classes to meet via video conferencing or Google Hangouts before meeting at the museum. Social interaction is the foundation for building a strong distance learning program and if teens feel uncomfortable with each other, it can hinder the entire experience.

Students from Bryson City and Chapel Hill participate in an ice breaker before starting the museum visit.

#2 Too much flexibility can be overwhelming

We developed this curriculum to allow for what we hoped would be maximum flexibility for students and teachers. We provided the course content and platform as well as some classroom activity ideas at different points in the course; students had choice over the direction of their project, and we left most of the lesson planning and timeline to the teachers.

Each component of the Flipped Museum aimed to put the learning in the control of the learner – whether that was teacher planning with their partner or students choosing the direction of their project. Students chose one of three concepts and numerous artists they wanted to research; which media they wanted to use; which works of art to include in a virtual exhibition; and ultimately the development and completion of their final project.

What we heard is that teachers wanted more guidance/support in how to guide students. Even though the course provided some activity ideas, teachers wanted more specific ways to encourage online interactions, more specific assignments and discussion prompts, suggested timelines, etc.

In future revisions we’ll work to strike a balance between being too structured and too unstructured, while also being able to scale and sustain the program as it grows from 16 classes to 32 and beyond.

#3 The Museum Visit

In the middle of the course, the class pairs met up at the NCMA for a self-guided experience where they broke into small groups based on the concept they selected (with students from both classes) and curated a virtual exhibition using the social media platform of their choice. Members from the NCMA teen programs staff would meet the classes at the beginning and end of their experience to welcome them to the NCMA and then reflect on their visit.

Distance and digital learning has immense power to transcend the physical walls of our museum and reach new audiences. But over and over again, our evaluations show that visiting the NCMA and seeing the objects in person is the highlight of this experience. Students also looked forward to meeting each other and talking about art with each other. As alluded to earlier, we’d provide more structure to scaffold learning to encourage both collaboration between students and individual time for students to make their own connections. While not all distance learning programs have to have an onsite component, for the Flipped Museum model, an onsite visit completes the experience.

Students from Fairmont High School used Instagram to curate their exhibition during the museum visit.

#4 Know where and how students access online content

North Carolina is 22 % rural. Only 17% of “North Carolina households have fixed Internet connections at a speed the FCC deems the “minimum required to engage in modern life.”’ In a time when museums are developing advanced technologies like user-directed robots, we assume students have access to computers and reliable Internet at home, when in fact our students primarily accessed the online course at school or on mobile devices. We are working with our developers to enhance our platform so that it is mobile friendly and not a source of frustration. Furthermore, the mobile platform should equally support the sort of social and active learning experience in our programs.

In Conclusion…

Dialogue is the foundation for helping students meet our learning outcomes. We aim to create a safe and welcoming space for teens to share, interact and converse with each other online and onsite. In the coming months, we’ll be revising Artists in Process and reflecting on the Flipped Museum model to incorporate guided social learning and dialogue consistently and deliberately throughout the experience.

It seems that more and more museums are taking thoughtful risks as they pioneer new ways to connect with audiences through technology. Mobile apps, digitizing collections, social media, media labs, robots, online learning – these technologies can deepen learning experiences for visitors while also developing transformative relationships with the museum.

Learn more

You can read more about our Flipped Museum model and other distance learning initiatives in museums by checking out the Summer 2015 issue of the Journal of Museum Education focusing on “Online Learning and Museums.”

Museum Tech, Teens in Museums

Museums and Online Learning: A Student’s Perspective

February 12, 2015 Mike Murawski 5 Comments

Reposted from Center for Future of Museums (CFM) Blog, February 12, 2015

Note from Elizabeth Merritt: Last December I visited Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, to brainstorm with their staff about museums and distance education. As Michael Edson has pointed out time and again, if museums are to scale up their impact and play a significant role in education in the U.S., they need to exploit the reach of the web. During my time there, Crystal Bridges shared a new initiative they were about to launch: an online course for high school students to take for credit towards graduation. Kirsten Peterson, project director at the educational nonprofit EDC contracted to help develop the project, gave us a brief tour of the course in its pilot form. Anne Kraybill, Crystal Bridges’ distance learning project manager, put me in touch with one of the students who tested the course prototype in 2014. Today’s guest post is by Maddy Windel, a freshman enrolled in a rural public high school, who shares her experience with this foray into online art education.

