Finally, it should be noted that the on-line educational activities do not intend to replace a museum visit or the development of existing educational programming at the Walker Art Center. A consistent encouragement to come to the museum and visit its galleries should be reflected throughout the units.

Addressing the goals of graduation standards
Essentially, the National Standards for Arts Education ask that students should know and be able to do the following by the time they have completed secondary school:

• They should be able to communicate at a basic level in the four arts disciplines--dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. This includes knowledge and skills in the use of the basic vocabularies, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods of each arts discipline.
• They should be able to communicate proficiently in at least one art form, including the ability to define and solve artistic problems with insight, reason, and technical proficiency.
• They should be able to develop and present basic analyses of works of art from structural, historical, and cultural perspectives, and from combinations of those perspectives. This includes the ability to understand and evaluate work in the various arts disciplines.
• They should have an informed acquaintance with exemplary works of art from a variety of cultures and historical periods, and a basic understanding of historical development in the arts disciplines, across the arts as a whole, and within cultures.
• They should be able to relate various types of arts knowledge and skills within and across the arts disciplines. This includes mixing and matching competencies and understandings in art-making, history and culture, and analysis in any arts-related project.

The IAIA educational units will meet the goals and objectives that the national, state, and/or city standards mandate and will clearly state this in detail throughout the developed material. The units should primarily address the standards set for the visual arts (which include drawing, painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, video, and folk arts), but will certainly mention standards for other disciplines where appropriate.

A reference to the specific standards will be included within each individual educational unit. Where this can not apply, a general page will announce the overall content and achievement standards in the form of: "The following performance indicators from the [State of Minnesota] Learning Standards for the [Literature and the Arts] are addressed in the Walker Art Center's on-line educational component:
[list content standards here] "

III. Audience

For general organizational purposes and easier allocation of instructional resources, the educational activities are grouped into categories based on the targeted audience. With respect to the K-12 target audience, the most commonly used and sensible sequence for organising and presenting the material is by grade level.

In this direction, the national content and achievement standards have been organized as follows: Grades K-4, Grades 5-8, and Grades 9-12. (see U.S. Dept. of Education, National Standards for Arts Education, "How the standards are organized"). The State of Minnesota has divided its groups into High School (grades 9-12) and Preparatory: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (grades 4 & 5), and Middle level (grades 6-8), (see State of Minnesota, "Graduation Standards"). Similarly, the Walker Art Center has used 4 groups for the organization of classroom material created in the past.

Based on the latter, the IAIA educational component will use a similar grouping to organize its educational units. The groups are referred to as Levels and are presented in the following table.

Level I (grades K-3)
Level I audience includes students of age 5 to about 9. The activities created for the audience at Level I focus on developing the ability to identify and describe basic artistic elements. Materials, techniques, and processes, such as color, scale, line, shape, light are emphasized, as well as simple concepts, symbols, ideas, and an introduction to subject matter.

Level II & III (grades 4-6 & 6-8)
Students 9-11 years of age and 11-14 years of age comprise levels II and III. The units developed for levels II and III emphasize analysis and interpretation . The students at these levels should already have a grasp of the basic elements in art and their expressive qualities. These elements can be continuously reinforced while exploring new facets of the artistic process. Additionally, the students in these levels are advanced enough to handle technologically more sophisticated activities, tools, and metaphors, such as the use of more immersive and interactive computer environments.

Level IV (grades 9-12)
Teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 are the targeted learners in level IV. The units targeted at teenagers should focus on the development of judgement and critical thought. Through the development of educational units, emphasis should be given on issues of art criticism and aesthetics, as well as art history and art production. , focus is given on the idea of teenagers being involved in the creation of the educational material itself, as a way to engage them in the process of producing as well as educating in the arts. Additionally, this will help them acquire the technical skills and mastery of contemporary art production and presentation tools (multimedia design, internet). The above process will be held in conjunction with teen arts programs at the Walker Art Center, as described later.

Higher Education, Adult and Lifelong learning
The development of the IAIA database will provide a large resource for researchers, artists, students , and adults in general, who wish to learn more about the museums' collection. In this direction, the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have joined the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO), a non-profit organization that will provide access to a joint, multimedia digital library documenting the collections of 23 North American art museums. Through AMICO this rich source of information can be distributed effectively to the educational community. A number of higher education institutions will be part of the AMICO University Testbed, a yearlong test project to deliver the database content to the higher education community.

