Reflections on Teaching "Museum Methods"
Spring Semester, 2002
Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis
In addition to the course materials submitted for review and to be posted on the web, I wanted to make a few comments on the experience of teaching the course. I make these comments both to contextualize the materials and to aid those who might want to mount similar "project-based" courses.
General Description
The premise of the course is a survey of museum practice. It is taught in a combined graduate and undergraduate course and it has no prerequisites. It is required for student in the Undergraduate Museum Studies Certificate program, but is open to anyone. As a result, the students are diverse in almost every aspect — wide range of ages, work and life experience, all different majors, different goals. Some are already working in museums, but are seeking to improve their skills or enter a different aspect of museum work. Some are thinking about a museum career and are still " vocational shopping". Others have no intention of going into museum work, but thought the course sounded like fun and/or it filled a distribution requirement that worked for their schedule.
The course is offered once a year, and each year I design student projects which become the primary vehicle for the student work in the class. The projects are generally exhibit projects (one year I had them create their own museum from scratch), but allied assignments such a condition reports, marketing plans, press releases, educational program plans, budgets, etc. bring in other aspects of museum practice. In the past I have tried individual and team-based projects, and I have also had students do projects that were self-contained in the classroom and projects that involved collaborating with a real organization or institution. Each year has had its advantages and disadvantages.
The basic pedagogical structure of the course is to pair the presentation of the particular topic (an aspect of museum practice such as exhibit development and design, museum education, collections management, museum technology, conservation, membership, marketing, public relations, development, administration, and governance) with an applied in-class exercise and, in many cases, a take-home assignment that is related to the larger exhibit project. Because the course scope is so broad, there is an emphasis on presenting resources for further information or training so that students entering the profession can go to the appropriate source should the particular area become pertinent for the tasks at hand. The in-class exercises are some of the productive and engaging parts of the course. Some of these are role-playing or hands-on exercises in class and others are part of the classes which take place in museums (where students also get to tour facilities and hear from experts in the particular area).
This Semester's Projects
In order to more fully integrate the relevant archaeological principles into what is an interdisciplinary course, I chose a exhibit project that was archaeological in its material and topics. The project was also a combination of individual and team and a combination of class-based and community partnered. It so happened that this year I was curating a temporary exhibit, along with two other faculty members from the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts, on a local African-American archaeology project that my colleague Paul Mullins conducts. The exhibit was to be the temporary component of a larger exhibit being developed by Freetown Village, a small African-American living history museum based in Indianapolis, that was to be part of the new Indiana State Museum — a massive new museum opening in May just on the edge of campus. The combination of circumstances seemed ideal to give the students an opportunity to get "real" experience with hands-on exhibit production by participating in our exhibit while also having the autonomy, economy, and ease of individual exhibit development projects. The project also allowed the community element (or service learning as it is known on our campus), because the students were curating exhibits for the same temporary exhibit space I was working on, and their concepts, research, and designs were to be given to Freetown for whatever use they wanted to make of them in their on-going development of exhibits for the space.
The semester was a rich and rewarding one, but not without its complications. The major complication was that Freetown's three year exhibit development process (working with Ralph Appelbaum and Associates, the same firm designing the rest of the museum exhibits) and their negotiations with the Indiana State Museum came to a crisis point a month before the opening of the museum. The decision was made not to proceed with the partnership and not to open the space until a future date. It is far too complicated a tale to spin here, but the result for the class was that the faculty-curated exhibit was delayed a month and given a different venue within the State Museum. The change meant that the fabrication part of the exhibit happened after the semester was over and students did not get to be involved. (we did a "workshop" with other materials). The students' research and concept/design development was still presented to the Freetown staff (in oral presentations and in documents and drawings) for use in whatever home they identify.
The Seven Principles
The seven archaeological principles were integrated throughout the course, and some were central to the curriculum. Real world problem solving, communication, and social relevance, and diverse interests were the most strongly represented with the combination of exhibit development skills and working with an African-American community organization. Professional ethics and values were strong elements of the teaching, particularly as it related to collections management and governance issues in museums. Stewardship, particularly the care and conservation of collections, was also a major contributing part of the course. To the extent that the curation and public interpretation of objects are ""basic archaeological skills, the course also contributed in that vein, and there was also more general instruction on grant writing, strategic planning, budgeting, and project management — all relevant skills to the administration of archaeological projects
Lessons Learned
In spite of the challenges of the circumstances beyond my control, there were still some wonderful successes, and I think we all learned a great deal. I have tried to highlight a number of particular challenges of the course, and to offer the potential responses for others who may want to try those aspects of the curriculum (and these are also responses I intend to try for next year).
Challenges/solutions:
- Reality-based projects are complicated because reality is complicated. To help students deal with this, I tried to stress both the inevitability and the value of having to deal with unforeseen circumstances since that is what they will be facing in their future careers as well. I also tried to keep communication as clear and as open as possible. Despite these efforts, there was still some confusion about what work the students were expected to complete and by when.
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- have students sign a one-page "assignments and deadlines" sheet signifying that they have read and understand the components of the project and when they are due.
- There were also the usual problems of procrastination, especially since for most of the students this was their first exhibit development project.
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- have more often "check ups" on the progress of the exhibit projects — probably the last ten to fifteen minutes of each class — in which students report briefly on where they are and can get feedback on any problems or concerns
- instead of just an exhibit development timeline (which they completed), make it a checklist with specific due dates
- The work load was difficult for most students to manage.
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- Reduce the number of lecture topics so that there can be more opportunity for student to internalize the material presented
- have team-based projects so that the workload of the exhibit development can be shared (I've done this in the past and it has its own challenges: uneven participation and effort among group participants, challenges of group evaluation, logistics of team meetings especially on a commuting campus
- The "imaginary" part of the project was challenging for some students (i.e. the collection they were working with was not "real" and the space they were designing for is not yet finished, and also, the exhibit itself would not necessarily be realized
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- Have "real" exhibit projects (although this presents the challenge of finding appropriate community partners for mounting exhibits and appropriate collections to work with. It also requires raising funds, albeit modest, for the photos, and fabrication costs.)
- There was a range of experience and skills in the group that made it hard to find a pace that worked for everyone.
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- Solutions are limited on this one because enrollment pressures require combining undergraduate and graduate students, and there is concern that introducing pre-requisites will mean the course will not fill. One answer may be to offer two "tracks," but then the equity of evaluating and grading comes in to play. Honors options only work for the few students who are on an honors track.