Blog post 3

Experience: Group Research Task (Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain) with Year 11 Visual Arts

Teaching Standard: 4.1.4. Use student group structures as appropriate to address teaching and learning goals

Students are nearing Preliminary examinations and begin Year 12 studies next term; this task was designed to help students develop their research skills to use for case studies for their exam and for next term. In this task, students were to identify important information from different articles regarding Marcel Duchamp and the Conceptual Framework. Each group was given a different agency from the Framework (Artist, Artwork, World, and Audience) and then each group member had a different article to read. Students then collaborated their findings with the rest of their group to create a poster focusing on that agency. At the end, groups explained their findings to the rest of the class and the posters were hung on the wall.

Students seemed a bit confused to begin with as they were given small tasks to complete which they had difficulty seeing the bigger picture, however, once they saw what they had completed, students were pleased with how much research the class had discovered. Not only did this task build students personal awareness of how to focus on a single point to find notes on in an article but also how they can study with others to gain more information over a short amount of time.

A few possible ways to improve this lesson:

·         Try to provide clearer explanation of the task to assist with students who were a bit confused at the beginning – perhaps a how to chart which lists the different steps involved in group research.

·         Get students to find their own articles (this could be a feature of the next time this task is done as a means of assessing students understanding of what kinds of articles/information is appropriate).

·         Introduce new articles/get students to find new articles after the first sharing of their findings to see if students can then build on the information they have already discovered.

·         Introduce an essay question at the end of the research task for students to answer or discuss how they would answer it based on the information they have found and what they have learnt from their group members and rest of the classes findings to assess if the information/method of research is useful.