The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle opens Book 1 of Metaphysics with the following statement:-

“All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”

We can attribute the recognition of a single gender and privileging of the visual sense over others to the cultural context of the time. It is, nevertheless, powerful recognition of the fact that we engage with the world as a way of building knowledge of it through our senses. Aristotle is stating that observation is the pathway to enlightened understanding. In other words, the relationship between the known and the knower is an interactive one. We do not gain knowledge by standing apart from the world; instead, it is achieved by interacting it. We fathom reality by working within it rather than by being separate from it. This thread of connectivity can be seen in many non-western systems of knowledge. The educational philosophy of recent theorists such as John Dewey and David Kolb align with this deeper historic train of thought.

History tells us that the urge to collect is a universal human trait. Even are close relatives, the Neanderthals made collections of naturally occurring objects (Monnier 2012). The impulse to organise and name objects in collections is the basis of our modern understanding of taxonomy. In the sixteenth century the urge to collect lead to the phenomena of the ‘cabinets of curiosity’, considered the forerunner of the modern museum. For the elite, it confirmed the existence of a sense of order in the world underscored by the existence of a divine being establishing a continuity between art and nature (Impey & MacGregor, 1985).

Objects are said to be sticky with meaning. As noted above, ever since antiquity they have been a fundamental way of knowing the world. They are also a focus for transmitting our understanding of the world to others and, as such, are both vessels that embody and transmit meaning. They can be found in museum collections around the world, and are primary source materials for a diverse range of learning and teaching possibilities.

Some scholars (e.g. Thomas 2016) note that objects have a dual character, or contradictory nature. On one hand they are definitive, observable, readily described and immutable. On the other-hand they lack fixity, are readily re-contextualised, multiply reinterpreted and ascribed highly variable values in their engagement with our ever-changing knowledge systems. Is it this dynamic between object and context that makes them such effective educational tools.

Using objects in teaching is always a joy and in many cases a privilege because objects can be considered as evidence. If it is a specimen from the natural world it could be evidence of the existence of a particular variety of a particular species. If it is a human-made object it could be evidence of human ingenuity and / or cultural beliefs. It is often said that what makes up all of humanity’s knowledge systems essentially consists of two different forms of information, text and object. Sometimes there can be hybrids such as the Rosetta Stone, it combines text and object-hood. In a well-balanced teaching institution the university museum is as central to university business as the library. The high quality of a university library and university museum will nurture students during their journey of discovery as part of their learning experiences in higher education.

The American educational philosopher, John Dewey, spoke of an engagement between an observer and an object as consisting of an exchange between the two. As a teacher working with objects you can see this when a student suddenly has a realisation or gains an insight through engaging with an object. Through the engagement of multiple senses, object-based learning therefore draws on embodied and experiential pedagogies to construct meaning. Educational theorists refer to this as constructivism. The objects are utilities for building meaning and vehicles of transport on a journey of learning.

One useful way for educators to think about objects is the analogy with a bunch of grapes. You can consider the object itself is the stem of the bunch and the individual grapes make up different parcels of information. A skilled educator will introduce the different parts of the bunch of grapes to their students in ways that give them the opportunity to build their own insights and construct their own meanings.

Another educational theorist whose work allowed the integration of Dewey’s ideas on object engagement into a theory of learning was David Kolb, in particular his theory of experiential learning (Kolb 1984). Kolb's theory works on two levels: there is a four-stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles. Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal cognitive processes. Essentially, learning is seen as the process where knowledge is created by the transformation of experience.

Object-based learning is therefore a form of active learning. Students engage in active learning either when working independently through reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation or in groups as a socially constructed form of active learning. Apart from the visual, objects can also offer a tactile experience for students. This can provide challenges that help conceptualise their thinking by asking questions around form and function of the object. A teacher in one of these sessions will act more as a facilitator or guide while the students construct their own meaning through interactions with each other that are centred on the object (Hannan et al., 2013). This is a social constructivist approach to learning where the students develop knowledge and understanding though interaction with objects based on their prior shared conceptual understanding (Chatterjee & Hannan, 2015). In this way, it is possible for the students to explore ideas, processes and events related to the object and link observations to complex abstract ideas and concepts, or challenge some of these existing suppositions.

Objects can be particularly stimulating in relation to learning processes when handled and studied closely. They can ground abstract experiences, enable recall of knowledge, and arouse curiosity. (Hooper-Greenhill 1999). This plays into the process of the cognitive, motivational, and emotional aspects of learning, providing powerful lessons that are readily recalled years later and aids the retention of didactic information (Simpson & Hammond 2012).

