Learning with objects and collections: Multimodal Pedagogies and Assessments

WEDNESDAY 6 Nov, 2019,   17:00-18:30

Location: Room 746,  UCL Institute of Education,  20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL

How can material culture and museum collections help to transform our higher education curricula?

Dr Thomas Kador from UCL’s interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (BASc) programme will talk about his work on designing modules that have objects and collections at their core, enabling experiential learning.

Object-based learning (OBL) is a relatively new pedagogy involving facilitated interaction with material culture for educational purposes, and can be conducted with any material object. In this seminar, Dr Kador will outline the key pedagogical bases for OBL and will focus on its application in higher education.

Drawing examples from the second year  BASc module Object Lessons and the final year Arts, Nature and Wellbeing, Dr Kador will discuss how material objects that form part of museums and heritage collections tend to offer particularly strong opportunities for learner engagement. The presentation will also focus on how an object-based approach to teaching can facilitate multimodal assessment methods.

The session is an opportunity to rethink our learning environments and consider ways to facilitate experiential and multimodal approaches to higher education.

About the speaker

Dr Thomas Kador is a Senior Teaching Fellow and Departmental Tutor on UCL’s interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (BASc) programme. He leads on a number of core and elective modules, including the second year Object Lessons and the final year Arts, Nature and Wellbeing, both building on an experiential learning framework. His research, covers archaeology, the use of material culture, especially in HE curricula. Some of this can be freely downloaded from UCL and UCL IoE press.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/basc/people/academic-staff/thomas-kador

The Visual and Multimodal Research Forum is a research hub for academic discussion on multimodality run by the UCL Centre for Multimodal Research. For information about future events visit:  https://multimodalforum.wordpress.com/                                                                                     

For any enquiries, please contact sophia.diamantopoulou@ucl.ac.uk