Running an Effective Online Gallery Visit

• Project Team: Lindsay CrispVeronica Davies
• Subject Discipline: Arts and Humanities
• Theme: Employability/CareersEquality, diversity and inclusionMultisensory/multimodal learning
• Project Aim: Enables more students to achieve their study goalsEnhances employability and career progressionImproves and enhance the learning experience of studentsPromotes equality diversity and inclusion including reduction of degree awarding gap
• Status: Complete
• Date: December 2019 to July 2021

We know that there are a number of both tangible and intangible ‘tried and tested’ benefits of face-to-face gallery visits. These include critical engagement with physical art objects; an enhancement of students’ understanding of the role of cultural institutions in the display and interpretation of art objects; opportunities for students to discuss with tutors and fellow students how the visit relates to study of their specific course; and opportunities for a more informal, social interaction than is necessarily possible in a classroom setting. This scholarship project, Running an effective online gallery visit, explores how and to what extent these benefits can be replicated in the online situation by collating data on the experiences of students and their tutors and putting this in the context of other related scholarship.

Open University Art History modules have offered optional gallery visits as part of their tutorial offering for some time, and since the introduction of the principle of providing ‘online alternatives’ for all learning events, online gallery visits have become an integral part of that programme. This project was originally conceived to evaluate how these online gallery visit sessions are being run, and what best practice can be identified and shared. Crucially, it also explores how students perceive the value they add to their studies, and how this can be mediated to them.

The move to all-online teaching, forced by the pandemic, makes this an even more timely piece of scholarship, and an interim report has already been shared with colleagues to take account of this. The immediate aim is to share our findings with art history colleagues within the OU who are currently teaching student groups or engaged in course development. In the longer term, we plan to disseminate this more widely via conference presentations and/or publication.