How might the course you are re-imagining incorportate the use of wiki? blog? multimedia project? Provide details as they pertain to the content of the course. What problems/issues do you forsee as you incorporate NewMedia into your classrooms?
I can see the usefulness of the blog, which I plan to use in my summmer I ARH 132 course. I will have the students read the arts page of the NTY and any arts news via the NYT during the week (they will be alerted via an RSS); they will be required to post by midnight each Friday in response to the art news they have read during the week. I will also use it for the homework assignments, instead of having the students turn in paper copies. I also plan on having them rewrite one of the homework assignments, using my comments to improve their writing.
Regarding the wiki, I'm not so sure about it. I don't tend to use group projects, because of the reality that only one or two students end of doing all of the work. But, if the wiki had an on-line archive, which records the changes made and by whom, then I might be more open to this type of assignment. But I will have to think about it a bit more.
With respect to new media assignments in non art classes, I'm not sure of the value at this point. Certainly students taking art courses in new media are expected to master video, web design, etc , but I'm not at all clear of the place for this in art history, especially at an introductory level. How does learning an additional set of skills in video for example (likely on a superficial level for most students) deepen the learning experience and makes students better writers? I'm open to non-traditional teaching methods and assignments, but as a member of the art and art history department, I respect the skills and creativity that my video and new media colleagues bring to their students, and I question whether a mandate to include new media across the college of arts and sciences does anything but belittle the skills required to master these creative art forms. Certainly no one should feel required to introduce them. Some web-based assignments may nonetheless be useful--having students critique websites, for example. I thought that it might be interesting for students to use google images to trace the use of a particular image. I chose the Mona Lisa and I was astounded by the complete rubbish that came up. From a pedagogical point of view, it was not a useful assignment.
However, I should note that I will teach an upper-level museum studies class in spring 09, in which my students will design an exhibition to be displayed in the Lowe Art Museum, complete with wall text, captions and a short catalog. I am also planning an on-line exhibition of complementary materials to accompany it. It may be that the catalog exists only in an on-line form and that students' essays for the class are also uploaded onto this web-based exhibition.
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I agree with you totally about new media assignments: they should not be required by the administration, rather should be used by faculty in appropriate situations. Indeed, there are times when plain old text is the best way to communicate something. All these technologies have to be assessed in terms of their efficacy--for learning and for communicating.
Your Lowe assignment sounds like one such case: here is where a central online clearing house for text, images, gallery plans, and so forth really profits students. Imagine emailing all that stuff around: boggles the mind. So, setting up a wiki on Bb can ensure that all students can see all materials at all times.
I've found a way to engineer group projects such that students are able to gain the benefits of collaboration--without the deficits (one person does all the work; the others coast). Basically, you have students work together to conceive the project (we want to do something about dam building), to frame it in reasonable ways (okay, you do the engineering of the Three Gorges Dam, I'll do the social impacts that have factored into its construction, and she can do the environmental impacts, positive and negative), to help each other with research (gathering and evaluating sources). Then, each student is responsible for his own written and/or oral portion of the project and receives a separate grade. I've been using this approach for five years, and it's worked very well.
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