Disseminating Event, Jardin des sciences – University of Strasbourg, November 19-20, 2024 /


PROGRAM


Tuesday November 19, 2024

Morning - plenary

Planétarium, 27 boulevard de la Victoire

 

9:30 – 10:00 

WELCOME – registration of the participants

WELCOME COFFEE

 

10:00 – 10:10  

Welcome address by Sébastien SOUBIRAN, director of the Jardin des sciences 

 

10:10 - 10:55   

PRESENTATION OF THE TEACHING WITH OBJECTS PROJECT

report, by Jill DECROP ERNST (University of Delft)

 

10:55 – 11:55  

PRESENTATION OF THE TEACHING WITH OBJECTS PLATFORM

 

11:55 – 12:05     

Practical information about the afternoon program

 

12:05 – 13:45    

LUNCH BREAK – BUFFET

 

Afternoon – Part 1. Workshops

Atelier des sciences / Room 125 (Faculty of Psychology) / Museum of Seismology / Room E 14 (Studium)

 

13:45 – 14:00   

Split into 4 groups for the workshops and move to the rooms

 

14:00 – 15:30    

Workshop part 1. – Four practitioners propose a teaching activity

representative of their approach.

 

15:30 – 16:15    

Workshop part 2. – Preparation of the feedback on the workshops

by each group of participants

 

16:15 – 16:30     Back to the Planétarium


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WORKSHOP


WORKSHOP A – Following an approach taken with schools to investigate objects

MUSEUM OF SEISMOLOGY

Neil Curtis, Head of University Collections, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, will lead an activity working with some items form museum collections. Her will follow an approach originally taken with primary school pupils to record and investigate objects, and will also consider how juxtaposing different items can lead to richer understandings of the items and their contexts. For this activity, he will  use a small number of items from the University of Aberdeen's museum collections and objects from the University of Strasbourg’s museums.

 

Neil Curtis is Head of University Collections, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He has studied Archaeology, Museum Studies and Education. His recent research has included studies of the history of museums, exhibitions and archaeology in Scotland, and the social and cultural roles of museums today, including repatriation and the treatment of human remains. He has a particular interest in using the University's extremely varied collections for teaching and learning, which included writing his Master's degree thesis on young children's learning with objects, and being co-author of "Online teaching and learning with digitised collections in Higher Education contexts, during Covid-19 pandemic' which was organised by University Museums in Scotland with funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a Vice-President of Universeum.


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WORKSHOP B - Working with objects across disciplines

ROOM 125 – FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY

The session will introduce participants to the principles of object-based research as an interdisciplinary research methodology The session will be articulated through two exercises aiming to develop your understanding of object- and collections-based research both as the primary research method and as a complementary methodology that can enhance research projects in any discipline.

 

Dr. Lola Sánchez-Jáuregui is an Art Historian specialising in 18th-century European and American art, with a particular interest in the history of collecting, museums and object-based pedagogies on which she has published articles and book chapters. She has developed her career as a curator in museums in Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom, where she has curated numerous national and international exhibitions. Since 2020 she has been an art curator at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, where she has recently designed and led a complete re-arrangement of its collections.

 

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WORKSHOP C - Animating and letting yourself be animated by meteorite collections

ATELIER DES SCIENCES

Trained as an anthropologist and puppeteer, Rafi Martin works with the concrete properties of matter and how they offer us spaces for physical and choreographic dialogue. RESONANCIAS, the latest project from his company Tectonique, is a participatory performance about attraction and magnetism based on the resonance thinking of Chilean geologist Millarca Valenzuela and German philosopher Hartmut Rosa. Following on from this project, this laboratory is an invitation to interact with Campo del cielo iron meteorites, which fell in Argentina five thousand years ago, using puppet animation techniques to interact with mineral bodies. Manipulating and letting ourselves be manipulated represents a whole spectrum of possibilities between guiding and following matter: it invites us to create bridges that bring us closer to bodies other than human. By inviting them into lessons and classes, we are revisiting the forms of interaction that are possible: by physically engaging with matter, we are opening up a space for mobilising learning that shifts bodies and ways of learning. Involving objects in lessons and teaching broadens our mental, physical and symbolic horizons: we seek to collaborate with stones and learn from them, so they become collaborators in learning. It also invites us to be more inclusive, and to experiment and co-create in order to generate knowledge.

