Sunday afternoon. Keep checking my watch. Just logged onto Skype to have a discussion about the experience of creating Smarthistory.org, a multi-award winning Open Educational Resource with founders, Drs Steven Zucker and Beth Harris. Dr Steven Zucker is a specialist in 19th and 20th-century art and theory and is Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He has received awards for excellence in teaching and authors essays and articles in prestigious art history journals. With Dr. Beth Harris, he created the FIT digital image library and organized conferences on technologies reshaping the practice of teaching art and art history. Dr Beth Harris was an assistant professor of art history at the Fashion Institute of Technology when she created Smarthistory with Dr. Zucker. She has taught both online and in the classroom and also directed FIT's large distance learning program. She is currently Director of Digital Learning at a museum in New York City. Beth is a Victorian Studies specialist and editor of Famine and Fashion: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth Century (2005). With  Steven Zucker, she co- authored "The Slide Library: A Posthumous Assessment in the Service of Our Digital Future,” in Teaching Art History with Technology: Case Studies (2008).

The first time I came across Smarthistory.org was at the Webby Awards. What I really liked about the site was that it immediately engaged me. I wanted to explore it. I have always admired art, especially Byzantine Art and Renaissance Era. In each video and audio in Smarthistory, Beth and Steven, seemed to take me by the hand, in their calm yet enthusiastic manner, allowing me to join their conversation, to learn from them and achieve a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the art object described. I believe that every learner should have teachers like Beth and Steven. This is a discussion with them about how one of the highest aims of scholarship should be entertainment and how when creating an educational resource we should always have the learner 'front and centre'.

How did the idea of Smarthistory.org emerge?


Smarthistory.org grew very organically, you could say that we employed an iterative approach. In 2005, soon after Apple had introduced podcasting, we purchased a $30 microphone, plugged it into an iPod and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to create alternative museum audioguides—something that was more accessible and personal than the scripted monologues then offered. We were inspired by the podcasts that Artmobs had produced. Essentially, we stood in front of a painting or sculpture and had a spontaneous conversation. We really had no plans beyond that. We posted our unscripted (edited) audio conversations on a blog (we used Blogger initially), and after we had completed half-a-dozen or so, created a map indicating the locations of the works that we had discussed. We're not sure if anyone ever downloaded these podcasts or listened to them in the museum. However, we quickly had success in an area we hadn't entirely anticipated.

Soon after we started the blog, we added the audio files to the art history courses we were teaching online (the second half of the Western survey and Modern art). Student response was immediate and very positive. They loved the conversations and told us that our little experiment really helped them learn. So in addition to focusing on more museum content, we began to record audio conversations about canonical monuments taught in the courses we were teaching. Soon, students in our face-to-face courses were also listening to our podcasts - as study aids. Our next step was to create simple videos—assembling images in a powerpoint, and then recording conversations with screen capture with programs like Camtasia. Sometimes we recorded conversations with a third or even a fourth colleague. After creating a few dozen videos and audios, we realized that it would be beneficial to put them into a chronological and stylistic framework, and so the first Smarthistory site was born. By this time we were using Wordpress and thanks to Dr. Joseph Ugoretz, we were able to use its pages functionality with an out-of-the-box template, to organize our material chronologically and by style. Student feedback has been constistently and overwhelmingly positive. Here's an example:


The videos help me a lot!  I find it easier to retain the info from the videos as opposed to reading several pages about the topic. It’s definitely easier for me to focus on the visuals while listening to the descriptions at the same time. They are a definite reinforcement- 

Thanks to generous support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, we completely redesigned Smarthistory.org during the summer of 2008 to more closely align its content and design. The new structure allows users to approach the narratives of art history using any of several embedded navigation paths. These include artists' name, historical period, style, theme, or even by using a prominent visual navigation that keeps the artwork front and center (this appears both on the home page and at the bottom of each object page). Smarthistory.org is among the few open educational resources that uses the capabilities of the web for non-linear, multimedia learning. We continue to reinvent Smarthistory.org listening and responding to the needs of users and to new opportunities.



Why create an open educational resource about art history?


