Introducing Art History Through Problem-Based Learning

You have been hired as consultants for a major motion picture. Although the story, set in ancient Greece (c. 425 B.C.), is fictional, the director wants every detail in the film to be as historicallyaccurate as possible. Part of the action will take place around a temple. Your task is to determine what this temple should look like -- including the interior, the exterior, the immediate vicinity,and the activities in and around the temple. If possible, recommend a location (or locations) where the filming of the temple scenes could take place. Include notes about what, if any, aspects of thesetting would need to be altered -- either physically or through special effects -- in order to be accurate.

This was one of eight problems that confronted students enrolled in the course Myth,Religion, and Art (ARTH 151) during fall semester at the Wilmington campus (Division of Continuing Education). The focus of the course was the many ways that spiritual beliefs generate and shape works ofart. Examples that we considered came from a variety of cultures from antiquity to the present, and from various places around the world. There are no prerequisites for this course and usually thestudents are not art history majors. For most of the students in the class this is their introduction to the discipline (and perhaps the only art history course they will ever take).

Students in thecourse developed solutions for the assigned problems by working together in small groups. Each group had five members (except for one group that included an auditor as its sixth member). The coursemet once a week in the evening for three hours at a time. Each week, during the last third of the class period, students received a new problem. Because many of the students were unable to meet withtheir group outside of class time, I allocated a significant portion of each class meeting for group work. Members of the group worked on aspects of the problem individually over the following week and...