Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

This paper presents a case study on rethinking large lecture survey courses through the use of a flipped classroom allowing students to develop critical curatorial skills by considering real world issues in museums, exhibitions, and cultural institutions. Using three years of data from the author’s World Architecture course which surveys the built environment from prehistory until the seventeenth century, this model demonstrates an entirely unique innovation. Traditional large lecture survey courses rely upon passive education where students are expected to use rote memorization to reproduce ‘facts’ which approximates a virtual inculturation of the world writ large. This passive large format lecture approach historically began in 1809 with Sir John Soane’s lectures at the Royal Academy in London as a means to educate gentlemanly architects on their Grand Tour to Rome and continues today using expanded geographies, chronologies, and topics of inquiry. The author’s course innovates on this existing model incorporating multi-phase group work that organizes students into curatorial teams to address contemporary cultural issues such as what to do with loot at the encyclopedic museum, how do you exhibit architectural histories of violence and destruction such as that at Cahokia and the St. Louis Suburb, and how are historical objects used for national agendas in the present. By situating course content in contemporary cultural issues at stake in museums and archival collections this model significantly increases student engagement, learning outcomes, and outside the classroom possibilities for students and faculty.