Quite simply, to help our students learn. Even before we created podcasts, we were interested in using technology to help art history students. About eight years ago, we created a website with our colleague Eric Feinblatt, about Leonardo's Last Supper—looking at that single image from several different perspectives (that content is now largely incorporated into Smarthistory). Students learn from an array of sources and increasingly expect and deserve well-designed multimedia content. Publishers are adding multimedia to their textbooks, but unfortunately they are often doing so in proprietary, password-protected adjunct websites. These are weak because they maintain an old model of closed and protected content, eliminating Web 2.0 possibilities for the open collaboration and open communities that our students now use and expect. That said, it's important to keep in mind that Smarthistory.org is not about technology, rather our focus is teaching and learning with the work of art in context as the primary focus of our site.



Where do you find the material that you publish on the site?


There are currently about a dozen contributors to the site, and we are anxious to recruit more. Thus, with the exception of the artwork itself, nearly all of the content on Smarthistory is original. The core of the the site could not be simpler, namely a recording of an unscripted conversation about a work of art. We believe that conversation is an extremely powerful tool in developing understanding and for empowering students to begin to explore material on their own.



In your opinion, what ensures the high quality of the material that you publish?


Well, we maintain editorial control, since we want our users to know that they can rely on what's published on the site. We also insure that the materials are written and created for our audience—informal learners and students who are new or relatively new to art history. Our primary goal is to make art and its history accessible even to those who might be intimidated by the elitism that too often distances art from daily life. An example of this is the palace architecture of the traditional fine art museum. We have aimed for reliable content and a delivery model that is entertaining and occasionally even playful. Our videos record spontaneous conversations about works of art where we are not afraid to disagree with each other or art history orthodoxy. The unpredictable nature of discussion is far more compelling to students, museum visitors and other informal learners than a monologue. We model the experience we want our visitors to have—a willingness to encounter the unfamiliar and transform it in ways that make it meaningful to them. 



Do you follow a particular methodology for creating your material?


Yes, our method is conversation where possible, and in both our text, and our videos, we seek to have an informal, accessible tone.

 We want Smarthistory.org to be useful for museum visitors and other informal learners as well as for undergraduate students enrolled in the standard art history survey course. As a result, we keep to a fairly traditional historical framework, and this is a direct result of our teaching experience. We know that students desperately need a firm grounding in the chronology of Western and non-Western history and our site is designed to reinforce this chronology clearly and consistently no matter what page you are on. Each object page locates its object in time and place while the content addresses formal and cultural issues.



How did people start finding out about you?


Visitors seem to have found us via links on Wikipedia, tweets on Twitter, listings on dozens of blogrolls, links on more than 50 university and museum websites, awards sites, conference presentations, and high web-search rankings. In addition, we have received some press. We believe that many more people would use our site if they knew about it. We have been surprised by the lack of interest from the mainstream education press—they don't seem particularly interested in the revolution taking place in education unless it concerns rather tired political/ideological tensions. 



Do many people visit the Smarthistory website?


The following statistics are based on Google Analytics. Smarthistory.org averaged between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors per month over the past six months. There is less traffic in the summer and increased traffic leading up to exam periods. While we have no hard data, anecdotally it appears that in addition to students and museum visitors, many of our visitors are creative professionals (designers, artists, architects, etc). On average, Smarthistory is visited by people in 150 countries and territories each month, 196 countries over the past year. The vast majority of visits come from the US, followed by the UK, and then other Anglophone countries.



Do you have evidence that users are downloading, using and re-embedding your material?


It appears that most people simply link to our site within their course documents or course sites. We also have channels on YouTube and Vimeo, a timeline on Dipity, a Facebook page and a Flickr group.



Are people also contributing OER material to your community?


To date, more than a dozen art historians have contributed text and/or audio to the site, while many more have enquired about it. We maintain editorial control and look for credible, original material written by experts that is aimed at an undergraduate audience. Smarthistory should reflect many voices and we actively seek additional contributors, especially scholars who specialize in non-Western and pre-Modern art. A direct and informal style that reveals art history's methods and challenges is preferred, because in our experience a more personal voice engages students far more successfully than a flat authoritative narrative. Unfortunately, online publications do not hold much value with tenure and promotion committees, and thus, Smarthistory remains primarily a labor of love.



Are you aware if OER materials on the site have been used in different contexts?


While we like to think this has happened, we don't have any specific evidence that it has.



Do you experience a growing interest in students, teachers and researchers in using Smarthistory material?


