Creative learning with cultural collections and objects
International panel and visits to Lund University's collection
On the 7th of February 2022, a seminar was held at Skissernas museum to discuss how Lund University's rich collections could be better used in courses and study programmes. Before the seminar, participants were invited to guided tours at Skissernas museum, the Historical museum, the Botanical Garden, and the Old Bishop’s House.
At the seminar, we were joined by colleagues with long experience of how art, artifacts and living things could be used in teaching:
- Dr Thomas Kador, Associate Professor at University College London. Teaching at the UCL Arts & Sciences (BASc) programme, and at the newly established MA programme in Creative Health. Thomas Kador is also leading a research project on Student Wellbeing and Experiential Learning Spaces
- Dr Kwang Cham, Senior Lecturer at Melbourne University. Teaching Optometry and Vision Sciences and educational developer for interdisciplinary courses using OBL to enhance critical thinking and creativity.
- Dr Heather Gaunt, Curator at Grainger Museum, Melbourne University
- Dr Jim Harris, Teaching Curator at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University Leader of the Academic Engagement programmes and the Ashmolean Faculty Fellows programme, offering Oxford faculty the opportunity to work in the Museum to develop new, collections-based teaching.
A video recording of the panel session can be found here.
About object-based learning
Art, artifacts and living things can be used for creative and student-centred teaching and for engaging all senses. Nature, museums, the city and different untraditional spaces can be used as alternative classrooms. Representation of knowledge and phenomenon can take other forms than text, images and speech. Students’ interaction with the world can be mediated in new (or, perhaps, older) and more tangible ways.
Object-based learning is not an established concept in Sweden, but it is becoming widely used in many international universities as a part of creative and experiential learning. University College London were pioneers, and have a newly established learning lab for object-based learning, as well as a new master programme on creative health, see here.