Website products:
During previous semesters, the creativity involved in the creation of the webpages was quite astounding. Some teams had solicited the help of friends, who were not enrolled in the class, to provide their expertise with drawing, creating music, and/or video samples. Additionally, the webpages were for the most part well researched and designed, although many technical details were overlooked or inconsistent across the class pages. Students appeared invested in the quality of the final project—some students even corrected small mistakes after final exams!
Student performance during the Fall 2006 semester was surprisingly markedly poorer than during previous semesters. Except for one team, student groups consistently handed work in late and really did not engage in serious research until it was too late to create substantial documents. This lack of enthusiasm is clearly discernable in their websites. Although the Fall 2006 websites were virtually free of technical errors, they were less interesting visually compared to websites from previous semesters.
During earlier semesters students went out of their way to exploit the available technology to its fullest, and some teams created fun profiles of the team members that clearly reflected the students’ pride in their work. During the Fall 2006 semester only one team worked to achieve that same high level of performance.
Still, numerous students expressed that they enjoyed the complexity of the tasks involved with making the web page. They also expressed appreciation for the degree to which they were exposed to all phases of the profession of art history.
The website as a team project
On a positive note, students enjoyed working together. All of them benefited tremendously from other students’ scrutiny of their written contributions. Many students made new friends and, in general, students reported that they loved the dynamics of the classroom. Students reported that getting to know their team members helped them feel more secure in the classroom environment and that this created a livelier atmosphere than in most classrooms. One anecdotal measure of success in the class was the fact that students always talked to each other before and after class (compared to the silence among students in other courses!). In fact, I often found it difficult to get the students to settle down at the beginning of class and to suspend their conversations, and likewise, at the end of class, students often stood around in clusters continuing their discussions.
As was to be expected, some students complained a lot about the amount of work and the distribution of work among team members. Team members, with some supervision, divided work amongst themselves based on particular interests, talent, and time management concerns. The division of labor took many different forms. Usually one or two students took on a leadership position, sometimes quite aggressively. Where this happened, other students in the group tended to become more passive. Some students found it nearly impossible to find the time to meet with others outside of scheduled class periods, and others complained about the difficulty of cooperating with peers. But there were just as many positive reports about teams, where team members quickly became very good friends and worked together fruitfully.
Students also complained about being evaluated as a team. They were given a chance at the end of the semester to provide feedback about their own involvement with the project and about their peers’ contributions. These peer evaluations were taken into consideration when a final grade was assigned. Overwhelmingly positive comments about a student’s participation by more than one peer resulted in extra points (half to one full grade) , while consent among team members that a student had done nothing or next to nothing resulted in a reduction of points (half a grade).
The website as service
The virtual gallery arose, in part, in response to a political debate on campus regarding issues such as the importance of the African art collection, accessibility of the collection, and the future of the collection. The student-created websites helped to draw attention to the collection, both on and off campus. At KU, the website helped to demonstrate that the collection was needed for classes and valued by the students. The political issues around the art objects made the students feel that their effort was meaningful and relevant to a world beyond the classroom. Ultimately, in part as a result of the student-created virtual tour of the ethnographic collection, 10,000 objects from Africa, MesoAmerica, Oceania and Native America were taken out of storage and transferred to KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, where they are currently being integrated into displays of what was previously a museum focused exclusively on Euro-American and Asian artworks.
Moreover, my colleagues at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association mentioned having seen the website. And recently, a representative from the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco requested to borrow the Yoruba Dundun drums for an exhibition called “Africa.Dot.Com: Drums to Digital.” She saw the drums on the website, initiated contact with me, and in her correspondence expressed her appreciation and admiration for the students’ work.
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