Helping Students Study for Art History

As a student, I often wondered why teachers would make it so difficult for students to study for art history tests. On a Friday they would say "learn these fifty something pieces and the test will be at 8 am sharp on Monday, good luck!" I would spend more time making study guides and charts than I did learning the actual material. I would use a mac based program called Pages to make my study guides. I understand that students can learn a lot through doing, but I feel like as teachers, we need to make the "doing" process as efficient as possible so students can spend more time mastering the material.

Consider giving the students the framework and letting them put in the information from their notes. If we have to make a powerpoint to teach our lectures efficiently, we could just as easily give our students a document that they could type in their lecture notes and or print it off and hand write their notes in the blank area. It saves time for students to transfer the information from lecture notes to a study guide, while still allowing them to learn by doing. It also saves the teacher lots of time during lecturing to address numerous questions on things like the spelling of an artist's name, when the movement took place exactly, etc. Here are some screen shots of study guides I have made for art history tests:

Here is an example of an information sheet that teachers could give to students. Each movement is assigned a color and an abbreviation to help the students remember the movement. The teacher also provides the date so there is no confusion about when the movement occurred. 

    

Here is what the same information sheet looks like after the student types their lecture notes back into the study guide. 

Here is an example of the blank template the students would receive before lecture. Each piece gets a page. The teacher provides the title (in the movements color), movement abbreviation, artist (in all caps), piece name and picture of the piece. 

Here is what the same sheet looks like after the student has filled in the template with your lecture notes.