Object-based learning is a practice with a deep history in higher education. Objects have always been closely associated with knowledge acquisition. It is therefore natural for knowledge-based organisations to collect and utilize objects and specimens to generate and transmit knowledge. It is a scholarly tradition that stretches back to antiquity.

One exercise commonly used in the study of museology is where students are asked to bring a specific object into class and talk about it to their fellow students. It is extraordinary some of the things that people will bring in, but even more extraordinary what these objects can mean to those who know them, even the simplest and most common items can carry the most vibrant stories.

One of them was a simple shell collected from the beach on the southern coast of New South Wales (Australia) during a summer holiday as a child. It was a low spired shell where the whorls of the mollusc grew in size rapidly, yet it was still small enough to be held in one hand. The shell had interesting patterns of dark and light on the outside. The beach where the shell was found was a place where the forest came right down to the sea. The patterns of light and dark on the shell were a reminder of the way summer light played through the forest canopy. For the finder of the shell it sparked memories of long hot days, cool blue waters full of sea grass, hot sand between the toes, the noise of sea gulls and even the smell of salt in the air. This was a classic example of an object acting as an anchor. The shell provided a rich personal aesthetic context for the owner of the object, one that triggers memories that are recalled through all the senses. Imagine being able to harness that power in teaching!

Objects can also act as bridges or links between disciplines. The shape of the spiral of the shell is reminiscent of the shape of a typhoon when seen from space, the arms of a galaxy of stars, the twists of the double helix of DNA. So the shape of a simple shell can be used to inspire the study of astronomy, biomolecular science or meteorology. The ability of objects to link between different disciplinary areas of knowledge also makes them powerful pedagogical tools (Bartlet 2012). Objects have the potential to awaken new ways of knowing, seeing and engaging. They carry context that provides links between past and present, they stimulate curiosity, deepen understanding and improve knowledge retention.

While object-based learning has historically been used in certain academic disciplines, especially those reliant on observation such as archaeology, geology, art history etc, where close examination and comparison has always been part of scholarship; what happens to a university if we breach those disciplinary silos and apply it as an educational methodology across the entire institution? The answer to that question can be quite surprising. Apart from transforming the university’s teaching practices; positive, impactful change can be seen in many other areas of institutional activity.

In 2018, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a mapping project at my university (Thogersen et al. 2018) that sought to increase the use of objects in university museums across the curriculum. The project involved the collections of two history museums on campus and extending their use into a range of academic teaching programs, not just within their home Faculty of Arts, but in other areas such as Science, Engineering and Medicine. This involved university museum staff proactively working with curriculum designers and academic teaching staff to raise awareness of the content of the museum collections and seek out opportunities where collection objects could be applied to their teaching practice.

Workshops were held with staff who already used objects in teaching and those who were interested in extending their teaching practice by introducing object-based learning as part of their teaching content. Those who participated in our workshops shared ideas, stories and experiences and encouraged each other to make greater use of these museum resources, they became our object-based learning community of practice (OBLCoP). In a short period of time the use of objects from university museum collections in teaching programs was steadily increasing. Teachers would use objects in a variety of different ways; as illustrations for lectures, as the focus of tutorial discussions and as part of assessment tasks. Here are some of the comments by teaching staff from our OBLCoP workshops:-

“It’s great trying to get students to think about how to communicate and seeing things differently when using objects. It’s a different way of thinking than having them sit down and prepare a presentation or write an essay.”

“It’s another way of getting ideas across by exploring how objects relate to each other…”

“I think the angle of repurposing the object is fantastic. You can challenge students to think about other examples from their everyday experience…”

“…my idea was to tie an initial assignment, which is a reading based, to an object in the collection. I thought that it would be a new way of thinking for the students….”

“…what we would like to do next year is make it a little more focused, so the performance that they create will be based on one of the object/artefacts as a starting point, so the object/ artefact will be like a pretext for them deciding how they might present”

With a combined university museums database, teaching staff can make a regular habit of sifting through collections to seek out the latest acquisitions and consider how they will be useful in their teaching practice whenever they are planning each new teaching semester. Curriculum applications are only the start. In a recent essay (Simpson 2019) I outlined four inter-related ways in which museum collections can bring value to the work of the university (Simpson 2019).

