How to Best Maximize Teacher Usage of Online Art Museum Curriculum Materials
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Authors
Corvin, Valerie
Issue Date
2007
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
The goal of this study was to recommend best practices for creating useful art museum online lesson plans that empower teachers to integrate visual arts education into their classroom teaching. These recommendations should be specifically useful to SFMOMA, as well as the field at large.
This report is explored through six chapters. The first describes the three components of Methodology conducted in this study: a review of the literature on museum education, museum curriculum, and the development and educational usage of the Internet; professional interviews with 14 art museums around the nation; and a case study with the SFMOMA curriculum site ArtThink. The study was conducted with middle and high school teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area to determine the usability of the teacher Web site. The second chapter explains the Limitations of the Methodology. This section describes the confines of this study regarding the time frame, sample size, and scope of the research. It also details the components not included in this study, such as the technology and graphic elements of Web sites.
The next chapter is a Description of the Product most suited to disseminate the results of this master's project. This section outlines a publishable 3,000-word article, titled "Maximizing Teacher Use of Online Art Museum Curriculum Materials" targeted to museum educators and interactive educational technology specialists.
The fourth chapter, Literature Review, presents a historical context on the art museum education profession, and the development of art museum educational Web sites. The review exp-lores the evolution of the educational role of museums, theories and practices of museum curriculum, and museums' recent journey into the uncharted waters of online museum educational resources.
The fifth chapter, Findings, is presented in two main sections. The first section reports on the telephone interviews I conducted with 14 museum educators from a sampling of U.S. metropolitan art museums in regards to online lesson plans. Results review the utilization of teacher advisory groups, elements typically included in lesson plans, strategies used for evaluation, Web site search capabilities, and marketing tools.
Secondly, the data is described from the teacher surveys conducted with the SFMOMA online curriculum site ArtThink. These surveys were administered (both online and in person) to 12 middle school and high school San Francisco Bay Area teachers to evaluate its usability as a teacher resource. Results focus on what aspects of Art Think teachers most and least value, the ease of navigation around the Web site, if teachers would recommend the lesson activities to fellow peers, and what other online curriculum resources do teachers find most helpful.
The report's final chapter, Conclusions and Recommendations, highlights the SFMOMA case study. This section also compares the current practices of the 14 sampled art museums for creating, testing and evaluating online curriculum materials. In this chapter, a total of four conclusions and seven recommendations are presented regarding the utilization of teacher advisory groups, user testing and evaluation practices, and marketing tools. The section's concluding final thoughts describe two new and developing ways to market online teacher resources that were mentioned in workshops I attended at both 2007 American Association of Museums and Museums and the Web conferences. It is my hope in presenting this information that art museums will continue to create online curriculum materials that benefit and enrich student learning and that teachers will access and use these visual art education resources in classroom teaching.