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I was in the museum 3-5pm on Monday afternoon (last minute!!) and interviewed 7 of the 9 people that passed through the galleries during that time period. This is NOT enough traffic to really get any idea of trends in data. That said, I asked a guard about the traffic flow and he suggested that traffic was heaviest when the museum opened (10-11) and after lunch (12-2).
I was lucky to have read Brianna’s and Laura’s blogs before I went & got an idea of their experience. This informed my approach in that I included Brianna’s suggestion of opening the interview with, “Have you ever visited/been to the Corcoran before?” This was very straightforward and gave the participants a sense of the direction of the interview. I noticed people relaxed a little when they realized that the questions were going to be simple. BUT given the simple feel most responses (6/7) were also very simple, i.e., yes/no. Another way I would re-design our tool is to put question #2 at the end, after the list of factors that may have influenced (expense, geographic location,etc.) Maybe we want to change the wording of current question #3 to “How did ________ influence your choice to come to the Corcoran today?” The HOW might yield more complex and helpful answers.
I disagree with Brianna in that I think we should keep the EXPENSE question AND add a follow-up, “Why?” In fact I found that I needed to follow-up on most of the questions which then diverged from the format a bit (OK?). Two respondants suggested that the Corcoran should have one day free/week and one said that they thought Mondays were free. This data could led us to another more specific way of getting at the crux of our initial interest, which was: “Why would a person come to the Corcoran when there were a lot of other good and FREE museums in D.C.?” If we wanted to focus in on this we could resign our interview as such. Some ideas for questions:
1. Did the expense of the entry fee factor into your decision to come to the Corcoran today?
2. Do you think the Corcoran should have one day/week that is free to the public?
3. Would you change your visitng habit accordingly if a ‘free day’ was instituted?
Another line of questioning is the ‘Have you ever visited the Corcoran before?’ This could lead to “Why, why not?” “Do you live in the Washington metro area?” etc. This is more along the lines of what Farolyn was initially suggesting. The answers would get at the demographics of the audience in terms of D.C. residents vs. tourists. The data might be significant to the Corc PR and who they should focus on attracting. BUT, do we already know the answer to this question?
I think even more significant would be a questionnaire on how people got to the Corcoran: car,taxi, bus, metro, foot. The Corcoran is not as convenient via Metro as the Smithsonian. Parking is about as difficult as it is at other museums. What about buses? I have no idea here. It seems like a lot of tourists come on foot on their way up from/to the mall OR from the White House. Maybe this interview could include a question, “Did you visit and other museums today?” “Did you visit the White House today?” This interview is SUPER simple BUT might get at more analyze-able data. Also significant for the PR dept. as they might want to advert at the other locations OR build a parking garage, yadda, yadda. DATA might provide direction for answers to: What can the museum do to make it easier to come to the galleries? What about adverts on the Orange line?
AND last, but not least, what days should we do our research? I think it will skew data if we only collect on the weekend when there is presumably the most traffic. I would suggest every day of the week over a longer (maybe sporadic) period. The seasons certainly influence attendance and the means of transport to the museum.
IN CLASS we need to reconfigure our tool and brainstorm about how to design timing/length of study in order to get most valid results, i.e., not only collect research during Cherry Blossom festival. More later…
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This would be a ‘brief’ open-ended-pre-questionnaire:
1. What was the most important factor in your choice to come to the Corcoran today?
2. What other things influenced your choice to come to the Corcoran today?
Open-ended to avoid assuming particular answers. We want it to be short so that we can get more people to fill it out completely w/o getting annoyed, stopping thinking, etc. I’m not sure we want demographic info for this research topic OR do we want to see what populations are being reached with current Corcoran advertising methods? THEN we need DEMO info.
Of course, we could make it multiple choice with an ‘Other’ option. Want to brainstorm exact tool in class.
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“What factors influenced your choice to come to the Corcoran today?”
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NOW we are going to change directions and construct pilot studies for the American Evolution show!!!
“What is it we want to learn from an audience study?”
“How do we know what kind of learning takes place in a museum?”