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Written by Maddy Windel

In October of 2014, I was given the opportunity to participate in the pilot of Museum Mash-Up, an online course being developed by Crystal Bridges. My English teacher/mother, Kenya Windel, heard about this opportunity through the ARTeacher Fellowship, an initiative that both she and my father have been a part of over the last few years.

Ms. Windel volunteered me for the pilot because she knows I love learning about art in general: What drives the artist? Why did they create this piece specifically? Was it inspired by a big event in the artist’s life? I also love making art. Museum Mash-Up combined all of these interests. I had never taken an online course, but I really wanted to know what one was like (in Arkansas, an online course credit is necessary for all graduates, and I wanted to feel more prepared). I didn’t know that much about the course when I was volunteered. I knew it was about art that could be found at the Crystal Bridges museum—art that has piqued my interest every time I have visited the museum—but that was about it.

The pilot started with an immediate communication push. It was a major part of the course, which was a relief to me because I am from an incredibly small school with a group of close-knit students and faculty. I had never had to deal with not knowing or talking to my teachers before, and I didn’t know what it would be like. The amount of communication I received from the course made this transition much easier. In fact, the course had almost the same level of communication as art courses I’ve taken in the classroom. It also offered much more on the history of the art, and the art projects we completed were a bit more open than those in the classroom. The prompts provided the students with the basics–what the art should be about or reflect on–and let us go from there.

The course centered on examining, interpreting, and discussing art and the process of curating art (how it’s done, who does it, why they do it, doing it oneself). There were also sessions dedicated to making art, whether through sketching, photography, cartooning, or other means, depending on the session and each student’s personal preferences.

Learning deeply about the art and what led to its creation was particularly interesting for me. While I have always enjoyed looking at artwork, Crystal Bridges’ course showed me just how deeply I could go into studying and interpreting art. I developed my knowledge on the fact that the creation of a specific piece of artwork hinged on hundreds of factors that made it what it was. Take, for instance, my favorite pilot session, on the artwork of Andy Warhol and George Tooker. From an unenlightened outsider’s perspective, I could analyze their work in whatever way I chose, but when I dug deeper, I discovered that Warhol insisted he just did art for fun or money, and Tooker was influenced by his neighborhood. I discovered how the artists were raised, how they became interested in art, and how their friendships and their relationships influenced them. All of these factors make the art more intriguing, and I find there is more to look for, or not to look for, a story for each piece.

Analyzing this art online also gave me a taste of what the originals may really be like, both physically and emotionally. No digital image of a piece of art compares to what it looks like face-to-face. While some museums may fear that online exposure may keep people away, I believe it does the opposite. Looking at a piece, absorbing it, may be done to a limited extent on a computer, but I cannot feel the presence of the work–the size, the stature, the beauty—online like I can in person. Online art does serve as a good alternative to those who do not have the opportunity to view the artwork in person due to distance, money, or other reasons, and online sharing gives museums an entirely new method of attracting audiences who might not visit the museum otherwise. Pictures and examples of artwork can help make a mark on a new generation of people who live in this visual age. Images can be of much more help to them than a written description.

Early 19th Century Gallery at Crystal Bridges — Early 19th Century Gallery at
Crystal Bridges

I see the Crystal Bridges’ course as a wonderful opportunity to help students understand and engage with art and with other students who share an interest in it. The course allows students to communicate, work with technology that may be new to them, and enjoy, curate, and make art while being guided by their instructors, but not so rigidly that they don’t get to create their own steps along the way. A few parts of the course were difficult for me personally (I’m not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to technology), but eventually all my difficulties were resolved. The pilot was a wonderful experience. It was one I would love to repeat, and I’ve begun to do just that by taking the course for credit this semester. It’s thrilling to be able to look back and acknowledge, even early on, a conscious change in understanding from taking a course like this, and I hope that feeling is one many students can experience in the future through online interactions and in-person visits to museums such as Crystal Bridges that offer these educational opportunities.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is currently offering the course through Virtual Arkansas for Arkansas public school students. Plans are underway to distribute the course to teachers in any state or country.

Learn more by reading a recent blog post by Anne Kraybill, “Up Close: Distance Learning and Art Museums.”

Museum Tech, Spotlight on Practice

Up Close: Distance Learning & Art Museums

February 10, 2015 Mike Murawski 5 Comments

By Anne Kraybill, Distance Learning Project Manager, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Check out Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Distance Learning website, which includes research and resources made available to support your distance learning initiatives.

