What is a museum? Drawing as online learning strategy for international students

Abstract

This article recounts the experience of devising and remotely delivering a multi-disciplinary drawing-based online summer course for Chinese students. This pivoted around the question: ‘what is a museum?’ Students were invited to give an initial drawn response prior to the first session. The resulting images provided the basis for whole-group discussion followed by further creative tasks. Activities included designing a museum logo, drawing a representation of an object of special personal significance and writing an interpretative text label. The chosen artefacts were then accessioned into a virtual museum in order to realize the promise of the online course, entitled ‘Museum Makers: Objects, Collections and Display’. This pedagogical endeavour was intended to use drawing to actively engage learners such that they were able to define museums, recognize the value of objects, understand what makes a collection and appreciate the principles of interpretation. Illustrative examples of student work are reproduced alongside an account of the production process and the participants’ views on the effectiveness of drawing as a learning strategy. The paper reflects on the challenges and opportunities of implementing drawing in a non-art context before going on to outline the operationalization and outcomes of the initiative, leading to a series of transferable findings and conclusions.