Rafi Martin is a contemporary puppeteer and anthropologist by training, with degrees from the HMDK University for Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart and the EHESS Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is developing an artistic practice that combines the animation of matter with a methodology of field investigation, and explores questions of the human sciences by experimentally searching for aesthetic forms. Through questions of gravity, suspension and attraction, it is the animation of matter that drives him, always seeking to reappropriate bodies and imaginations. He teaches and gives workshops at Strasbourg University and the HMDK Stuttgart School of Art. Franco-German institutions such as the Fonds TRANSFABRIK, the Goethe Institut and the Institut Français support the mobility and exchange of his projects. Since 2022, he has been artistic director of Strasbourg-based Compagnie Tectonique. www.rafimartin.com

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WORKSHOP D - Connecting with objects: sensation(s) and interpretation(s)

Room E 14 - STUDIUM

Drawing information and ideas from material culture studies, perception theories, neuroaesthetics and other fields of knowledge, this workshop offers experiential exercises that will provide insights into how we can connect with objects both in the personal and collective realm, and how we can make meaning and construct narratives about the material world and about us. This is an experience we can have in our everyday life and of course in museums, the object repositories par excellence. 

One of the most challenging tasks for museum curators, let alone students who are trained on object-based learning, is to write engaging object-based stories that are both intellectually and emotionally meaningful to museum audiences.

To celebrate this year's Academic Heritage Day topic, the workshop will explore the concept and experience of "sensation" in the object interpretation process. It will be structured around a very short introduction by the moderator, some creative word-play tasks by the participants and lots of discussion within the group. 

Participants are required to bring with them an object (personal or from a museum context) which for them connects (in any way) with the concept of "sensation".

These objects will be the pop-up collection based on which this workshop will unfold. Advice: Do not bring very big or fragile objects that will be difficult to carry. Be practical but also creative in your choice.

 

Marlen Mouliou is Assistant Professor of Museology at the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and a member of the Special Cross-faculty Committee of the MA in Museum Studies. She is responsible for the Public Archeology activities organised in the context of NKUA’s Excavation at Marathon and Coordinator of CIVIS Alliance Open Labs in the NKUA. In 2023, she has been awarded a Fellowship by Fulbright Foundation in Greece. 

Her research interests focus on: the social role of museums, museums as spiritual places, museum history and contemporary museums’ operations, public archeology, etc. In 2020, she created The Museum Inside Me,  a participatory initiative aimed at promoting the public value of museums. Together with Mark O’Neill and Jette Sandahl, she co-edited the book Revisiting Museums of Influence. Four decades of Innovation and Public Quality in European Museums, Routledge, 2021

Marlen studied Archaeology and History of Art at the NKUA and Museology (MA, PhD) at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK 


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Afternoon – Part 2. Plenary

Planétarium, 27 boulevard de la Victoire         

 

16:30 – 16:45

COFFEE BREAK


16:45 – 17:45    

Round Table « Experience sharing and feedback on the workshops”

Moderation by Kristel WAUTIER (Ghent University Museum)

 

18:00 – 19:00    

Planetarium show

 

19:00 – 21:00   

COCKTAIL RECEPTION


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Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Morning - plenary

ISIS – Institut de Science et Ingénierie Supramoléculaires, 8 allée Gaspar Monge

 

8:45 – 9:00 

Welcome – registration of the participants

 

9:00 – 10:35

PRESENTATIONS: “CREATIVE OBTL APPROACHES AND TOOLS”

Moderation by Frank MEIJER (SAE)


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PRESENTATIONS


The Science Museum as a Stage for Meaning-Making

 

This talk uses the Ghent University Museum as a case study to explore the shift of science museums from knowledge-mediating institutions to spaces that foster meaning-making. How can science museums evolve into places of active contemplation without compromising their mission to promote scientific literacy and critical citizenship? Can science, which inherently pursues objective knowledge, be reframed to offer existential experiences? What does this mean for engaging diverse audiences and embracing multiperspectivism?

