Interdisciplinary Teaching through Object Based Learning
A Case Study
Dr Chiara Ambrosio (Science & Technology Studies) in collaboration with the UCL Art Museum
University College London (UCL) is lucky enough to have at its disposal three public museums and
further collections of objects pertinent to a variety of academic subjects. These include the Petrie
Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, the Grant Museum of Zoology, the UCL Art Museum, and a range of
other archaeology, ethnography, science, medical, and historical collections. In the last decade, the
Museums & Public Engagement department
has made significant progress in its mission to
promote the benefits of object based learning
for teaching and learning in higher education
(see Chatterjee 2008; Duhs 2010). This drive to
establish object based learning in the
university classroom, builds on a broader
evidence base for its efficacy in other
educational environments (Durbin, Morris,
and Wilkinson 1990; Lane and Wallace 2007;
Paris 2002). For example, object handling
sessions have long been commonplace for
school groups and museum visitors, but the
acceptance of this technique as beneficial for
learning in higher education is relatively recent.
Notwithstanding this, university museums and collections were formed as learning resources and, as is
the case at UCL, often date back to the origin of their respective disciplines within their host higher
education institutes.
Through successfully engaging a wide range of academic departments, across the arts,
humanities, social sciences and sciences, UCL’s museums have been able to demonstrate the
pedagogical benefits of object based
learning. Many academic disciplines
have adopted this pedagogoy in their
teaching and research suggests that
this approach is having a positive
impact on the student experience of
learning. Here, a really excellent
example of object based learning will
be explored to show the exciting
possibilities open to teachers and
learners wishing to use museum
collections. In particular, this case
study illuminates the potential for
using works of art to engage students
with interdisciplinary concepts.
The UCL Art Museum and
Chiara Ambrosio have a long-standing collaboration that has resulted in Ambrosio using the
collections for several of her taught courses, postgraduate research skills workshops, and also for
public and schools engagement projects. The close working relationship between Andrea Fredericksen,
curator of the Art Museum, and Ambrosio has facilitated experimentation with different ways of
approaching the curriculum through the Art Museum’s collections. This is particularly true of
Ambrosio’s Special Topic course on advanced philosophy of science, entitled: ‘Science, Art and
Philosophy’. This course examines interactions between science and art from the mid-nineteenth
century to the present day. It takes a philosophical focus on the notion of ‘representation’ – which is
conceived as a common link between
scientific and artistic visual practices. The
course helps students to question the role
of visual representations in the practice of
both science and art and to debate what
counts as ‘objective’ representation. To
teach this course, Ambrosio has drawn on a
wide range of works within the Art
Museum’s collections, including eighteenthcentury French anatomical prints, a
sixteenth-century depiction of a rhinoceros
by Enea Vico, a nineteenth-century
American photograph album, and Slade
School artists’ computer-generated art
dating from the 1970s.
Of the ten weekly topics taught on Science, Art and Philosophy, five of them use the Art
Museum and its collections as a starting point. In particular, lectures on ‘Denotation, Convention and
the Riddle of Style’, ‘Truth-to-Nature’, and ‘The Future of Representations’ and tutorials on
‘Representation in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and ‘Representing Time: seriality and
duration’ are all based in the Museum space, using easels to display selected works of art. Ambrosio’s
approach maintains a close connection between her research and teaching and the students benefit
from her energy to try new things. Most recently, Ambrosio has looked into the Art Museum’s map
collections as another possible avenue for exploring scientific representation with her students.
The Art Museum’s Museum Assistant, Krisztina Lackoi, points out that by working closely with
lecturers on their collections-based teaching – the museum gains inspiration for creating new, publicly
accessible learning resources. A case in point is the Anatomy Teaching Pack, which was developed by
Lackoi and her colleagues after Ambrosio started using anatomical prints in her teaching. This eresource
is
now
available
from
the
Museums
&
Collections
website:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/learning/objects-and-elearning. This reciprocal relationship has
benefitted all parties, most especially the students and the Art Museum are keen to forge similar
working relationships with other
members of teaching staff.
In terms of the students’
learning, Ambrosio is an ardent
advocate of the benefits of contact
with real works of art, rather than
digital reproductions. For her, the
engagement that students have with
the works in the museum space is
extremely valuable – as it develops
their skills of critical appraisal and their
ability
to
form
independent
Taking a closer look at representations of human
judgements about visual sources. The
anatomy
assessment set for ‘Science, Art and
Philosophy’ is in keeping with this ethos of close contact with the visual, as students are asked to
produce a poster presentation of an ‘academic quality’. This exercise leads many students to book
research visits with the museum and undertake their own analysis and documentation of the
collections. This is a fantastic outcome for an undergraduate course and can be credited to the
innovative, collections-based approach that Ambrosio has made central to her teaching.
References
H.J. Chatterjee, ‘Staying Essential: Articulating the value of object based learning’, University Museums
and Collections Journal, 1 (2008) pp. 1-6.
http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/umacj/1/chatterjee-helen-1/PDF/chatterjee.pdf
R. Duhs, ‘Learning from University Museums and Collections in Higher Education: University College
London (UCL)’, University Museums and Collections Journal, 3 (2010) pp. 183-6.
http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/umacj/2010/duhs-183/PDF/duhs.pdf
G. Durbin, S. Morris, and S. Wilkinson, Learning from Objects: A teachers guide (London, 1990).
J. Lane and A. Wallace, Hands On: Learning from Objects and Paintings. A Teacher’s Guide (Glasgow,
2007).
S.G. Paris, Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums (London, 2002).