Published Dec 16, 2022
An introduction to the museum, broadly interpreted as the public face of scholarship. Students work in small groups to research an inter-disciplinary topic of personal interest, in-depth, and design a museum exhibit suitable for a particular audience. [Note: WHMIS required.]
Prereq: INTEG 230
INTEG 320 is a 12-week, half-credit course that is part of the core program for Knowledge Integration students. It is the first half of “The Museum Course”, which includes INTEG321, in which students apply their skills and experience to a major collaborative interdisciplinary project: the design of a museum exhibit. In groups of 4-5, you will identify a topic within a theme and determine associated learning objectives: what do you want your visitors to experience, feel, learn.
Over the course of the 24 weeks of INTEG 320/321, you will collaborate within your groups to research, design, build, and exhibit a museum exhibit on that topic, that uses objects, text and experiences to help achieve those learning objectives. Roughly speaking, INTEG 320 comprises the project definition, research, conceptual design, and early prototyping phases of the project. Time in INTEG321 is spent critiquing, refining, redesigning, and fabricating the exhibits for public exhibition in March.
The Museum Course provides a context in which students gain experience applying their skills in research, communication, collaboration, and design. The obvious end product is the museum exhibit, but perhaps more important is the development of collaboration and other professional skills that accompany the creation of that exhibit. As with any university assignment, we don’t ask you to build a museum exhibit because there are museum exhibits that need building; we ask you to build a museum exhibit because of the growth and impact that activity will have on you, the student.
During the 12 weeks of INTEG 320, you will form a group, refine a topic and associated learning objectives, research your topic and aspects of the visitor experience, identify and design objects and activities, and develop a storyboard detailing the experience of visiting your exhibit. In INTEG321, your group will design, test, iterate, build, and show your exhibit.
For several years, we have asked groups to align their topics with some aspect of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/).
Your aim will be to educate visitors on some aspect of one of the goals, and ideally inspire them to action.
The primary audience for the design will be high-school and university students. However, the exhibit will be open to the entire Waterloo community including adults and children: faculty, staff, parents, siblings, and community members. You will want to consider the points of view of different segments of this audience in your design.
The major deliverable in INTEG 320 is the Storyboard: a document which integrates and conveys your vision for your exhibit, how you’ve divided that up into learning objectives, and how you’ve designed the visitor experience to accomplish those learning objectives. Class content, activities, and deliverables are all structured to help you build the Storyboard, encouraging iteration, regular feedback, and a progressive shift in focus from high-level to more detailed as the term progresses. Your Storyboard will include both formatted text and graphics, and your group can choose the shared-editing platform you will use (e.g., Google Presentation, Miro, ...).
This is an experiential learning, project-based course. The primary purpose of lectures, discussions, meetings, and deliverables is to support and advance the state of the project. In the balance of theory vs. practice, it leans very heavily towards practice. This has implications for every aspect of the course, from class format, to meet patterns, to feedback & grading.
The class meets twice/week for two hours each time. Meets will include different types of activities (lecture, discussion, design group meetings, meetings with teaching team, skill-group meetings) which will shift in importance over the course of the term. Early meets will be mostly focussed on information transfer. Once groups have been formed there will be more time for groups to work during meet times, though you will still need to find time outside of class to meet together at least weekly. After reading week as you get into the details of your designs, it will be helpful to start skill-group meetings (e.g., the editors from each group). Students are expected to attend all meets unless they have approved reasons for absence that were communicated in advance to the instructor and their group mates.
The nature of The Museum Course requires significant, extended group work, in a way that you may not have experienced to date. You will undoubtedly encounter conflict, but not all conflict is bad! Groups will be highly encouraged to engage in regular reflection about their process and give each other formative feedback at regular intervals. While groups are expected to openly discuss and resolve any issues that arise—indeed, a significant part of the learning is in doing so—the instructor is available to act as a facilitator if any group member desires.
