For Shannon Holcomb
[This was first presented at the Southeasterm Medieval Association annual meeting, College of Charleston, 1995; and published in slightly different, HTML format on-line in (re)soundings 1/1 (Nov. 1996).]
Certainly one of the biggest problems in incorporating technology into humanities classes is getting the non-technically-minded teachers involved. I am a case in point. In Spring 1995 I designed and taught a 400-level seminar for Art History majors entitled "Medieval Art On-Line." No cyber-whiz myself, but an enthusiastic amateur, I am trying to live up to my university's rhetoric about technology-based teaching and distance learning. As a medievalist, I created the course partly to challenge myself to explore the new media systematically, beginning with electronic reference tools and CD-ROMs in the library, advancing to discussion lists and World Wide Web sites on the Internet. Medievalist electronic resources are no longer the novelty they seemed way back in 1994, nor is it my purpose to introduce them in this paper. Instead, I would like to address the problem they raise in the classroom: how to present Medieval studies in a challenging way to students at a variety of levels of both electronic sophistication and academic background, with little equipment and uncertain technical support--a situation we all increasingly face. Rather than direct readers to the latest and greatest--which will inevitably be obsolete by the date of this publication--I will argue for a more low-tech approach to high-tech teaching. This is an approach that anticipates dramatic, sudden changes in technology, and provides students with a range of good, exciting projects they can pursue in a hurry on a very limited budget. It is an approach intended to keep the central focus of the classroom on the Middle Ages, not on technology. Finally, I would like to show how an amateur like me can teach a high-tech course with confidence, by off-loading the technical training onto the experts, allowing classroom time to be used more profitably for what I can teach best.
DESIGNING A SIMPLE, WORKABLE AND EFFECTIVE COURSE. First a confession: "Medieval Art On-Line" was a bit of a misnomer; a self-consciously flashy course title intended to grab interest. In fact, "on-line" was only the final goal of a semester-long 400-level course on using a variety of technologies in Medieval studies. My interest was initially stimulated by news of such projects as the Cluny III virtual-reality reconstruction, promising twentieth-century viewers the experience of walking through long-vanished monuments. Whatever the validity of these claims, this was clearly not the level of sophistication we could expect from undergraduates of varying backgrounds, nor the level of technology my university could support in a general humanities environment, nor, least of all, anything I had the first clue about teaching. Rather, I wanted to present a course that I could teach with confidence, without becoming a techie as a second career; a course that would give students skills applicable to life outside the university; a course where those keenly interested in Medieval Studies would not be distracted by machine problems. Most important, it had to be a course appropriate to the technology actually available in my university classroom, not a course built upon the wishful thinking of University public-relations brochures.
SYLLABUS. The governing principle of my syllabus design was that the first half of the semester should be spent pulling everyone up to roughly comparable levels in computer skills and Medieval background. The Medieval material was my problem; the rest was to be offloaded onto those who know how to teach computer skills; and as much as possible, the students should teach eachother the necessary skills in both. The final course objectives, as stated, were these:
The textbooks reflected the dual aims of the course: one was Medieval Studies An Introduction, ed. James A. Powell (2nd ed., Syracuse, 1992), selected articles from which I had the students explore in teams and present in class--in part to foster a sense of teamwork and to break down classroom shyness. In addition, I had them choose and buy an Internet guide. I structured the course to give students time at the beginning to learn the necessary computer skills, using Patrick Crispen's "Roadmap" (copyright 1994) on-line tutorial, while in class we studied current medievalist issues and methodology. The library provided on-line bibliographic instruction and helped with the multimedia equipment. The students taught eachother, and pushed me as well. Most class projects involved pairing or grouping students so as to pool their skills and backgrounds. Crucial to the success of this first part of the course was the patient, persistent cheerleading of my teaching assistant, Ms. Shannon Holcomb, who not only suggested many of the pedagogical approaches, but who also provided invaluable service by pushing the students to learn to be resourceful on their own. We all learned the importance of pushing campus facilities to develop new procedures as fast as we found them necessary.