TYPES OF STUDIES:
- synonyms pre/post
- demographic
- quantitavie/qualitiative
- duration (time in place)
My FIRST IDEA for a question to design research around = “How did your experience of the show differ from your expectations for the show? Did it fail, meet or exceed?” I think this could be looked at through an exit interview, possibly a questionnaire. Pre- and Post- testing could also work–”what are your expectations?” and then, “did the show meet/match your expectations? how/why?” This would be a little bit more tricky for the proctor as one would have to find the same people before and after they walked through the show. The study would be qualitative and results would take time to analyze.
Necessary background for this question:
- something on what people expect to experience at a museum
- why do people go to museums?
- what forms their expectations? (media, personal recommendations, other research, other experiences?)
WORKING WITH BRIANNA AND FAROLYN we came up with the question, “What factors influenced your choice to come to the Corcoran today?” I think this would be a PRE- questionnaire. The debate was whether to leave it open-ended of to give a multiple choice format. Would we bias the answers or help the subjects think? Farolyn was particularly interested in collecting demographic info on the peeps who came to the Corcoran and Brianna very much wanted to understand people’s motivations, like, “Why the Corcoran when there are so many other (free) options?” The issue was whether the two interests could and should be combined to make for a multi-layered study. PROB: Can we conflate demographics with qualitative info to make judgments about the audience? I think one could present the accompanying demographic info for readers to make their own inferences, BUT could not necessarily say anything professional about the connection.
Some ideas for necessary background research:
- are there any private museum demographic studies? past Corcoran studies?
- some info on who is the Corcoran’s target audience? have there been efforts to broaden audience?
- a survey of other concurrent art options around the city
OTHER QUESTIONS:
What are we going to do with this information once it is collected? Why is it important to do these sorts of studies? Why should a museum spend $$ on this sort of thing? What is important and unique about the Corcoran as a D.C. institution? Does it do enough to reach out to a wider audience? How? Is it effective? Who has time to go to a museum? Why should people go to museums?
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Does anyone understand how to read the rubric in this article?
This is the ‘Data Gathering Profile’ graphic. I’m not sure if you went over this in the class I missed– maybe I could get a hand interpreting it next meeting.
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This issue seems a little bit harder to approach than the ‘GRADES’ blog post. The questions are a couple steps ahead of my thinking. I find myself in the mire of my past experiences participating in tedious group critiques and then I am stuck in a debate over how to sufficiently answer the question, “What is a useful critique?” My background is NOT in art (I have a BA in anthropology) and so I do not have that many life-hours spent in discussion of the elements of design, i.e., in terms of ‘art criticism,’ I am a bit of a novice. At this point I feel like I need to define ‘crit’— I don’t think are we talking about ‘Art Criticism,’ but critique of student work. OR are we just talking about all criticism and should thereby lump these things into the same pile of ‘talking about art’?
My approach, like my ‘grading scheme,’ needs to be developed. Thus far I have conducted individual student crits to unsatisfactory ends, using all too many, “Nice!!” and “Good job!!” comments. These sort of responses are not totally invalid (as perhaps an opener into discussion of exactly what I like or exactly how I think they did a good job), BUT they cannot be the end all or promo quo. In fact, the Ghanaian children I work with once mocked me for saying the same thing every time: when one of them would come to show me their finished product, I would typically exclaim, “Nice!!” Many thanks to their humor, I am now aware that I need to work on this aspect of my teaching AND make more time for quality responses. (Granted this situation was a little different because the students English was often limited and therefore using big vocab for description was not an option.)
Awareness of my incompetence with crit might be somehow connected to my ambivalence about it in general. Until recently (DM Fall 07 for example) I have not experienced a good classroom crit. The only crits I found useful were one-on-one with people I respected who, more often than not, held some position of authority. My experiences with crit in the workplace (doing finish carpentry and painting, drywall, etc. for my father) have been the most valuable. These are periodic informal crits regarding the aesthetics and acceptability of my work, ‘quality control’ by the boss. I need to reflect on why these are the best a little more, later…
My relative dearth of good experiences with formal art crits and my non-art-school background have contributed to the fact that I have NEVER designed or lead a formal group crit. Instead, I leave it up to the student (assumptions galore here—like the student wants to come talk to me!) to approach me for one-on-one crit time which then often catches me off-guard and ends in closed comments like ‘Nice!’. I never teach about the import of crit to the artistic process or about the steps of a formal crit, which then, of course, makes it hard to approach doing any sort of formal crit.