The term “distance learning” can seem antithetical to art museums that espouse the power of an authentic experience with an object. As I worked to develop a distance learning initiative at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, I struggled to reconcile the rationale for such a program. After all, Crystal Bridges has a robust and well-funded school visits program that brings students from all over the region. Why would I want to create a program that did not take place within our walls?

First, let me provide a little context. Crystal Bridges decided to pursue a distance learning initiative shortly after the field trip study conducted by Jay Greene, Brian Kisida, and Dan Bowen at the University of Arkansas. The findings revealed that student gains from a one-time fieldtrip in a variety of outcomes were two to three times higher for students in rural locations. With these findings in mind, we decided to create a distance learning program that would reach more students overall, but particularly students in these rural schools.

Where to Start?

We began with some formative research to determine what path we might take. In July 2013, we hosted a Distance Learning Summit, which brought together more than 40 art museums and arts organizations to better understand the current landscape and approaches to distance learning, as well as envision the future of how art museums might further leverage distance learning. Case study presentations included traditional approaches such as synchronous video conferences—often branded as “virtual fieldtrips”—that connected classrooms remotely, to blended approaches that utilized Learning Management Systems (LMS) before and after an onsite program, to asynchronous approaches such as a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that engage thousands of learners at one time.

While all of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages to consider, the model that resonated with our particular situation was presented by Michelle Harrell and Emily Kotecki from the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA). In an effort to increase their reach to teens, they partnered with North Carolina Virtual Public School to develop online courses in the visual arts for high school students throughout the state of North Carolina. This model resonated for a few reasons. First, in the state of Arkansas we have the Digital Learning Act that requires all high school students to take an asynchronous online course for graduation, so this approach was a natural fit. Second, the notion of having such a direct role in a student’s school career was appealing and provided a level of accountability not found in most art museum/school partnerships. Following the trail Michelle and Emily had blazed, Crystal Bridges set out to develop a for-credit online course with the aim of deeply connecting high school students to art history, American history, and museum studies.

Course Development

After an RFP process, we selected Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) as the development partner. Over the course of a year, a cross disciplinary team of museum educators, instructional designers, subject-matter experts, graphic designers, and programmers, developed Museum Mash Up: American Identity through the Arts. Rather than progress through the artworks chronologically, the course begins with contemporary art. The guiding questions ask students “How did we get here? And how have artists shaped and reflected upon American identity?” Crystal Bridges partnered with Virtual Arkansas to offer and deliver the course. Like North Carolina Virtual, Virtual Arkansas is a supplementary provider of online courses that any public school student in the state can take. EDC and Crystal Bridges trained a few online arts instructors from Virtual Arkansas with volunteer students to test the activities and get formative feedback from both instructors and students.

The course has now launched through Virtual Arkansas with a pilot group of about 40 students from all over the state, including the community of Deer, population 680; the community of Hugh, population 1,441; and the community of Star City, population 2,248. Students typically log onto the course during one of their class periods at school. Though the course is asynchronous, students are paced in weekly units and use tools to engage in online discussion. This was one of the most important elements for the design of this course. While there are many valuable websites and other online resources to learn about the arts, we wanted to be sure that the act of “collaborative meaning-making” was not lost. Similar to an onsite program, students begin their lesson by looking at the work of art and sharing their initial observations and interpretations using VoiceThread™. This tool allows for a conversation in the cloud using text, video, or audio and is an excellent platform for students to build on one another’s ideas. Following their initial observations in VoiceThread™, the students read about the art and engage with multi-media materials to ascertain some context about the art, artist, and historical time period. They then participate in another, more in-depth discussion about their new and evolving interpretations.

Simultaneously, students are also working on two major capstone projects. The first project is a curated exhibition about their own individual identity using the tool Kapsul™ somewhat similar to a Pinterest board. Through this project, along with videos by curators, designers, and educators, they learn about the curatorial, design, and interpretive process necessary to curate an exhibition. These skills are used in their final project: a virtual exhibition curated by each student using the artworks they learned about during the semester, and research new works in the Crystal Bridges collection. This amazing virtual rendering of the Twentieth-Century Art Gallery at Crystal Bridges was created by David Charles Frederick from Tesseract Studios at the University of Arkansas using Unity™, an immersive game engine that includes rich textures and allows the students to explore the space as if on foot. The rendering is completely accurate to the specifications from the museum blueprints and provides learners with an immersive experience in which they arrange paintings they have researched on the walls, write the labels and interpretation, develop the graphic identity of their exhibition, and most importantly, learn that they can make meaning and conversations between paintings and across history.

