3 Case Study: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Madison Buildings
3 Case Study: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Madison Buildings
Anna Andrzejewski, an art history professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was looking for a hands-on learning project for her Frank Lloyd Wright art history course.
The class was an upper-division, research course designed for art history majors or grad students, but also open to other disciplines. Andrzejewski had arranged access to seven historic local Frank Lloyd Wright houses for the course.
Known for hands-on learning projects that used student research to get ideas out into the broader community, she had had her students create walking tour booklets and websites documenting architectural landmarks in previous courses, but for this class she wanted to do something different.
Steel Wagstaff, an instructional technology consultant at the university, approached her with the idea of having the students create a book using Pressbooks,[1] an online book-formatting software often used for open textbook projects.
Because Frank Lloyd Wright was not her primary area of scholarship, Andrzejewski said, the project became an opportunity for her to learn along with the students.
“Part of the appeal of working on this textbook idea was to create something that the students would participate in and feel invested in but that I could also use later on as a tool in future classes.”
Wagstaff said the project was designed to be a “renewable assignment,” one whose life extended beyond the term of the class.[2]
“What I saw the students really engage with was the idea that they’re writing this for Anna but also for a public audience,” Wagstaff said.
Knowing that the next time Andrzejewski taught the course, her students would read the previous students’ writing and could add to it or could improve it deepened student engagement with the project, Wagstaff said.
In addition, students might not have access to the same private homes featured in the book in future semesters.
“We hope that this book will provide surrogate access to many of these places for future classes, since they likely won’t be able to visit all of them when the course is taught in future semesters,” Wagstaff said.
Examples
Before embarking on the major assignment, Andrzejewski gave the students a lower-stakes, small-scale assignment that helped them learn how to use Pressbooks. Each student had to write several paragraphs of architectural context for the building they would visit and upload images into the platform for an overview section framing the progression of Frank Lloyd Wright’s career.
From the low-stakes assignment, Andrzejewski said, “They saw what they had to do. It involved them and also scared them such that they were invested for the rest of the time.”
Next, the small class of cross-disciplinary students, which included journalism, art, history, geography, urban planning, and other majors, made field visits to seven local Frank Lloyd Wright homes that Andrzejewski had arranged access t