It looks like my next big step is to come to terms with crit and start infusing it into my lessons in a manner that is acceptable to my-resistant-self. If we let art criticism be part of the pile, then maybe using crit as part of my intro to a project would be the best place to start. For example, by looking at examples of a style and talking about the qualities, elements, and why import to consider ‘a, b, + c.’
AS FAR AS LINKS…
I found a lot of stuff focused on Art Criticism and activities focused on writing about art.
On this topic I found a longer article, “Using Art Criticism” by Pam Matthews (not linked), that offers a historical perspective on art criticism and goes on to talk about it in relation to Terry Barrett’s Lessons for Teaching Art Criticism(1994) and to the DBAE handbook. And a shorter definition and review of these methods and Feldman’s crit sequence at the North Texas Institute for Educators (good ed website with posts like those for this class by then current ed students).
I found Marivin Bartel’s website and specifically his “Successful Art Class Critique” page with corresponding student handout page. This also focuses on writing the criticism and I seriously question his language choice in point #3, “Try to write what you think that person wants to hear.” Is this useful?
This link How to read a Painting is to a page that lays out lesson about art criticism and connects it to the museum experience. I think it has a good sequence of events in ‘Process’ section which also introduces a lot of vocab. Kids would of course already need to be familiar with the words to complete project AND be wiling to follow through WHOLE sequence which is relatively long/in-depth.
The North Texas Institute for Educators looks like a good resource and they have a page on art criticism activities. Fun with Post-It notes!
This is a definition of the critique process I found on the ‘ART-iculation’ website:
The Art Critiquing Process is a method of organizing the facts and your thoughts about a particular work of art. In some ways it is similar to the Scientific Method used in your science classes. The Art Critiquing Process is broken down into FOUR areas. Each area specifically looks at one section. The FOUR steps are Description, Analysis, Interpretation and Judgment. Each section must be covered in order, beginning with Description. This order helps you to organize your thoughts and to make intelligent and educated statements about a work of art. It is very important that you are familiar with the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design as they will provide you with the vocabulary and knowledge necessary to critique art intelligently.
The succinct nature of their descriptions is helpful for me, the non-art-school lady who needs help with the elements and principles, just like the student might! Go to their ‘Elements’ page and scroll down to ‘Art-links’. This is a worksheet (pdf) that explores the principles using works of art = good assessment tool.
AND of course, last but NOT least, we must have a link to the VTS page. This is the ‘What is VTS?’ page with a bunch of links to ‘Overview’ sheets– good for printing!
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I found a rubric by Marvin Bartel I feel somewhat happy about while searching for resources on the ‘role of crit.’
I like it b/c it gets at the idea of progress and originality and takes note of student behavior. Which leads to the question, ‘Are we allowed to assess a kid based on behavior OR only their work?’ Where do you stand? My mentor teacher and I disagree on this point with me in favor of assessing a student’s behavior in addition to their work/she says we cannot judge how they act, but only if they do and how well the do the assignment.
Another question: Is it a generic rubric and I’m rubric-naive OR is it different from what you’ve seen? What rubrics do you like to use? Do you always tailor them to the assignment? Is this necessary?
How could you use this rubric with younger kids? Maybe break down the task more and focus less on conversations and principles of design?
I also like it for a self-crit of my own teaching, slightly re-interpreted/adapted to crit my method instead of artwork.
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K’s first blog post!!!
I’m a little late on the scene AND I have been speaking ‘Ghana English’ for the past two months so please excuse my convoluted text and over-use of parentheses.
