“Wikis for Critical Thinking and Contextual Application”

Our assignment this week was to create a lesson plan for a wiki project that stimulates critical thinking or contextual application, based on the project templates in West and West (2009). Since I’m kind of a traditional, content-focused guy when it comes to education, I chose to work with the collaborative research paper template, described by West and West as “the most common and traditional group writing project” (p. 88). Collaborative research projects foster critical thinking, information literacy, and group work skills (West & West).

This lesson plan is intended to encourage students in a twentieth century European history course to view history and society through the prism of the lives and works of major period artists. It encourages critical thinking through making connections between artists’ biographies and themes and the events and social trends of their times. Accessing the wide variety of sources on artists’ works and lives will contribute to information literacy, and the requirement to work as a team in the open editing wiki environment will enhance collaborative experience.

Wiki Project Title: HIST 386 Group Research on Modern European Artists

Target Audience: HIST 386 Twentieth Century Europe class members (online class)

Purpose: Artists often embody and reflect in their works the spirit of their times and the concerns and conflicts of their societies. In this wiki project, class groups will collaborate to research and present the lives and works of twentieth century European artists. Each group will research one artist and build a wiki page that will add to our understanding of European history through the perspective of the artist’s biography and artistic themes.

Frame: The class has been divided into groups of three. Each group will choose one artist to research and write about. A class wiki has been established, with a page for each group to create its collaborative view of the life and work of its chosen artist. Each group also has a group planning and research page to use as a work space and resource reservoir throughout the project.

Group Planning and Research Page: This page may be accessed through the wiki “Planning/Research” page, where there is a link to each group’s planning and research page. Use this page to decide on your artist, to discuss group member roles, to outline your artist page, and to build your reference and resource materials.

Artist Page: This is where you will present your artist’s life and artistic themes, and how these relate to and elucidate twentieth century European history. A recommended approach to building this page is to transfer your working outline from your planning and research page, and then to use your references and resources to collaboratively write and edit your text. Resources may include artist monographs, exhibition catalogues, biographies, articles, reviews, and museum guides. You are also encouraged to take advantage of the multi-media capabilities of the wiki to embed Web links, videos and graphics to provide examples of the artist’s works, and scenes from and insights about his or her life and times.

Management Tips:

·         This project can be accomplished through a free service such as pbWiki or Wikispaces.
·         Allowing each group to choose its own artist to research is a good way to initiate group dialogue and use of the planning and research page. However, set a relatively short deadline for groups to select their subject and move on to research and writing.
·         Groups that desire to use a discussion forum in addition to the planning and research page may use the group pages that have been set up in the online class website.

Additional Resources:

·         Art History Resources: 20th-Century Art: http://arthistoryresources.net/ARTH20thcentury.html
·         The Metropolitan Museum of Art: European Art in the Twentieth Century: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/te_index.asp?i=19
·         Top Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Primer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M-X7nwqLlg

 

KSU Cuz

Reference

West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.