Humanities Retention Funding Application 2010/11
Project title: Learning at your fingertips: increasing student retention through use of object-based
teaching to support different learning styles
Project director: Dr. Lindy Crewe, Archaeology, Research Fellow the Manchester Museum.
Project facilitator: Dr. Jolene Debert, Archaeology
Context
This project will employ archaeological methodologies to develop three stand-alone seminar
teaching sets as case studies, using the collections of the Manchester Museum, aimed at targeting
the full range of learning styles amongst students (see further below). Initially, subject areas chosen
for development in the 2010/11 academic year are all within SAHC but this application has potential
for engaging large numbers of students and thereby increasing retention across the university.
Teaching sets will reside in the Manchester Museum and will be designed for use by tutorial groups
within the museum’s Resource Centre and making use of all the museum’s collections (natural
history and geology, archaeology and Egyptology, living cultures) in order to address a range of
subjects and avenues for exploration. Housing the project within the museum also allows
considerably greater reach and impact than that of a conventional subject-specific project.
Aims and objectives:
 To expand the range of learning styles used in SAHC undergraduate programmes
 To increase student satisfaction and thereby increase student retention
 To increase the use of the Manchester Museum collections and learning environments
 To facilitate a smooth transition from school to university level learning through innovative
teaching techniques and learning environments
 To focus students inquiry towards the process of learning rather than the resulting knowledge
 To create three online GLOs (generative learning objects), which can also be used to explore
student responses in class and provide immediate feedback.
Subjects to be included and numbers of students to benefit
The three subject areas chosen for development in this proposal are Archaeology, History, and
Religions and Theology. History and Religions and Theology are traditionally non-object based
disciplines and these students will be exposed to a new style of learning. Archaeology
undergraduate feedback has included requests for more object handling during Level 1. Two
strategies will be employed to develop and test the concepts. Two teaching sets will be developed
within existing Level 3 second semester Archaeology courses and the third with the assistance of
History GTAs, responsible for implementing History Level 1 tutorials. These case studies will allow
us to gage student/tutor satisfaction and serve as a foundation for designing further object-based
seminars. Teaching sets developed this academic year will be ready to be utilised by colleagues in
the above disciplines in 2011/12. Following a successful pilot, future opportunities for expanding this
programme lie across all disciplines, in consultation with relevant academics. All teaching sets will
be designed for use by Level 1 students in a seminar/tutorial environment and therefore high
numbers of students can be reached (ie. all Level 1 students in participating subjects). In addition
the GLOs (see below) will also appear on the subject area and Manchester Museum web pages,
reaching greater numbers of students (and interested non-students) outside regular class hours.
Why Object-based learning?
When students enter university they are a heterogeneous group with different experiences and
educational backgrounds. The students also differ in the way they learn. The acronym VARK (visual,
aural, read/write and kinaesthetic) is a method for determining from which of the above four styles of
learning a student gains most (Fleming 1995), is already favoured by the University of Manchester
within the New Academics Programme to encourage academics to explore new methods of
engaging students. Object-based learning, like most learning styles, is a mode of teaching that is
geared towards increasing student engagement and knowledge transfer. What is unique about this
teaching style is that it is tactile in nature. This allows visual learners to see the object, aural learners
to hear the object in their hands and to describe it out loud, read/write learners to write notes on the
object, and kinaesthetic learners to manipulate the object, to suggesting function, meaning, origin
etc. Object-based learning is the corner stone of the discipline of archaeology; as such the
archaeological background of both the project director and project facilitator means that they are
well versed in the use of objects in learning.
Level 1 class sizes across the university (with the lowest retention rates) are large and it is
impossible to cater for each student, to determine their learning style and then tailor teaching
accordingly. It is possible, however, to change teaching methodologies to incorporate aspects of the
different styles into at least some of their Level 1 experience. This multi-modal teaching method
should increase the level of student engagement and thereby increase satisfaction and retention.
Clearly it is through smaller tutorial groups that this type of learning style works best. This is why this
project aims to provide fully prepared seminar sets, easily utilised with little preparation by
academics or GTA from disciplines that may not normally consider object-based methods.
Use of E-learning
In the process of working with the objects the students will be creating storyboards of their enquiry
process. These storyboards will later be changed into online GLOs (generative learning objects,
http://www.glomaker.org/) as a means of extending the life and impact of the project. The GLOs will
be placed on the Manchester Museum and subject area websites, ensuring the continuation of the
seminars after the project has finished and allowing visitors to the web pages to work through the
object-based seminars online. The rationale behind the project builds upon archaeology’s unique
position as a discipline with a strong reliance on material culture studies. Students will be
encouraged to question their assumptions about exotic/everyday objects and materials, to be
adventurous with their interpretations to create a narrative around the objects, and to appreciate
how different types of data sets may contain different types of knowledge. The nature of GLOs also
means that the exploration experience is dependent upon the learning pathways chosen. The
absence of a right/wrong answer should build confidence and encourage students to consider their
learning experience in a new light.
Breakdown of costs
Staffing Costs
Project Facilitator: 1 day a week (.2FTE)
15/11/10- 30/06/11 scale 24 £3000
Digitisation Cost
Photography and image
manipulation: 2.5 days £400
Total
£3400
The project team will, with the assistance of curatorial staff in the museum, select the objects and
develop the narrative streams. The project facilitator has extensive experience in both object-based
learning and working with GLOs. She will need to spend time constructing the storyboards and
satisfaction questionnaires. In order to facilitate the creation of the GLOs the objects that are used in
the three seminars must be digitised and funds for photography and image manipulation are
therefore sought. Once created these GLOs need to be up loaded and given space on the different
subject area web pages and this is where the Faculty eLearning Team will be invaluable.
Measurement of the success of project
The success of the project will be monitored in a number of ways. Firstly, student satisfaction will be
measured during the Semester 2 2010/11 pilot. Thereafter retention statistics can be monitored for
participating subject area classes. Secondly, feedback will be gathered directly from the students,
systematically at the beginning and end of the project. A questionnaire will be given to students at
the start and the end of the course containing the additional object-based seminar. Finally, feedback
will also be acquired from the lecturers of the courses involved.
Continuing support
 The seminars created with the collections from the Manchester Museum are a reusable resource,
which will also benefit from the museum’s extensive education/outreach programmes;
 GLOs created during the duration of the project will be made available on both the Manchester
Museum webpage and the subject area’s homepages;
 The three sets to be created in 2010/11 will not require further input of funds. Creation of
additional sets is something that can be considered in future years as costs will be minimal after
this initial pilot stage.
School account code: AA02767
References: Fleming, N.D; (1995), I'm different; not dumb. Modes of presentation (VARK) in the tertiary classroom, in
Zelmer,A., (ed.) Research and Development in Higher Education, Proceedings of the 1995 Annual Conference of the
Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA),HERDSA, Volume 18, pp. 308 – 313.