Challenges

Along the way, there were many challenges to overcome and there will be many more as we continue to pilot the course. Content for all of the artwork had to be generated requiring a mass amount of writing. Image rights had to be procured, videos needed to be produced, and external content from primary and secondary sources had to be found. One of the most challenging hurdles we had to overcome was the course approval process with the Arkansas Department of Education. Because this was not a standard course, the state had to approve it under a standards framework. After much work and standards alignment, we were able to obtain course approval for students to receive .5 credit hours in fine arts. The course now satisfies two requirements all high school students must meet for graduation; a .5 credit hour in fine arts, and at least one course taken online.

Beyond the bureaucratic and logistical challenges we continue to encounter and amend, there are, not surprisingly, some challenges in working with high school students. There are a wide range of motivations, with some students passionately interested in learning art and history, and others who are more ambivalent about visual arts and museums. This results in a wide range of responses in the discussions. For instance, students were asked to look at and respond to George Tooker’s, The Ward in VoiceThread™. Their only prompt was “What do you notice and what do you wonder?”

Student One: it looks like there is a bunch sick people laying (sic) in hospital. like it looks like the ones already laying down are dead.

Student Two: George Tooker’s “The Ward” is a very interesting piece that’s (sic) shows to have many subliminal messages. In the background there are many American flags hanging on the wall in a much brighter contrast to the rest of the painting. I recognize this as a representation of patriotism and American pride. Going on to the next part of the painting, the elderly people lined up in rows on beds. There isn’t much to identify the various elderly by- except as Madeliene said, they have little to no hair- so they are most likely men. The elderly people are lined up on these beds- which do not appear to be comfortable by their stiff appearance. It seems that these people are just existing, not really being anything other than a case number or a medical condition. I believe that this represents the wounded soldiers that have returned from the various wars. When the soldiers came back from the war wounded this is how they were treated oftentimes, in a lifeless building or tent, not having anything to do or participate in, often making them become depressed which slowed or stopped the healing process completely. When Tooker made this painting I wonder why he depicted the wounded soldiers scene as so dreary and negative when he could have followed in the footsteps of others and sugar coat it to pacify the public and make it seem appealing enough. For Tooker’s honesty in this painting I admire him greatly. He really got his point across that the war wasn’t pleasant and it wasn’t pleasant afterwards either, because these memories still haunt you…

In addition, for many students this is the first time they have taken an online course, so they need support in learning the tools plus very well-defined and articulated expectations of the level and quality of work the course requires. Everyone is making significant progress. For example, early responses from all but a few students were rarely justified, but just five weeks in, student are better articulating their interpretations with more detail and inference, and justifying their claims with evidence.

Overall, the benefits far outweigh the challenges. There is a level of anonymity for each student that is freeing. They are not burdened by labels that they might encounter in their physical school. They are also able to contribute their ideas without ridicule. The way in which they engage with works of art and learn about the works is multi-model. And they are connecting with Crystal Bridges and the collection in a way that a one-time fieldtrip could never afford. In addition, Crystal Bridges is providing a unique course-offering to the state that expands access to quality arts education.

Next Steps

Crystal Bridges has a large agenda as it continues to expand upon this program. Next steps include:

Conduct an observational study of the current section of Museum Mash Up to analyze instructional design and quality, and measure student perceptions. Follow the observational study with a rigorous, experimental design to measure student outcomes including critical thinking and writing.
Develop an online teacher professional-development program that certifies teachers in any state to teach the course;
Create a second course offering that is grounded in studio and design practice;
Host an online professional learning community where teachers can receive support in teaching the online course.
Host a second Distance Learning Summit (details forthcoming this summer).

Phew!

Final Thoughts

This project has been one of the scariest and most fulfilling in my career. The students are not the only ones who have a stake in the course; we as a museum cannot fail our obligation to them. I could not have conceived of it without the ground-breaking work by Michelle and Emily at NCMA. I also have to thank the talented and dedicated Crystal Bridges museum educators, Emily Rodriguez and Donna Hutchinson, for all their help in developing, researching, and designing the course outline, as well as EDCs project manager, Kirsten Peterson, for her unwavering dedication and belief in this project, and Diana Garrison, teacher extraordinaire at Virtual Arkansas.

Read about the Distance Learning Project from the perspective of a participating student, “Museums and Online Learning: A Student’s Perspective.”