MY PROFILE/CONTEXT:
First off, I have never had to give students grades—on their art work or any other sort of assignment. Second, grades and my philosophy of art are NOT on the same page. I am a very process-heavy teacher and the product is usually something shared between me and the student in a quick exchange at the end of a lesson or the completion of a project. This means that group critique is not in my assessment tool bag. While this kind of impromptu exchange is inadequate in the long-run, the settings in which I have taught—after-school classes, camp, a community arts project, special event workshops—have not provided much space for a lengthy and meaningful interaction regarding the quality of a student’s work. Neither did these settings provide the time to develop substantially meaningful relationships between teacher and student. It is important to know that I have usually taught young children: ages 3 to 15 with a mean age of 10 years.
The best relationships that I have built with students is in Ghana (over three distinct month-long sessions of community arts classes) AND I would now feel comfortable giving some of the students (the ones I have seen all three sessions and that had good attendance during those sessions) grades. In other words, I believe that grading, AND FOR THAT MATTER, TEACHING, is a long-term process built on a relationship with the student. I must be familiar with the student and how they work, what sort of stuff they produce, in order to judge whether they are doing a good job or whether they are doing NOT such a good job. How can one evaluate a stranger?
To return to the process v. product aspect of my philosophy which I mentioned above, my emphasis on the process and experience of making art does not somehow necessarily translate into a reluctance to grade students. This is difficult to verbalize, but I mean to say that I am not excused from engaging in grading given that I am a teacher and artist who believes in the act of art-making as the predominant/more important thing that happens in the art classroom. That is, art-making is a transformative and essential act, (bwah ha ha) and the product can reflect this OR can be destroyed in the process (which would also speak to some truth about the student).
I as art teacher feel a responsibility to offer the student something that:
a) uses other parts of their brains than are used during learning in core subjects;
b) is physical in a manner different than regular classroom work;
c) presents opportunity for a different (not verbal) expression than the world usually requires;
d) creates relationships, with peers and with the teacher, that are unique to the setting;
e) and so on.
This list is just a start and is crafted in no particular sequence of import rather, it is an attempt to communicate that I want to offer something different in my room (the ART ROOM), both in the work and in the relationships created that is a respite from the hum drum drills and schedule (time, time, time!) of the rest of the school day. I want to provide relief for the ESL student or an outlet for the hyper active student (the misfits) AND I want to provide every child the opportunity to have a relationship with an adult that is not based on absolute authority. I try to be a non-judgmental person in life and therefore do not give credence to the structure of learning as judgment passed down from the more-knowledgeable adult to less-knowledgeable kid. This sort of authority is often found in the form of grades. (We must note that I have always dismissed grades as a student.)
GRADING SCHEME:
I have no grading scheme. My tools need to be developed, but as of now I have my own observation of the goings-on in class and the students’ final product (ironic!?) as the main things I use to assess. That is, I look at:
1) a child’s behavior when listening to instructions and during class discussion
2) his/her willingness and effort to engage with the work during the process
3) his/her efforts at cooperation
4) his/her response to challenges encountered during the process
5) his/her ability to sustain productivity during class
6) the student’s response to me when we interact one-on-one
7) the finished PRODUCT— Is it the correct assignment? Is it clean? Is it unique? Does it go beyond the parameters of the assignment and in doing so express the student’s unique vision? How does it compare to the student’s past efforts?
My current tools (1-6 = process, 7 = product) seem to reveal that I DO indeed credit the final product (am I fooling myself?). I think I’m still in-line with my philosophy as I believe a good (relatively speaking of course) product is a manifestation of engagement in the process which is my #1 objective. I want the student to engage. This in fact places the emphasis on my performance as a teacher. My soon-to-be-developed tool is a rubric for self-grading to be completed at the end of each lesson [on paper for older kids, in one’s head for younger kids (?) AND at the end of every class for the teacher]: What did I do well? How could I have done better? Did I communicate clearly my intentions? Am I satisfied with my work? This could be a great ‘closure’ tool for the end of a class-session: after students clean-up they return to seats and put their head down on table, then are asked to visualize answers to above questions as I, teacher, call them out. This would hopefully calm kids down before they move on and develop a practice of reflection after process, etc.
I will be glad to understand my student-teaching mentor teacher’s scheme for grading as I think this will be the real jumping-off point for the development of my own system. Of course in the public school system it is not entirely up to the teacher to create their own criteria. I will be glad to bring this information and experience back to the discussion.