We receive emails nearly every week from people who want to contribute to the site. For example we recently received this:



I really enjoy Smarthistory, including the name. Although I got my BA and MA in art history, I have never worked in the field. However, when my husband and I still lived in Britain and had a video production company, we collected footage of several cathedrals with the intent of making some kind of educational video. This never happened. Still have the footage, though. I haven't seen anything on your site that encompasses architectural history, and I wondered if you'd be interested in some clips, or if there is a similar site for architectural history that might be more appropriate.

Thanks for any info you can share. 
Valerie Spanswick
 


Valerie ended up contributing several valuable essays on Medieval architecture, an area where our content was thin. See for example "English Gothic Architecture"



And we just received this email:

I’m an art historian and art department chair.... I applaud your work on Smarthistory and your willingness to share it with others. It is truly amazing and timely, and a wonderful alternative to the massive art history textbooks. In May and June of 2010 a philosophy professor and I will be taking a group of 10 students to Greece. I would be very interested in doing some podcasts in the new Acropolis Museum in Athens or at archeological sites and other museums we visit in Athens or the Peloponnese or the islands of Santorini/Mykonos/Delos. The course I teach is a problem-based learning one on discovering the many faces of Athens (Byzantine, Ottoman, etc. in addition to the classical Greek era). Students are required to work collaboratively and I will definitely have them doing conversational interpretations. Would either of these be of interest for expanding the content of Smarthistory?



Are you aware if OER material on your site has been translated into other languages? 


Smarthistory is cited on numerous blogs etc that are in languages other than English but we are not aware of the site being translated en masse into other languages, though that would be terrific.



Are you aware if Higher Education or other educational institutions are using Smarthistory material? If yes, in what ways?


Yes, individual instructors, centers for faculty development, and libraries use our material. Please refer to the following list. Instructors are assigning the videos as homework and including them in their syllabi, or course blogs. Of course most professors use closed Learning Management Systems, so it's difficult to get a sense of how many are using it in that way.


Are you aware of barriers that teacher and learner communities might have encountered while using, teaching, or re-purposing your material?


Yes, there are three areas that we know have caused some concern for instructors:


1. Audio recordings for hearing-impaired visitors (this is due to lack of resources)


2. The videos are only available in English


3. Some instructors are unsure as to how to assign materials from our site.


The last issue seems to vanish once the teacher becomes comfortable with our structure, ie. that they can link to individual pages or download videos (or get embed codes) from YouTube or Vimeo.



What I really find extraordinary about Smarthistory.org is that it seems as though you are trying to make OERs more mainstream by easing resource discovery with increased granularity and use of sub-components (images, videos etc). How important do you feel this is in enhancing access, discovery and re-purposing of content?


Our focus has always been in using the individual work of art as an example of a broader cultural/historic trend. This grew naturally from our teaching experience and from the idea of creating alternative museum audioguides, which are based on "stops" in front of a work of art. We also felt that being granular in this way would allow other educators to use the material in their own way. Everyone teaches differently. Online educational resources should be as flexible as possible.



In recent years, an important issue debated is the re-examining of PDF file format as the common denominator for OER content. How important do you feel is the fact that you allow for diverse formats? 


PDFs are not used in our material because they require an additional step to download them and can't be easily edited by the user. More importantly, we strongly believe in using the Web 2.0 multimedia publishing capabilities of the web. No longer constrained by the text/image relationship of the printed page, we can use audio and video, annotate images (think: Flickr), draw on an image and record a conversation about it at the same time (think: Voicethread). We need to think more broadly about our options. For example, in the Digital Humanities Manifesto (version 1.0), Todd Presner (UCLA) and Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford) creators of the manifesto for the Mellon Seminars in Digital Humanities, talk about 'digital humanities' not as a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated.



How did your collaboration with Flickr emerge? Do you also have other collaborations? 


The existing Flickr functionality is used for badges and groups to include them on the Smarthistory site. We have recently joined Art Babble, a consortium of institutions that aggregate museum videos. Thanks to support from the Sameul H. Kress Foundation, last spring we partnered with the Portland Art Museum. It is in our plans to maintain and build on our current institutional partnerships.



Do you feel that these collaborations have helped in the wider awareness and adoption of OER material?