Groups will have some time during class most weeks to meet together and work on the project, but you will need to find other times to meet, as well. During in-class group work time the instruction team will be available to answer questions and provide advice. If we know when & where your group meets outside of class time we may be able to drop in on some of those as well.
For this course, the most effective mode of feedback from the instruction team is face-to-face conversation, allowing for efficient back and forth and quicker iteration. Each group will meet with a member of the instruction team (alternating weeks) for 15-20 minutes during Wednesday class for an update/feedback session. In advance of that, every Monday, each student will submit a brief check-in on slack which their group mates and the instruction team will all read. These are intended to be light-weight and helpful, rather than onerous and distracting, and will help focus the update.
| Increase your knowledge about issues in museum design: learning paradigms, interactivity, labels, user experience, etc. |
| Increase your domain-specific knowledge about your specific topic area and, in the process, gain experience and increased comfort doing independent research. |
| Understand, apply and defend evidence-based decision-making in the context of your exhibit design. |
| Exercise your time management, organizational, negotiation, leadership, followership and other professional skills. |
| Gain experience identifying, understanding and addressing the issues that may arise during a complex, extended group project. |
| Experience the satisfaction of making your ideas come to life in something physical, and the pleasure of watching how that thing creates an impact on others. |
| Week | Monday 12:30pm – 2:20pm | Wednesday 12:30pm – 2:20pm | Due by 11:59pm Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 Sept 5, 7 | Labour Day | Course overview Museum as a Design Project Group formation | Who Am I forms |
| Week 2 Sept 12, 14 | The Storyboard: the big deliverable Group Dynamics: Tuckman, Lencioni | Decolonising the Museum | Top 10/Not 3 |
| Week 3 Sept 19, 21 | Updates; Working on your Group Norms | Updates; Working on your Group Norms | D1: Group Norms |
| Week 4 Sept 26, 28 | Working on your Big Idea | Updates; Working on your Big Idea | |
| Week 5 Oct 3, 5 | Designing learning objectives (LOs) | MAD Workshop, KIX space, doors Working on your LOs | WHMIS 2015 |
| Oct 10-14 | Thanksgiving & Reading Week – no classes | ||
| Week 6 Oct 17, 19 | Transformative Experiences | Updates; Working on your LOs | D4: Indiv. Reflection |
| Week 7 Oct 24, 26 | From LOs to Learning Experiences | Updates & Group Work | D3: Big Idea & LOs |
| Week 8 Oct 31, Nov 2 | Updates & Group Work | Updates & Group Work | |
| Week 9 Nov 7, 9 | Writing Didactic Text | Updates & Group Work | D5: Presentation Slides |
| Week 10 Nov 14, 16 | Class Presentations | Updates & Group Work | |
| Week 11 Nov 21, 23 | Updates & Group Work | Updates & Group Work | |
| Week 12 Nov 28, 30 | Updates & Group Work | Updates & Group Work | D6: Draft Storyboard |
| Final Day Dec 5 | Draft Storyboard Critique End of term reflection/celebration | ||
There is no required textbook, and there are few mandatory readings for INTEG 320 or INTEG 321. You will need to do two kinds of research in developing your project: topic research (e.g., learning about food security, if you choose SDG2 Zero Hunger) and museum design research (e.g., about pedagogy, activity design, construction, text layout & printing).
There are a few reasons we don’t assign formal readings in the course:
| Component | Value |
|---|---|
| Group Norms (3-4 pages group) | 5% |
| Weekly Check-ins (6-8 lines individual) | 5% |
| Big Idea & Learning Objectives (4-6 page group paper) | 15% |
| Individual Midterm Reflection (3-4 pages individual) | 10% |
| Storyboard Draft (group) | 5% |
| Storyboard Final (group) | 40% |
| Peer- and Self-Assessment | 20% |
Reflecting the ongoing, iterative nature of the design process, your grade in INTEG 320 will be made up of several “small” grades and one important final grade. You can think of the smaller grades as formative feedback that is quick and low-stakes so that the work you’re doing in the course can contribute to the overall process and not to big interim documents. This in turn will make the final project stronger.
