All of the works of art reproduced in this portfolio are in the collection of the Spencer Museum of Art. For information about them, go to the Spencer Museum collection page.
Recently, there has been a shift among the Kress Foundation Department of Art History faculty members to focus on developing undergraduates’ writing and analytic skills as they prepare for future careers or graduate programs. We used the Provost’s initiative as a step toward deciding what we as art historians have in common and want to impart to the students in our discipline. As a diverse department, a discussion of methodologies could go on forever, but a discussion of pedagogical goals allowed us to focus on something concrete and find surprising commonalities.
| ImplementationWe chose to evaluate learning in 500-level art history courses, mostly made up of junior and senior undergraduates, so we could better clarify goals for students nearing the end of the program. Five faculty members submitted samples of student work from any one assignment they had given that semester, and we developed a simple rubric to evaluate this work according to the major skill sets we hoped to see.
| EvaluationThough samples of student work showed our upper-level undergraduates’ ability to describe and analyze pieces of art, we did not see evidence that they are engaging in other scholarly arguments or synthesizing information to form their own arguments. In the future, we will ask faculty to attach a clearer explanation of the specific goals of the assignment they submit, so we can see if students are unable to meet these goals or if they are simply not being asked to do so.
| ReflectionsWe have an archive of work from the past year that we will evaluate, but first the committee will meet to decide how to specifically assess the skills we have not seen applied so far. Imagined fears of failure or judgment make the prospect of changing courses daunting, but we hope faculty recognize the wide variety of options available as we all use a new awareness of pedagogy to improve our courses.
| Summary
Faculty members in the Kress Foundation Department of Art History established a process to examine student work in their 500-level courses, in order to discover how to better develop undergraduates’ writing and analytic skills.
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