There is a growing number of museums, universities and libraries that currently recommend Smarthistory.org and this seems to be growing. In order to determine whether Smarthistory-style conversations had value in a museum setting, we ran a multi-day workshop at the Portland Art Museum with Dr. Christina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs and with their curators, educators and docents. The workshop was extremely successful and the results of those collaborations can be found on their website.



Sustainability is another very important issue in OERs, how do you ensure the long-term sustainability of your initiative? 


The open-source content management system, MODx, is used, which makes it relatively easy to add pages and content. Nonetheless, Smarthistory's continuation is currently entirely dependent on the two executive editors who currently cover the site's relatively modest expenses and devote significant time to its continued improvement and growth. Smarthistory depends on a small group of key volunteers. In addition, we depend on the hard work of our information architect, Lotte Meijer, our designer, Mickey Mayo, and our contributing editor, Dr. Juliana Kreinik. 



What is the biggest challenge for your OER initiative?


We keep on learning about the OER landscape, however, what strikes us is the substantial infrastructure that has been built to distribute OERs and yet the relatively small number of OERs that are more than just course resources (lecture notes and images) distributed online. We think that for web-based educational resources to be successful they need to make use of the interactive, non-linear, multimedia capabilities of the web.



What are the advantages of the creation of multimedia learning objects? What are the barriers?


Audio allows students and informal learners to focus on the image and they don't have to leave it in order to read. When confronted with text and image, students and museum visitors often look to the text to explain the image. We have found that when it comes to teaching visual materials, or using visual materials in teaching, the use of audio and video helps learners enormously. Perhaps the best thing the OER community could do is tweak/publicize/support the use of tools that would allow for the easy creation of multimedia learning objects by teachers. The tools already exist and they are often quite inexpensive.



What tools do you use to create these learning objects?


The primary "tool" we use is perhaps the oldest one. Conversation. We use unscripted conversation to model for our listeners how to approach an unfamiliar and perhaps difficult work of art. In our conversations, our students can hear us take risks and learn from each other and this not only engages them, it models close looking, careful listening, and a degree of engagement with the object that we want our students to develop. With Smarthistory, we have tried to be entertaining and enlightening while eschewing an authoritative voice in favor of personal, opinionated voices. This makes us very different from the traditional texbook, and even from many OERs. Referring once more to the Digital Humanities Manifesto (version 1.0), in Paragraph 11, we read, Among the highest aims of scholarship: entertainment; entertainment as scholarship: a scandal that is now no longer a scandal. To speak to an audience.  



In terms of technology, we've experimented with just about every tool out there - including Flickr, Voicethread, Camtasia, iPixer, Cozimo, Garageband, Screenflow and Audacity. The right tool for those of us teaching with images would likely combine elements of many of these. The main problem is that these tools are not made for educators, and often need just a bit of "tweaking" to make them more appropriate for an educational environment. In addition, educators need more help and support in using the technology. We discuss these issues in depth in "The Slide Library: A Posthumous Assessment for our Digital Future" in Teaching Art History with New Technologies: Reflections and Case Studies (2008).



The use of images that are drawn from experience are the best—and not the typical images one would find in an academic image library (i.e., a department slide library or a digital library like ARTstor). For our video on Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning, photographs of oil cloth, chair caning and cafe tables were included. Using photographs from outside an image library meant using images that were more relevant to our students. The combination of tourist snapshots with more pristine images of monuments, gave our students valuable contextual information as well as a sense of the work of art as it is experienced in the early 21st century, as an object in their world. In the context of a survey course, art historical practice too often isolates a monument whether in a museum, book or in the photographs displayed in class. Art historians tend to frame objects on black backgrounds, view lofty altars straight on from unacknowledged scaffolding and do so in churches emptied of the visitors that bring the art to life.



What is your vision for the future of Smarthistory?


In our vision for the future of Smarthistory.org we would like to create a space for our users to comment on works of art more directly, perhaps using a tool like Voicethread. We're very interested in collaborating with other educators and technologists on developing tools for creating rich image-centered learning resources. We have also discussed the possibility of modularizing Smarthistory so a teacher could create a customized version of the site for their students, adding their own materials. However, this might not make sense since teachers increasingly have their own blogs and class sites. 



Ultimately, we would like Smarthistory to function as a model for other discipline-specific OER projects and to use it to bridge the educational communities in museums and universities.