"Object-Based Teaching and Learning Today", pre-conference workshop, ICOM-UMAC & Universeum Conference - Dresden, September 24, 2024 /

For this workshop, the project’s scientific staff invited practitioners, researchers, and curators who use objects in their teaching to share their approaches in short presentations (approx. 5–10 mins) and discuss results. Thus, the workshop aims to reflect on the current state of Object-Based Teaching and Learning and to investigate its role both for higher education generally and for those working in and with academic heritage and university museums and collections.

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Report by Fanny Marcon, Conservator of the diffuse scientific-technological heritage and the Museum of Machines “Enrico Bernardi,” University of Padua and member of the TWO project

On 24 September, the TU Dresden welcomed participants of the workshop ‘Object-Based Teaching and Learning Today’.

During the workshop, six experts in OBTL presented their experiences, focusing on various target groups and showing the strengths and weaknesses of their activities. The workshop was chaired by Martin Stricker, member of the TWO project.

After a presentation of the TWO project itself, the workshop started with Simone Grytter, from the Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), who presented an activity involving the ‘unboxing’ of medicine-related objects stored in a box. The same activity is presented at events dedicated to very different audiences, from children's events to researcher and stakeholder engagement activities. The aim of the activity is to stimulate deep conversations around an object by bringing together different points of view and experiences. This is actually one of the strengths of the activity, as participants build knowledge around an object by bringing their personal, professional and physical experiences. This allows all participants to have their voice heard, as no one has a predominant narrative about the object. However, the conversation does not always take off, and different groups require different modes of mediation. This of course increases the time and staff dedicated to the preparation and facilitation of activities.

Elena Avgeri, from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, presented the experience of working around one object in particular, a model planetarium, used in an activity included in the ‘Informal and Non-formal Science Education’ course of the Primary Education Department. Groups of students gather around the object and are asked to find out the object's date, by studying both the object’s design and its scientific features, in particular its number of planets and satellites. This engages the audience in a challenging way, and the planetarium serves as a starting point both for researches about historical scientific instruments and their makers, and for researches about the solar system and its history. Participants are given various primary bibliographic sources, as well as a worksheet with questions to guide them in their exploration of the object. The activity was proposed both in teacher training courses and to mixed groups. The material provided and the support activity by the tutor changes greatly according to the target. The design of the activity is still in progress, for instance with a new worksheet with open questions for a more experienced audience and gamification activities for a younger audience.

The third contribution was presented by Delphine Issenmann, from the Jardin des Science of the University of Strasbourg (France) and member of the TWO project. Delphine presented an activity focusing on a multidisciplinary approach. Presented to a group of Science studies and Museology students, the activity is led by a historian of naturalistic collections, a sociologist, the head of cultural and digital projects and the curator of the Jardin des Sciences collections. After a presentation of the collections, a ‘Big Mac session’ follows, to stimulate students to observe and ask questions about a scientific instrument they choose. The chosen scientific instrument becomes an aid to mediation, and the various professionals lead the students to see the object in different ways, stimulating creativity and the creation of a digital media tool. The multidisciplinarity of the activity stimulates various formats and skills. As for the students, they represent a very specific target group, i.e. future professionals in these fields. The question is: can this activity be proposed to another target group, such as a mixed audience? In this case, how do you select the objects? And how do you evaluate the success of the activity?

After the break, we started with a presentation by Jimena Lobo Guerrero-Arenas, from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). The activity she presented focuses on the Archaeology of Americas Collection, and the participating students are invited, after some preliminary readings, to choose the objects that most impress them from the Museum's database. This approach develops in the students a sense of commitment and ownership towards the object. The community where the objects come from (e.g. Trinidad and Tobago) is also involved - in this case remotely - in the activity, offering the students a unique opportunity for discussion, thus also giving a voice to the descendants of those who produced the heritage. Discussions among the various participants leads to a more complete interpretation of the past, and students develop more research skills, increase empathy for historical facts and re-evaluate the importance of material culture.

Sofia Talas, another member of the TWO project and curator of the Giovanni Poleni Museum of the University of Padua, then presented an activity on the multicultural nature of science, designed for a mixed audience. The activity was part of a year-long project involving four very mixed groups, made of students from a difficult professional school, members of the local community (adults from public evening schools, members of the Islamic community, etc.) and PhD students in physics and astronomy. The aim of the project was to co-create new popularisation  proposals about the multiculturality of science. Sofia focused on the first lecture of the project. The greatest challenge was the very diverse backgrounds of the participants. The various groups were divided into smaller groups and worked on some of the historical scientific instruments of the museum. Curiosity and respect for the objects immediately created a first bridge between people. Furthermore, participants were invited to ask questions and not provide answers about instruments: this contributed to stimulate curiosity and make people work together on a peer level. The use of historical instruments was actually also crucial to keep people interested in the more theoretical part of the lecture, a slide-based presentation on the millennial scientific exchanges across cultures.

Dominick Verschelde, also member of the TWO project and curator of the Zoology section of the GUM (Ghent, Belgium), then closed the workshop. He showed how it is much more effective to make any audience understand dogs’ respiratory and olfactory problems by directly showing the inside of a bulldog’s skull, rather than use any picture or drawing. He thus explained the mysterious drawing on the blackboard: the cavities of the dog's skull :)!