Teachers
The learning units developed will address the needs of teachers in two ways:
a) by organizing the material and providing indices for easy access to them.
b) by including helpful tips and pointers to resources, such as the IAIA database
c) by including the relevant graduation standards in every unit

IV. Layers of Technological Development

In detail:

1. Digital Delivery of Analog Material
   Layer 1 pertains to delivering existing printed curriculum material that are reproducible and thus amenable to adaptation into computerized formats (e.g., in the form of postscript files, plain text, .html). made accessible via the web. The process involves the collection of this material (from "Classroom Connections", Artlab, activity kits and other sources) and their eventual transfer on-line. This will create a digital archive of the educational material that has been created by the Walker in the past, for teachers to download and print. As this educational material is very popular with the teachers in its current traditional format, the contents will not be altered. The web will therefore serve merely as the delivery mechanism. However, the design of these pages must follow a standard template, which will include the Walker insignia and brief information to bring each activity into context. It has been decided that part, not all, of the existing printed curriculum material will be made available on the web. The chosen set will be selected according to various criteria: that of best developed unit, most popular, simplest to apply, etc.
   The goal in this layer of implementation is to deliver the popular educational units in the easiest, least technological demanding manner. The intended audience includes teachers and parents who wish to use these units as part of their curriculum.

2. Repurposing
   Layer 2 involves the creation of web-based educational material (either existing educational units enhanced with hyperlinks and images, or new material). Essentially, this layer applies to all units and all other layers technically, in the sense that everything will be delivered by using the traditional web-based format as we know it. The educational content and instructional form of all material will have one component of familiar and widely accessible web design, whether the primary delivery method resides in layer 1, or layers 3 and 4. Layer 2, is the unifying layer: the kind of implementation used for all units as a base. This ensures a level of consistency for the delivered whole.
   An example of pure layer 2 implementation is the current ArtsNet Minnesota format. It may well be that a big part of the effort will resemble or overlap with the new modules of ArtsNet Minnesota. The general theme of the next module of ArtsNet Minnesota is "Designing Spaces", which will reference Walker artwork (located both in the MSG as well as the permanent collection). It is also particularly relevant to Joep Van Lieshout's commissioned work for the MSG. Therefore, artwork didactics, thematic modules, and activities pertinent to the "designing spaces" theme may converge or be linked together from ArtsNet Minnesota.

   Aside from ArtsNet Minnesota: the "Artful Thinking" kit can serve as an example for layer 2 implementation. The text included in this kit is presented as a lesson, with hyperlinks to references and the images of the work on the slides. Under each image/unit a description of an activity to do in class is included. The sequence of the art presented is flexible and so is the art/thematic content chosen. And this can obviously expand infinitely.

3. Interactive digital activities
   Layer 3 involves the creation of a set of on-line activities which will be simple, interactive, and fairly widely accessible from current web browsers. These activities do involve some interactivity (of the kind that is technically simple and widely accessible, such as e-mail feedback, discussion board, JavaScript etc.). These layer 3 type activities are regarded as an extension mechanism to the existing web-enhanced units. An example of such activities can be found on the Walker Art Center's Disney Playland site. A list of more activities can be found in Appendix A.

4. Responsive interactive activities
   Layer 4 involves the development of highly interactive, responsive, innovative activities or more elaborate on-line activities that may extend to physical installations (kiosks connected to the Internet or kiosks with a digital component). These activities will utilize more involved technological concepts and tools, such as the use of VRML to represent 3-dimensional objects and environments, virtual communities, where multiple participants can meet and interact with each other and the environment itself representing themselves as graphical characters called "avatars", on-site kiosks connected to a Global Positioning System (GPS), etc.
   This layer involves interactivity that assumes a 2-way interaction between user and learning environment (responsive) and the ability to manipulate outside of rigid parameters. Due to the more complex nature of the implementation for this layer, most activities will be targeted to middle and higher audience levels.

V. Examples/Models

A detailed list of the proposed units listed by Audience level can be found in Appendix A.

