Final Synthesis Project

Target Audience
The target audience for this project will be for college students. Audience would be mixed, probably more female than male. My assumption is students would come into college with some studio and art history background from high school and/or some college credit, which leads into skill sets. Students in a general sense would be inexperienced learners coming out of high school or low-knowledge learners, providing for a course that would incorporate well-designed multi-media to present art history time-lines. Learning styles would be taken into account for this web based or hybrid format. Although that said, a freshman level online course may be problematic in terms of self-motivational, self-paced format. We will assume students are high quality, highly motivated art students who have choice this course platform.

Context
To study art history is to gain an academic view of art, and learn the historical concepts of people, their cultural and social context of the time period of which is being studied. Another assumption, this course would be a required course satisfying college credits towards an undergrad degree. This course would be part of a program for art majors, art history majors and art educators.

Learning Objectives
• Develop a good working knowledge of art timelines, the big picture
• Learn terminology and be able to identify art in its historical context
• Develop critical writing and oral discussion skills on the topic of art, leads into being able to identify major artists or thinkers and their disciplines
• Learn historical and cultural contexts of jobs in the art field
• Current critical issues in the art world today, developing critical thinking skills
• Learn historic artistic technical styles used of the day, fundamental concepts

Lesson Outline
My course would be delivered completely online using a course management system like Blackboard. I envision this course incorporating several interactive tools in conjunction with a required text:
• Online scholar lectures or video clips
• Streaming or podcasts to help with vocabulary
• Online “flashcards” which include images that associated with the text readings
• Discussion boards to discuss readings or work with groups projects
• Discussion based guest lecturer
• Google earth connecting works of art to their geographic areas
• Online assessments and study guides
• Online quizzes

Artifact
I considered using a development Blackboard shell, although I thought that might give me an resource that other students would not have. Please see my Google site, which isn’t as complete as maybe a course structure would be in Blackboard.
http://sites.google.com/site/arthistoryfinal/

Justification
I believe that an art history course could work very well delivered online incorporating some of the visual tools suggested above. In a more traditional approach, for example going to class, viewing slides, reading and then being tested is the way I remember my art history class in college. The online resources, for example the online slides give you the ability to study the materials. (Instructors may have their own image collection which could be embedded into the course). A Google Map, Earth is used to connect the art to a location, providing a good understanding of where these pieces were created and by whom. I think the discussion board could come in handy when reading the required text and having group discussions. A podcast or streamed lecture could also be a good chance to then come together for a group discussion. A guest lecture could also be used for such a format with maybe Skype. To measure learning, I believe online quizzes could be used which could include visuals for essay or multiple-choice quiz formats. There were some websites I found while researching to prepare for this project was amazing. I’ve included some of these wonderful resources, a small sampling:
• http://design.flexiblelearning.ent.au/learning_materials/index.htm
• http://www.scholarsresource.com/browse/image_set/785
• http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_stokstad_arthist_3/63/16227/4154352.cw/index.html