Through the lens of the Ghent University Museum, we will examine how curators can transform objects from passive knowledge carriers into active “actants” that stimulate thought. By approaching curation as a form of performance, this talk investigates how a science museum can serve as a dynamic stage for multilayered interpretations.

 

Prof. dr. Marjan Doom is Master in Veterinary Medicine and holds a phd in anatomy. As the director of GUM (Ghent University Museum), that opened its doors in October 2020, she is setting out the mission and vision of the museum. She also curated its permanent display for which she choose a science philosophical narrative, juxtaposing objects from a wide range of disciplines (from the humanities and social sciences to the hard sciences). This approach aims to evoke reflection on scientific thinking and the process of knowledge creation rather than to clarify research output and results. With this vision, GUM fully embraces the societal role of universities to encourage and educate critical citizenship. Simultaneously, this approach embraces the societal role of museums as public spaces where reflection and dialogue are activated. She is affiliated with the research group culture and education (UGent).

Author of "The Museum of Doubt" and TedX speaker https://youtu.be/qVCUC6kP9wU


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Teaching with DOLCE: creating spaces for students to build object-related digital literacy 

The Digital Object Learning Centre (DOLCE) aims to build digital literacy in dealing with collections and object databases. The project was developed at Goethe University Frankfurt as part of its Digital Teaching and Learning Lab (DigiTeLL) programme. It is run on the learning platform Moodle and focuses on the university’s collection database Collecting Objects and Data (CODA). The guiding principles for the development of the platform follow the approach of a self-paced, flexible, low-threshold, bite-sized, interactive learning design. After successfully completing the step-wise and asynchronous modules including tutorials, exercises, and challenges, the users receive a certificate.  After its first test-run in a seminar with Archeology students during winter semester 2023/2024, DOLCE is currently in its second project phase with the aim to make it available as Open Educational Resources (OER). Whereas a targeted application of DOLCE was achieved through tailoring the project to a specific seminar, making the platform available as OER requires a review of technical conditions, didactic methods, and scopes of application. In the beginning of the evaluation phase we identified components that are suitable for a standardized version of DOLCE. Next to focusing on these components and fathoming the users' perspectives, the success of the project relies on mediating the importance of object-based research and teaching with objects.

 

Johanna Sentef is an anthropologist with a background in interdisciplinary science and technology studies (MA, Goethe University Frankfurt) and works at the intersection of art and science. From 2021 to 2023 she contributed to the exhibition program at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden as curatorial assistant and co-curator. In 2024, she was elected as a board member of SUSTAIN, ICOM’s International Committee for Museums and Sustainable Development, where she is committed to making visible under-researched instruments and strategies for sustainable transformation processes in and through museums. She is currently developing the Digital Object Learning Centre (DOLCE) at the Coordination of the Goethe University Collections while also teaching at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology.

 

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Creating an infrastructure for Object Based Teaching and Learning at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

 

How do we achieve deeper learning experiences, gain skills and address complex topics through engaging with objects? This is a question we ask ourselves at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. At the University Library, we have five unique heritage collections available for use in education. In practice, these collections are not being used in education very often. When they are used, it is by a limited range of disciplines. In this talk, we will tell you how we encourage the use of our special collections in education through our Object Based Teaching and Learning initiative. We will present the infrastructure that we have created for lecturers, discuss the tools we have developed for curators, and reflect on some of our applications of OBTL in higher education.

 

Anouk Nuijten is subject librarian for Humanities for the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds a PhD in Celtic Studies from Cambridge University and specialized in manuscript and early print book culture. She takes care of the collections for the Faculty of Humanities and teaches workshops on information literacy and how to find sources. She is also project leader for the library, having recently completed project Re:Book, an initiative that rethinks the way we interact with our physical collections. Anouk is part of the Object Based Teaching and Learning initiative team within the library.

Linde Voorend is a project leader in the educational support department for the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). She has a background in Cultural Anthropology and is specialized in visual ethnography, sexuality and the body. At the VU, she supports lecturers in using innovative resources in their education, such as 3D printed objects and Virtual Reality environments. She is also the project lead on the topic of open education and open educational resources. Linde is part of the Object Based Teaching and Learning initiative team within the library.