GUEST EXPERTS. My department arranged for a series of nationally prominent guest speakers who have set up pioneering projects in the application of electronic technology to archeology and Medieval studies. This is another way, clearly, for the Medievalist techno-amateur to extend the range of the course beyond his or her own limitations. Prof. Marilyn Lavin of Princeton University spoke about her "Piero Project," and the collaboration of Art History and Computer Engineering students in the animated reconstruction of late Medieval fresco cycles. Prof. Martha Driver of Pace University spoke about developing multimedia hypertext presentations of "The Medieval Woman" and "Arthurian Legends," allowing students to discuss hypertext design and production. Finally, Prof. Harrison J. Eiteljorg II of the Center for the Study of Architecture in Bryn Mawr explained his work promoting the use of computer technology in archeological surveying, three-dimensional drafting, and on-line publication. These guest speakers proved to be crucial in motivating the students, most of whom modeled their own projects on one or another speaker's work. I am grateful to all, and would urge any teacher attempting to present high technology in the classroom to remember the inspirational magic of a guest speaker with an exciting project underway. But I would also stress that presentations involving live computer technology have a way of going awry in front of an audience, and that a prepared video, or even overhead transparencies, are a wise way to forestall trouble. Part of successfully teaching high technology with a low-tech attitude is to underestimate the technical capabilities of any given university classroom.
STUDENT PROJECTS. There is no dearth of interesting topics on the intersection of Medievalist studies and technologies. The hardest part of the course was finding projects appropriate to each student's level and interests, and feasible in a few weeks with little or no budget. First, I allowed the most confident and independent students to pursue individual projects, while encouraging the rest to form groups that would pool skills. This took a certain amount of delicate diplomacy, as all group projects do. One must be prepared to lay down rules of group structure and interaction; to allow some class time for groups to meet; and insist that group leaders be given a lightened workload in recognition of their extraordinary effort required to coordinate their peers' schedules, capabilities, and whims. Their final group projects included multimedia presentations, critiques of current Medievalist electronic media, and historical studies conducted on-line. We tried to think up projects that were more creative than simply using Internet resources for research. Particularly successful projects, easily accomplished in several weeks, included the following:
Less electronically sophisticated students were put to work critiquing particular electronic resources or formats, such as the Labyrinth or scholarly conferences with on-line components. This may seem simplistic, but I was concerned that no students be overwhelmed by the electronic component of the course if their primary interests remained strictly Medievalist. On the other hand, one particularly ambitious student was able, with help, to produce a short multimedia presentation on Hildegard of Bingen, consisting of a dozen screens of text and image, with music, playing on her Powerbook. A project of this scope I would recommend only to students with interests in production and access to specialized equipment--and to sounder training than their computer-amateur teacher can be expected to provide.
RESULTS AND JUST A FEW TIPS. The semester did not, of course, go exactly as planned, though the results were more exciting that I dared hope at the beginning. We did not anticipate the sudden explosion of the World Wide Web, which quickly rendered much of our arcane training in FTP, and several weeks of the syllabus, instantly obsolete. The lesson is to be prepared for such, and to stress learning broad principles and applications over mastering specific techniques in the classroom. Three features of the syllabus proved most valuable, and I would urge anyone attempting such a course to incorporate them. First, off-loading the technical training onto campus trainers and on-line tutorials allowed everyone to learn at an individual pace, and allowed us to concentrate on Medieval studies in the classroom. Second, the emphasis on group collaboration not only made for a happier atmosphere, but it also taught the students to be more resourceful than if they had looked to me as sole authority on electronic matters. Finally, the guest speakers provided the crucial spark, as was noted earlier. What did not work very well were complex data-retrieval assignments; I should have recognized the limits of my own expertise in designing them. The other disappointment was that despite my best efforts to minimize the technical aspect of the course in the classroom, technical problems did consume an inordinate amount of time, often more than one hour of each three-hour seminar session. Were I to teach a similar course now, I would plan for this. To some extent, the spreading ease and familiarity with Internet browsers will make this less of a problem. The most important lesson I learned and would pass on to fellow Medievalists is that this sort of course is not only teachable by anyone, with little training, or sources beyond campus Internet access, but that in fact the course worked best when kept simple. A happy postscript to "Medieval Art On-Line" is that the students seem to have enjoyed the course as much as I did, and several have in fact gone into jobs that make use of their hypertext design and Internet navigating skills.
Lawrence E. Butler
Department of Art History
George Mason University