A few programs serve as an umbrella, under which the developed educational content for the IAIA effort can be integrated. A couple of these models are noted below.

Joep van Lieshout's model: the "poly-model" experiment

The Walker Art Center has commissioned the Dutch artist Joep Van Lieshout to design The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a life-size wooden cabin and a detachable mobile Art Lab unit that will be installed this fall in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Next year the mobile Art Lab unit will travel to sites in local neighborhoods. In the meantime, the artist has designed a scale model of both the cabin and the moving vehicle which is installed and on view in the Walker's actual Art Lab.

Joep van Lieshout's model of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is central to the development of a variety of activities at the Walker (AOM, etc.) It also serves as a good base to experiment with connecting throughout all levels and layers and encompassing many of the themes that we're playing with: it'll be installed in the MSG and it is appropriate for interactive activities in all four age groups and layers of implementation. Thus, Joep Van Lieshout's model is a poly-object because of the variety of activities it relates to.

A first step in integrating the various units related to Joep van Lieshout's project is the creation of a web site. This web site will function as a place to provide information about the project, introduce the Atelier Van Lieshout and the work they do, and to solicit comments from the viewers so they may provide their feedback on the process and their desired outcome. The visitors to the site should be able to make a real contribution or suggestion about the actual sculpture, through information about the model. At the least, they should be able to suggest uses of the mobile unit.

Hence, the site includes three main parts: the page about Atelier van Lieshout, the description of the current project, and the response mechanism page, a web form which will allow participants to enter their comments about the model. Comments are automatically posted on the web and can be read by the Walker, Joep, and the world when desired. This set of pages can start the Artwork of the Month (AOM) page for Joep's model. As activities are developed they will be added to the web site. Upon completion of the site, a kiosk installation may be installed near the model, in a public space (lobby) of the Wa lker Art Center during the summer months to collect more comments from museum visitors in addition to web visitors.

The educational activities that branch off of Joep's work deal with designing spaces, hide & seek, secret spaces (public vs. private), memory, making rooms of memories... and many more. These activities can be as simple as "drag-n-drop" activities for young children, where simple primitive objects and shapes are provided that can be dragged onto the (top-down sketch or photograph of the) model, or as complex as interactive space design using VRML. The activities can be connected to other features, such as an on-line journal, a way to "save" each participant's work so he/she can come back to it later, etc. (see Appendix A).

A kiosk installation may be installed near the model, in a public space (lobby) of the Walker Art Center during the summer to collect more comments from the museum visitors. The other idea is for Joep's actual sculpture to be used for the on-site teens programs: to turn a room (perhaps the "space for secret activities"?) or the whole actual (physical) house into a workshop space, an artlab or a clubhouse, where kids can hang out and work on various activities. In other words, an on-site kiosk installation for users of all ages with computer(s) connected to the internet. These activities may include all of the above plus the GPS system ideas discussed with the Dunwoody Institute for tracking the location of the mobile unit of the house.

Teen Programs

A possible direction for the educational activities developed for Level IV audience may be various programs for teenagers, which the Walker Art Center has already been active in hosting. These include the Teen Arts Council and the Teen web class, as well as the future development of a Digital Clubhouse (following the model of Boston's Computer Clubhouse ). The IAIA educational activities can benefit from as well as be integrated in the existing and future teen programs.

• Digital Clubhouse
• Teen Arts Council (Fig. 12)
• Teen web class - Teen website

As the above involve planning for the longer term shaping of the teens programs, it can take up considerable time and effort. In the interim, a limited number of IAIA educational units directed to Layer 4 audience will be developed to serve as an example for the kinds of things the teens can start developing on their own for their own age group.

