Omeka in the Classroom: The Challenges of Teaching Material Culture in a Digital World

Omeka in the Classroom: The Challenges of Teaching Material Culture in a Digital World
Marsh, Allison, University of South Carolina, allisonmarsh@yahoo.com
For presenters and attendees at DH2011, there is no need to sing the praises of the digital world. We are the early adopters, the converted, the evangelists. But our colleagues across the humanities are not yet entirely convinced, and of more concern to me, neither are the students. I direct the museum studies track of the masters in public history at the University of South Carolina, one of the oldest public history programs in the country. It is a nationally competitive program, and our graduates have an impressive placement record: the Smithsonian; the National Park Service; federal, state, and local government. And yet, since I joined the faculty three years ago, I have been shocked that the students – the so-called digital natives – have little interest in the digital world as part of their professional training. They may communicate with each other using Facebook, share photos on Flickr, or post to their personal blogs, but when it comes to coursework they expect, and sometimes demand, a traditional graduate seminar where we read and discuss books. More than one student has balked at my assignments, whining, “I don’t need to learn how to program. I just want to be a regular historian.” Unyielding in my persistence, I argue back that it is no longer an option. Wikis, blogs, and tweeting are everyday realities for museum professionals. At the very minimum, all curators and collections managers need to have a basic understanding of database architecture in order to structure their object databases and construct useful queries. More importantly, two decades of digitization has created new questions for curators of three-dimensional objects: What does material culture look like on the web? How do you curate it? How does the public interact with virtual objects? What is the relationship between virtual and physical museum artifacts?

Each fall I teach HIST 787: Material Culture Studies, the foundational graduate seminar for the museums track in our masters program. On the first day of class, I ask the students to bring in five objects that describe either themselves or their research interests. I tell them to choose wisely, as they will be using those objects every week for the entire semester, but otherwise I give no guidance to object selection. The objects serve multiple purposes throughout the semester, but most importantly they are part of a larger project to create an object database that represents the changing attitudes towards material culture in the digital age. Each year the students must create an online exhibit drawing from the objects in the database, the objects of both their classmates as well as the students of previous years. Clearly each year the number of objects in the database increases, and the distance from the early contributors becomes greater. I am in Year 3 of what I anticipate to be a decade long study, and this short paper presentation is designed to give preliminary results. Because this course is part of a two-year masters degree, this is the first year where the students do not have direct access to the owners of objects from previous classes.

I have chosen Omeka as the platform for this assignment. Although I am well aware of the limitations, as well as the potential, of the open source software, Omeka has a low barrier for entry. Omeka was developed by George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media with non-IT specialists in mind. CHNM’s goal was (and continues to be) to provide museum and library professionals with a tool that allows them to concentrate on content and interpretation without worrying about programming. I am concerned that by using a black box application my students don’t fully understand the implications of engaging with the virtual world. However, that is one of the compromises I have made in order to encourage budding historians to get their toes wet in the digital arena.

For their final assignment, students must create records for each of their objects, which includes uploading images, entering Dublin Core metadata, tagging objects with key words, and writing short descriptions. The students then must curate their own exhibit, either by using one of the theme templates provided by CHNM or by creating their own. The open source software allows students who are more skilled or interested in web design to create more elaborate exhibits.

So far the results of the online exhibits have been mostly disastrous. As a whole, the exhibits are terrible (available at (link) ). They have clunky navigation, lack any elegance in design, and often are just plain boring. In many ways, the exhibits are proof of my distrust of black box software for developing online exhibits and are an indicator that anyone who wants to engage seriously in the virtual world needs significantly more training (either formally or informally) than a few hours of online tutorials can provide. More generously, these online exhibits are often the first experience students have in curating, and so one of the assignment’s goals is for students to gain skills in developing effective narrative techniques (useful in both physical and digital curation). In assessing their work, it is important to be mindful of the learning process; remember that they are professionals in training, and they should not be judged on their first attempt but rather on the progress they achieve by the time they graduate.

However, as a pedagogical device, the assignment has been tremendously successful. By working through the process of creating an online exhibit, the students naturally confront the many epistemic questions relating to the use of physical objects in a virtual environment. Students immediately recognize the diverse challenges of working in the digital format, from the pedestrian, such as how to search for items when a previous user failed to enter appropriate metadata, to the substantial, such as questioning the ethics of using an object as a metonym in an exhibit that is antithetical to the physical object’s authenticity. My goal for the assignment is not for students to become master web designers, but for them to engage in the questions confronting digital curation.

Although I could talk at length about the implications of this ongoing assignment, this short paper will focus on the joint challenges of curating digital resources and the role of digital humanities in the academic curricula – how are universities training the next generation of museum professionals who will have to confront digital curation. My presentation will be a snap shot of a longitudinal study that is currently in progress. I will briefly describe the assignment, its goals, and the unexpected lessons learned thus far. I hope to reach fellow members of the academy to discuss effective teaching techniques while at the same time seeking feedback from museum professionals as to what skills they believe graduating students should have. How do professors balance the need to provide theoretical training in how to read and interpret material culture while fostering the development of technical skills in an ever-changing digital landscape?