GRANT RECIPIENTS:

Annette Zimmerman Wells, Arts & Philosophy, Wolfson Campus
awells@mdc.edu

Enriched Art Appreciation is an ARH 1000 course that will be taught both in the classroom and at The Miami Art Museum (50/50). This will allow the learners more contact with primary sources and interaction with art professionals. Participants will have the option to become a trained volunteer exhibition tour guide. I hope by integrating ‘real world’ experience with the regular ARH 1000 curriculum, students will have a deeper and more personal understanding and appreciation of the visual arts.

The project description is outlined in the abstract. On Tuesdays the class met on campus, Thursdays were spent at MAM or other downtown art venues throughout the term. The course was initially planned in collaboration with the Education Curator of MAM, with some participation by the Miami-Dade Public Library and Miami-Dade Art in Public Places program.

Though the goals were attained, after the first three weeks of the term, the project had to be modified to accommodate a change in personnel. The Education Curator at MAM had to quit unexpectedly and return home to Iowa to deal with a family emergency. So the project was not as collaborative as planned. Also, since there was no one at the museum to administer it, the Service Learning option was dropped.

With the museum’s approval, I decided to ‘share’ the experience with an interested adjunct faculty member (Elizabeth Alvarez) teaching ARH 1000 in the section after mine. We met initially to set everything up, then weekly to debrief and share ideas, student feedback, materials, and strategies. Our experience with the students was not notably different, so I will refer to both classes as one in most of this report.

The goals for the course were essentially the same as the goals for a regular ARH 1000 course – with the addition of more experiential activity. Many of the assignments were tailored to the exhibitions on view. The assessments of course competencies – quizzes and the Final Art Review remained the same – allowed me to compare performance between the enhanced and non-enhanced sections.

The Final Art Review is a comprehensive set of specific questions to be answered as they apply to a chosen work of art at the Lowe Museum. This is the ‘acid test’ of the students’ visual literacy and visual arts oriented critical thinking skills. For obvious reasons, I required that they perform the review at a venue other than those visited during class.

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There is no Student Feedback service in the Spring Term, so I have no formal statistics with which to evaluate the course. Both Elizabeth and I had 90-100% positive responses for the enhanced version of ARH 1000 in informal feedback administered throughout the course. I had only one exception, a student who came to me early in the course and said that she would prefer a course taught in the classroom only. (!) I helped her switch into another section. The rest of the students were very enthusiastic.

In the beginning, there were some adjustment problems – about half the students in the classes didn’t do as well as expected on the first two quizzes. After requesting to see student notebooks, I came to the conclusion that some students went into a conditioned “field trip mode” during MAM sessions, and especially when we had guest speakers or went elsewhere, such as Government Center, to hear presentations on the Art in Public Places program. Though the students seemed attentive and engaged, they weren’t ‘retaining’ or taking quality notes. The rigorous academic expectations of the students were discussed at the outset of class and explicit in the syllabus, but I believe the novelty of the museum experience ‘tipped logic on its head’ for a number of them. Addressing this problem directly and a session on effective note-taking solved the problem. From then on, students performed as well or better than those in my ‘un-enhanced’ ARH 1000 sections.

The inconvenienced of meeting off-campus was minimized by free MetroMover service. No grumbles about it. There was no difference in attendance rates – I adhere to my attendance policy in all classes and remind students of it throughout the term.

The students, as hoped, began to take ownership of their museum experience – and many brought friends and family to MAM’s public events and openings. A few became members of MAM and others enjoyed the Lowe so much they joined at the student level. A common assessment of the experience was the exclamation, “I never knew we (Miami) had so much art everywhere!”

One unexpected result was that the MAM Docents began attending the classes as well, to enhance the content of their exhibition tours. I was also invited to speak at their monthly meetings. This connection has not continued, as their Education Department is in a transition period.

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The project has already been shared, as mentioned earlier. When the new Education Curator of MAM is ready, I will meet with him and (hopefully) establish a new connection. I hope to make Enhanced Art Appreciation an option for all appropriate sections.