The first is about using museum collection objects to tell a story about your university. It involves identifying the objects that are significant in terms of university history, those that reflect on the university’s achievements, those that make your university a unique institution, those that tell stories of your university’s engagement with national and international aspirations and agendas, those that reflect a unique institutional culture. These can be used to construct powerful institutional narratives in the form of both exhibitions and digital platforms. Imagine the impact of an induction program where all new students and staff gain some insights about the type of university of which they are becoming a part. It can be transformative, inducing strong sentiments of institutional loyalty and alignment. This form of cultural production can also be used in engagement programs for alumni. A growing number of universities world-wide are developing this form of cultural production as a way of valorising their achievement and broadcasting a distinctive institutional identity.

The second relates to the cross-disciplinary potential of collection objects. Increasingly museum collections in higher education are being seen as tools for facilitating inter-disciplinary engagements in teaching and research. This introduces many new audiences from beyond the discipline-specific nature of their original pedagogic application. Many university museums, particularly art museums, do cross-disciplinary programming with both exhibitions and events. This is easily done in an academic setting where there is a diversity of intellectual resources available. Exhibition projects constructed to specifically cross academic disciplines can generate new perspectives, insight and discourse. This enhances the academic mission by providing a template for interaction between people whose research endeavours are usually confined to a single discipline. New multi-disciplinary discourse can extend beyond the campus drawing in community and professional groups.

The third relates to using collection data with new digital technologies that are transforming our experience of the material with projects that sit at the intersection of art, science and technology. Universities are at the forefront of these new developments. It is argued that with the growth of the digital humanities (Prescott 2012), we are only in the early phases of discovering the ways in which material and digital natures are able to speak to different registers of meaning and perception, and through new configurations, produce new kinds of meaning. As the boundaries between traditional disciplines dissolve (as noted above), there is a growing sense that analogue and digital, fixed and mobile, authentic and surrogate and even cultural production and consumption are best conceptualised as a sliding scale of experience rather than as polar opposites (Simpson 2019).

The fourth way that museum collections bring value to the work of the university is through participation. Here students can be part of the process of cultural production on campus through the development of exhibitions, the delivery of museum events and curatorial research. When students actively participate in the cultural life of the university through the museums and collections, they can be given the space to exercise their own initiative and even take responsibility for their own learning. This means they develop the essential graduate capabilities that come from active learning such as critical analysis, problem solving and collaboration. This leads to a mutual reinforcement of pedagogy and content. It involves interplay of the intellectual, the embodied, and the social creating rich and authentic learning experiences.

In the increasingly competitive world of higher education, universities are looking at ways to more effectively use material collections in support of the triple mission of research, teaching and engagement. The long history of scholarship has resulted in many of the material collections being housed in university museums. As such, they are the raw material for learning, research and cultural production in higher education. The rapid growth of new digital information ecologies around these collections can provide a multitude of new possibilities. This makes our museum collections core university business in the new age of inter-disciplinarity.

References

Bartlett D. (2012). Coaxing them out of the box: Removing disciplinary barriers to collection use. In Jandl, S & Gold, M, (editors). A Handbook for Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education. Edinburgh & Boston: MuseumsEtc.
Chatterjee H.J. & Hannan, L. (2015).Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. Routledge.
Hannan, L., Chatterjee, H., & Duhs, R. (2013). Object Based Learning: A Powerful Pedagogy for Higher Education. In A. Boddington, J. Boys, & C. Speight (Eds.), Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities (p. 159-168). Ashgate Publishing.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). The Educational Role of the Museum. London, UK: Routledge.
Impey, O. & MacGregor, A. (Editors) (1985). The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. Oxford University Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Monnier, G. (2012). Neanderthal Behavior. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):11.
Simpson, A. (2019). Why Academic Museums Matter: Four Frameworks for Considering Their Value. University Museums and Collections Journal, 11 (2), 196-202.
Simpson, A. & Hammond, G. (2012). University collections and object-based pedagogies. University Museums and Collections Journal 5: 75-82.
Prescott, A. (2012). An Electric Current of the Imagination: What the Digital Humanities Are and What They Might Become. Journal of Digital Humanities 1 (2) at: http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/an-electric-current-of-the-imagination-by-andrew-prescott/
Thogersen, J., Simpson, A., Hammond, G., Janiszewski, L., & Guerry, E. (2018). Creating curriculum connections: a university museum object-based learning project. Education for Information, 34(2), pp. 113-120.
Thomas, N. (2016). The Return of Curiosity, what museums are good for in the 21st century. Reaktion Books London.

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