Since the collaborative process is also an important part of the course, a portion of your grade will depend on end-of-term peer- and self-assessments. Groups will be highly encouraged to engage in regular reflection about their process, through the Weekly Check-Ins and in other ways, and give each other formative feedback at regular intervals.
Note that the same mark will be given to all students in a group. If you feel some group members contributed significantly more or less than others, please contact the instructor within two days of receiving the mark. In such a case, we will ask each group member to summarize and evaluate the contributions of all group members to determine appropriate individual marks.
Each individual will be allocated a total of 4 grace days, which allow deliverables to be handed in late without penalty. Grace days used for group deliverables will be subtracted from EACH member of the group. Late days, including weekends, will be tracked individually. At the end of the term, I will total the number of late days, subtract 4, and each student will receive a 1% penalty on their overall grade for each late day beyond the 4 grace days. Grace days cannot be used for D2, D5, or D6.
No assignment screening will be used in this course.
Anti-racism Statement: The University of Waterloo does not tolerate racism or any other form of discrimination and expects campus community members to contribute to a culture where all members feel safe and valued. Any member of the campus community who has experienced racism or discrimination at the University is encouraged to seek guidance from the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-racism (EDI-R) via email at equity@uwaterloo.ca or through their website: › uwaterloo.ca/human-rights-equity-inclusion/ about/equity-office3
Mental Health: The University of Waterloo, the Faculty of Environment and our Departments/Schools consider students' well-being to be extremely important. We recognize that throughout the term students may face health challenges - physical and / or emotional. Please note that help is available. Mental health is a serious issue for everyone and can affect your ability to do your best work. Counselling Services https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/ is an inclusive, non-judgmental, and confidential space for anyone to seek support. They offer confidential counselling for a variety of areas including anxiety, stress management, depression, grief, substance use, sexuality, relationship issues, and much more.
All students are encouraged to download the WatSAFE app which is available free through the google and iOS app stores. The WatSAFE app provides on- and off-campus contacts for students in distress, including international students, and other information related to campus safety and security.
Religious Observances: Students need to inform the instructor at the beginning of term if special accommodation needs to be made for religious observances that are not otherwise accounted for in the scheduling of classes and assignments.
Communications with Instructor and Teaching Assistants: All communication with students must be through either the student’s University of Waterloo email account or via LEARN. If a student emails the instructor or TA from a personal account they will be requested to resend the email using their personal University of Waterloo email account.
Recording lecture: Use of recording devices during lectures is only allowed with explicit permission of the instructor of the course. If allowed, video recordings may only include images of the instructor and not fellow classmates. Posting of videos or links to the video to any website, including but not limited to social media sites such as: facebook, twitter, etc., is strictly prohibited.
Academic integrity: In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. [Check the Office of Academic Integrity for more information.]
Grievance: A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of their university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4. When in doubt, please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.
Discipline: A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity to avoid committing an academic offence, and to take responsibility for their actions. [Check the Office of Academic Integrity for more information.] A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about “rules” for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course instructor, academic advisor, or the undergraduate associate dean. For information on categories of offences and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71, Student Discipline. For typical penalties, check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties.
Appeals: A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71, Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes they have a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72, Student Appeals.
Note for students with disabilities: AccessAbility Services, located in Needles Hall, Room 1401, collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with AccessAbility Services at the beginning of each academic term.
Turnitin.com: Text matching software (Turnitin®) may be used to screen assignments in this course. Turnitin® is used to verify that all materials and sources in assignments are documented. Students' submissions are stored on a U.S. server, therefore students must be given an alternative (e.g., scaffolded assignment or annotated bibliography), if they are concerned about their privacy and/or security. Students will be given due notice, in the first week of the term and/or at the time assignment details are provided, about arrangements and alternatives for the use of Turnitin in this course.
It is the responsibility of the student to notify the instructor if they, in the first week of term or at the time assignment details are provided, wish to submit alternate assignment.