VI. Interfaces

1. indexical
   An index/list of all the educational units, activities, .pdf material. It may be sorted in a variety of ways.
2. query
   The unmediated, direct access to the database of educational materials in the form of a search engine. Both of the above interfaces provide unmediated access to the database and allow the visitior to construct his/her own set of ways to search for the desired educational material.
3. browse
   This method is intended for the audience that does not know what to look for and wants a quick feel, idea of what is there. It may be presented as random or thematic highlights of the educational resources, a web interface like ArtsNet Minnesota, etc.
4. immersive interface
   The VRML implementation of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is one of the experimental interfaces to the educational material that is currently under way. The idea is to use the VRML sculpture garden as an interface to access more information about each artwork and the educational activities related to it. An implementation of the VRML sculpture garden already exists but in an alpha form and is in the process of being enhanced in order to provide an easy to understand interface to the educational activities (in Appendix B). This interface involves the use of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden as a unifying element, which means that it provides access to the part of the activities that pertain to the garden.
5. guided interface
   An interface based on the guided exploration of the museum through the eyes of different "personas" with which the visitor can identify. This interface is currently being developed by Y-core. More information will be made available in Appendix B.

The form of the interface , whether guided or free-form, does not affect the content of the educational material. Some standardization in the production of the interfaces will take place, to ensure a compatible and familiar look for better referencing and to expedite production time. Templates will be created across technical layers of development and across different audience levels.

VII. Templates and Metadata

Classification of educational metadata
In order to directly access the educational units or information about them, we need to capture certain attributes that characterize them. We call these attributes educational metadata. Each educational unit will be classified according to a range of categories that will be formulated after studying meta-data sets, such as the ones defined by IMS or Dublin Core. Some suggestions include:

1. Title of educational unit/activity
2. Learning level (or level, ie. level I, II, etc.)
3. Learning Concepts (sculpture, MSG, architecture/design) (color, scale, etc.) (*)
4. Subject/Theme(?) (color, scale, etc)
5. artist relevance (Joep V.L., Lorna Simpson)
6. object relevance (Hare on Bell, etc.)

7. Educational Objectives
8. Prerequisites
9. Learning Standards (may be same as Ed. Objectives)

Each educational unit will list the categories it pertains to and its connections to other sites. This information will be important when creating indices of the educational modules. These indices may provide the chance to access the material by any number of the above attributes.

VIII. Evaluation

Evaluation in general raises some great challenges when studying any kind of learning. Evaluating an arts education program is even more difficult, as defining what is learned will most likely involve questioning such cognitive skills as analysis, interpretation and problem solving.

It is generally agreed that with regard to constructivist learning environments, such as the IAIA learning units, alternative assessment methods are considered absolute requirements. Additionally, the unique characteristics of the IAIA educational project do not include only the constructivist-exploratory approach and the informal learning nature but also the fact that the audience is essentially all over the world. These factors may complicate the methods used to assess the outcomes of the work and could exclude the use of traditional methods of assessment. In such settings, it is usually the case that anecdotal and qualitative evidence of the program's impact may essentially provide the biggest part of the evaluation results. A systematic approach, however, is required in order to maximize the program's potential for success. Two evaluation phases, encountered in many evaluation programs, are used as a general guideline and can be identified as:

Formative
Formative evaluation involves testing the concept, design, and production of the program's units during their development process, before they are actually completed. As a first step towards implementing a process of formative evaluation, we are planning on running the activities by a small number of selected teachers (Walker Art Center's Educational Advisory Board). When development is under way in the next few months, we can start setting up a more systematic formative evaluation process with a few teachers and students.

Summative
The summative evaluation phase studies the effectiveness of the developed units in actually producing desired outcomes and the degree by which they meet the original educational goals. In other words, it measures the impact of the final program on users.

The summative evaluation of the IAIA educational component may involve a number of different directions, such as:
- evaluating the effectiveness of the program as a learning tool used by visitors of the Walker web site. This is difficult to identify, but may take place with the study of a number of test cases that can "report" results over the Internet. An interesting concept may be to somehow embed the evaluation in the learning process and develop methods that can automatically determine the progress of particular visitors.
- evaluating the usefulness of the program as a tool used by educators in a classroom. This can be implemented in a straightforward fashion (have teachers complete questionaires), or by suggesting ways for the teachers to perform the evaluation in their classrooms.
A popular evaluation measure used in alternative assesment is portfolio assessment (learner-created products that reflect the processes of learning and development over time). A goal of the IAIA educational inititiative is to encourage and support such activities and to suggest the use of portfolio review as a method that may be used by teachers in the classroom.

A better formulated evaluation effort will be determined further along in the process.

IX. Appendices

Appendix A
Lists of activities and learning units

Appendix B
Interfaces

Appendix C
learning standards

X. References