(1673) GREATER EXPECTATIONS: IMPROVING STUDENT CONFIDENCE IN ONLINE ART HISTORY SURVEYS

摘要

In January 2009, the online version of Art History 111, a survey of Western art from Prehistory throughthe Gothic Era, made its debut. The follow-up course, Art History 112 (Renaissance through Modern),debuted in fall 2012. Although I spent two years developing each course with the help of the e-Learning Institute at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), neither one received a warmstudent reception right away. One of the greatest challenges facing students in both courses was fearof the unknown. Students were unfamiliar with the online lesson delivery and online assessments, andthey had no clear concept of the time required to complete weekly lessons. In addition, most studentsfound the complexity of the material to be very intimidating. Without reassuring guidance, studentsfacing these conditions can feel overwhelmed and even hostile. We counteracted this situation bycreating a clear orientation, targeted tutorials, and tools to help the students budget their time. Theresult was increased student confidence, both in navigating the online course environment and insuccessfully mastering the material. In each of the two art history surveys, our solutions resulted infewer negative and more positive student emails, improved performance on essay exams, and betterstudent satisfaction in exit surveys. In my paper, I will briefly discuss Art History 111 and 112 onlineand their student populations, the problems we encountered with each course, our solutions, and theresults of those improvements. With modifications, the strategic approaches that we developed foronline art history surveys could be applied to nearly any other online course.