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About the Author

ANNE KRAYBILL: Distance Learning Project Manager at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, where she is developing online accredited courses for high school students and online professional development for teachers. In her previous position as the school and community programs manager at Crystal Bridges, she developed and implemented all of the Museum’s programming related to K-12 students, teachers and pre-services teacher as well as community groups. She has held positions at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Norton Museum of Art , the Center for Creative Education, and the Vero Beach Museum of Art. Prior to joining Crystal Bridges, she worked as the Art School Director at the Durham Art Council, managing visual and performing arts classes for over 3,000 youth and adult students annually. Anne has a B.F.A. in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art, a M.A. in Museum Education from The University of the Arts, and a M.S. in Instructional Technology from East Carolina University. She is currently a Doctoral Academy Fellow in Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. Anne’s postings on this site are her own and don’t necessarily represent the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

Field Notes, Spotlight on Practice, Teaching Tools

Why Museums Can Excel in Online Learning

May 4, 2013 Emily 6 Comments

“The recent development of MOOCs (massive open online courses) can provide museums with valuable possibilities for education, community outreach and multi-disciplinary collaboration.”

The quote above by David Greenfield, a doctoral candidate in Learning Technologies at Pepperdine University, was part of a paper entitled “MOOCs, Museums, and Schools: Natural Partners and Processes for Learning” presented at the recent Museums & the Web Conference in Portland theorizing about the potential of partnerships with schools and community members in developing online museum courses. Museums are already starting to realize those possibilities in the area of online courses.

The Museum of Modern Art, the Tate and my own North Carolina Museum of Art are currently offering extended online courses similar to MOOCs. These courses are different from each other in content, audience, and style, yet they are all pioneering engagement with local, national, and global audiences through objects in their specific collections. Their experiences offer important lessons to future museum MOOC-makers.

Why Museums Can Excel Online

MoMA Educator Deborah Howes interviewing MoMA Conservator Glen Wharton in front of 'Untitled,' 1993 by Nam June Paik. Photo used with permission (c) MoMA 2013. — MoMA educator Deborah Howes filming a segment for MoMA Online Courses in front of a Nam June Paik piece.

Why are museums uniquely suited to be leaders in this field? For one, museum education is predicated on informal, constructivist learning approaches which encourage the learner to control their learning. Similarly, online courses allow students to go through the content at their own pace, constructing their own meaning from discussion forums, assignments and projects. Deborah Howes, Director of Digital Learning at MoMA, said, the pairing of museum education and online learning is, “conceptually, very much aligned.” She continues:

“Museum education teaching is based on the curiosity of people who come from all different walks of life and have any number of questions about what excites them. Teaching online, we offer different kinds of learning experiences–videos of behind the scenes tours, slide shows of art works, DIY experiments–and students explore this variety according to their own interests to create meaning.”

Second, museum learning is often social. Visitors come in groups, field trips, or with families to share the experience of looking at and discussing objects. Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Moodle, and Haiku allow for similar discussions and facilitate group collaboration.

At the North Carolina Museum of Art, students who might live hundreds of miles away can work together on a video project and post art projects to receive peer feedback. MoMA and Tate also encourage this type of online community through discussion boards. MoMA online course alumni have created their own Facebook groups to extend the learning community, some of which are in their third year of operation

MOOCs Multiply Museum Outreach

Elizabeth Moore, an NCVPS Photography student stands with her work in an exhibition in NCMA's education gallery. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of Art. — Elizabeth Moore, an NCVPS Photography student stands with her work in an exhibition in NCMA’s education gallery. Courtesy North Carolina Museum of Art.

Online learning can offer virtual windows to the extensive, beautiful, and awe-inspiring collections that museums have to offer. The NCMA is located in the middle of North Carolina, a state 560 miles (900 km) long. The virtual courses offer both synchronous and asynchronous components. Each week the instructor is in charge of opening the module (or unit) and hosting one live class with students. Otherwise, students go through that module and complete assignments at their own pace. Modules can include articles, assignments, discussion forums vocabulary wiki’s and/or multimedia. Over half of our online high school students live hours away and may never have even heard of their state art museum. Online, they can take our courses, be exposed to art spanning 5,000 years of all mediums, including sculpture, photography, paintings, and mixed media.

Once students take online classes at NCMA, we want to find ways to bring them to the brick-and-mortar building. To do that, we host exhibitions that highlight work from our online courses, which encourages students to visit the NCMA in person (see photo). We’ve also offered field trips and buses to our annual teen event.