 

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Unboxing objects in teaching, with public audiences, and in health research

In this talk I will share experiences from my work as curator of the Appendix initiative at Medical Museion, and from my current position as a health complexity researcher. I will focus on the activity called Unboxing – an activity where participants mirror the role of a museum worker: they put on plastic gloves, open the lid of an acid-free box, and explore the object inside. The activity was originally developed by colleagues as a children’s holiday activity. We have since translated it into an all-ages public activity, a way of teaching students on different levels, and as a way of engaging researchers.


 Simone Grytter is a medical and visual anthropologist. She holds a PhD degree from Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, where she has also worked as a curator and project manager. She is currently an assistant professor at Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, University of Copenhagen. She works with explorative qualitative methods, including the role of museums and objects in teaching and research.


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„and a lot more is retained” - object-based learning from the student perspective

 

Based on qualitative interviews, the presentation will provide an insight into object-based learning in university seminars. The focus will be on the experiences and statements of the students, who have taken part in a seminar dealing with collection objects. At the same time, an attempt will be made to draw conclusions from their descriptions about the use of objects in teaching. Based on this, results on the special potentials of object-based teaching and the learning processes as well as the learning successes are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the students' statements are analyzed with regard to the goal of research-oriented learning and the advantages of using objects to learn academic skills.

 

Dr. Christiana Bers is research associate at the Institute of Educational Science with a focus on general and historical education in Göttingen since 2012.

After completing her doctorate (2018), asking how the university has been discussed between scientific mission, study and education since the beginning of the Bologareform, she focused on the question of the materiality of knowledge in her habilitation thesis (submitted in April 2024). The focus here is particularly on university knowledge processes and the communication of science through and with objects. In addition to object-based learning and teaching, she works on questions of educational research in higher education, museum education and cultural education, science studies and philosophy of education.

 

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What assessment of learning within the framework of the OBTL?”

 

Assessing student learning appropriately and fairly is a daily challenge for teachers. What methods should be used to avoid overloading students and teachers? What can be assessed? How can we do things differently? How can subjectivity be reduced? How can feedback be provided? The issues of marking, feedback, the construction of criterion-referenced assessment grids and the use of self-assessment will be some of the points addressed in relation to OBTL.

 

Christian Sauter has a doctorate in educational science and is a teaching adviser at the Institut de Développement et d'Innovations pédagogiques (IDIP) at the University of Strasbourg.


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10:35 – 10:50   COFFEE BREAK

 

10:50 – 11:45   “Evaluating OBTL”

Moderation by Sarah LINK (University of Berlin)

 

11:45 – 12:00   

WRAP-UP, by Marlen MOULIOU (University of Athens)

 

12:00 – 12:30  

Open discussion “And now… let’s contribute!”

Moderation by Sofia TALAS (University of Padua)

 

12:30 – 12:40   

Closing remarks and thanks by Sébastien SOUBIRAN and the project partners

 

12:40 – 13:20   LUNCH BREAK – Lunch bags

 

Afternoon – optional guided tours

Historical campus

 

13:30 – 14:45   

Guided tours:  Museum of Seismology / Observatory of Astronomy / Museum of Zoology (renovation site)

 

PRACTICAL INFORMATIONS


CONTACTS 

“Teaching with Objects” – Coordination of the disseminating event

julie.morgen@unistra.fr / +33(0)3 68 85 24 46

“Teaching with Objects” - Project Coordination

delphine.issenmann@unistra.fr / +33 (0)3 68 85 05 33


EVENT LOCATION


Tuesday November 19, 2024

Jardin des sciences / Planétarium - Université de Strasbourg

27 boulevard de la Victoire, 67000 Strasbourg


Wednesday, November 20, 2024 

ISIS (Institut de sciences et d'ingénierie supramoléculaires)

8 allée Gaspard Monge, 67000 Strasbourg

(6mn walk from the planetarium).


Access

Tram: lines C, E, F – ‘Université’ tram station

Bus: lines 10, 30 - ‘Gallia’ bus stop / lines L1, 2 - ‘Observatoire’ bus stop


HOTEL SUGGESTIONS


Near University district

Near train station