Activity: Creating Online Exhibitions for the Public

Showcase / Showcase: Creating Online Exhibitions for the Public / Activity : Creating Online Exhbitions for the Public

Sarah Longair – Senior Lecturer – School of History & Heritage – Staff Profile

Summary:

The idea of this activity is to give students the creative space to design their own unique virtual online exhibition, based on 6 objects of their choosing from physical or online museums and collections. For each object, students write a 100 word ‘label’ giving a relevant summary of the object and include all of the relevant museum curation data. To complete the exhibition students script a general introduction to the collection.

To make up the 2,500 word requirement for a formal assessment, students also provide a written essay explaining their choices, and the collection’s theme. All text is additionally submitted in via Turnitin along with a link to the finished exhibition, for formal assessment.

What is attractive about this particular activity is that it represents a departure from the usual formal assessment format and allows students to choose their own theme. It also helps students to extend their skills in writing in a nonacademic style for lay audiences.

One limitation to be aware of is that, while there are several free open-source apps specifically designed for this type of online heritage exhibition, these are not currently supported by the University. As such this recipe refers to relevant technologies that are supported, such as Prezi and Xerte. 

Further development:

To develop this activity further, students could run a live question and answer session with a panel to explain their collection.

Methods and tools used:

To get a full understanding of the tools and methods used, please visit our activity instructions page by clicking here.