The Tate’s reach stretches nationally and even globally. Rosie Cardiff, e-Learning editor at Tate, found that 31% of her students based outside the United Kingdom, with just under 10% living in Australia and New Zealand. Similarly, MoMA has both a national and international reach. A woman from rural Canada who took one of the online courses thanked Howes for the opportunity to interact with a global community of contemporary art lovers that she could not find locally. “A museum can provide that type of community and support,” Howes says.

Financing Remains a Challenge

Both the MoMA and NCMA courses started because of grants from Volkswagen and Wells Fargo Foundation, respectively. Both of these grants end soon, and both institutions are seeking future funding for the growth and expansion of the courses. MoMA charges $150–200 for their self-guided course and $200–350 for their instructor-led courses. Those fees will help sustain the program, whether or not they receive a future grant. The NCMA, on the other hand, does not charge for their courses, instead, high school students receive school credit. While we encourage students to visit the NCMA to see their exhibition or attend a field trip, we don’t have additional funds to cover their travel.

In Tate’s case, Rosie Cardiff explained that “initial funding for developing the courses came from the Tate Online core budget.” Tate charges £20 ($31) for unlimited course access. Cardiff says the courses “have now paid for themselves and cover costs of ongoing maintenance and copyright fees, etc., but they don’t generate much in the way of profit.” When asked what advice she would give to future museums or institutions looking to invest in developing online courses, Cardiff advised thinking “carefully about the business model for the online courses if you are planning to use them to generate revenue. Courses can be costly to produce and you need to think about ongoing maintenance costs, especially if the courses are tutored.”

Cardiff and her team presented an evaluation of their courses and their changing business model at Museums & the Web 2012.

An inside look at the Tate online courses. Courtesy Tate Museum.

Grounded in Specific Collections

As museums create online courses, resources, or distant learning programs, Howes advises they “think creatively about the unique qualities of their collection and what that could offer to a global audience. Anyone can do a course on modern art if they have a collection, but how do they offer a unique look on this topic?”

Similarly, the Tate and NCMA courses offer visitors opportunities to engage with and respond to art specific to their collections. The NCMA courses use art in the permanent collection as catalysts for learning about topics such as game design, advertising, fashion, photography and videography. The multimedia we provide include videos of art in the galleries, interviews with museum staff or local, North Carolina experts in that particular field. All three museums offer opportunities to watch video interviews with artists, curators, or experts, as well as demonstrations of artist technique and process.

Full Speed to the Future

David Greenfield believes that when it comes to museums and online learning, “we’re in the evolutionary stages of what’s going on.” As pioneers of a new educational format, museums join with for-profit companies like 2U and Coursera in shaping a field that is rapidly changing. In fact, as of May 1, 2013, MoMA, along with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, has announced a new partnership offering professional development MOOCs for K-12 teachers.

“Museums”, says MoMA’s Deborah Howes, “have a chance to rewrite art history in a way that is relevant to where they are.” MoMA, Tate, and NCMA are already doing just that.

ONLINE COURSE DETAILS:

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Courses Online

Audience: lifelong learners, general public
Cost: varies from $150-350
Length: 5-10 weeks
Course topics (selected): From Pigment to Pixel: Color in Modern and Contemporary Art, Experimenting with Collage, Modern Art 1880-1945, Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting, etc.
Instruction: Self-guided and instructor-led options

North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) Virtual Courses

Audience: North Carolina public high school students
Cost: Free; only available to high school students for credit
Length: semester
Course topics: Videography, game design, fashion, advertising, photography
Instruction: Instructor-led

Tate Online Courses

Audience: lifelong learners, general public
Cost: £20
Length: 6 units per course, self-guided
Course topics: Artists’ Techniques & Methods, Introduction to Drawing Techniques
Instruction: Self-guided

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

EMILY KOTECKI: Associate Coordinator of Teen and College Programs at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Emily creates online and onsite programming for these audiences, including art competitions, arts councils, and developing online courses. Prior to museums, Emily worked at The Washington Post as a multimedia politics producer covering the 2008 presidential campaign. She received her received her Master of Arts in Teaching from The George Washington University and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from American University. Follow her on Twitter @EmilyKotecki or visit www.emilykotecki.com. Emily’s postings on this site are her own and do not necessarily represent the North Carolina Museum of Art’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

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