Bringing Visual Arts 110: Foundation Studio Digital Media into the Digital Realm
The following are excepts from my TLEF application from 2015-17, wherein I was given support to turn VISA 110 into a blended learning environment. In sum, the project included:
- Researched, organized and devised a successful proposal for TLEF funding to establish a blended learning environment into VISA 110 – Digital Foundation Studio class.
- Devised new curriculum strategy for course to highlight blended learning integration.
- Research and execution of technological development and instructional course design and new assessment models for new format.
- Creation of over 60 instructional/technical demonstration video’s, 200 quiz questions and external resources directory.
- Supervisory and training of two graduate research assistants and one undergraduate assistant.
- Establishing a beta-test system and focus group study towards continuous improvement.
Project Summary
This project will extend “Visual Arts Digital Foundation” studio course into the digital realm. Embracing the larger thematic topics of the course, namely “how the machine influenced art-making” these changes proposed will embrace the multitude ways that the transfer of knowledge can be expanded by way of the electronic. Through the development of online tools for certain skill based and social components of the class, such as; workshop videos with companion online evaluation tools, communication tools and online forums to enhance collegiality and implement online social learning, and the use of digital media to enhance lecture facility, all allowing for flexible learning and blended components integrated into the curriculum. These resources would facilitate a carefully constructed foundation that would allow for contact hours to be re-directed to cover the core learning of the class, which is the complex philosophical and experiential learning of that is vital to the visual arts.
Statement of Rationale and Objectives and How it meets TLEF Criteria:
With a direct focus on the enhancement of teaching and learning, this proposal will reconfigure the amount and purpose of contact hours, thus refocusing students on the core outcomes of the class. By using strategies blended and flexible learning environment through the creation of an online technical demonstration library, online lectures, and collaborative online communication tools, students will have control of their learning style for foundational skill based learning tasks that can then be expanded upon in a more focused manner in contact hours.
Software skill development becomes a pre-occupation of students in the VISA 110 class, and although is a component of the course and needed to create the projects, it is not a core outcome of the course. I propose to create an archive of technical demonstrations that are usually carried out by the Teaching Assistants during contact hours, and have them organized into an online library. This will allow students to access videos of specific and detailed technical tasks at their discretion and pace, and allow for replay and review. This is a pro-active way to give students who are at various levels, resources to pursue their own learning. This would also allow for a common technical foundation throughout the course, not dependant on the skill level of the Teaching Assistant. Guided testing and interactive components will aid to further assess and track learning, and materials will be adjusted in the beta-testing phases towards students’ learning process.
Artistic practice and creative thinking thrives on a built community of collegiality, critique, and peer review. With the rise of digital art making, this component of the studio artist has been sacrificed. The second component of this proposed project will implement and online communication component that will allow students of all types, personalities and backgrounds, to find common ground in a safe online communication environment. In an aim to create a sense of collegiality and community online, in aim to transform social media habits and using online communication tools into something generative and focus on the learning benefits that a community can bring.
The final phase is to build preparation lectures that extend beyond the lecture hall facility, to be distributed and executed as online videos and lectures, featuring a variety of resources, such as artist studio visits, and gallery interviews, etc. This final component of the project is to build up a repertoire for students to refer to when searching for inspiration, or desire to connect with professional articulations of the artistic process, allowing access to different geographies, institutions, and artists that would not normally be available in a traditional lecture hall. The traditional lecture will be able to expand into a multitude of experiences by embracing digital media.
Expanding on UBC’s Blackboard Connect Tools, I aim to create an activated online environment as constructive component of the course. Media development is a product of what we teach in the course, therefore the project will be sustainable through continuous additions of resources updated when necessary.
Provide a clear work plan for how you will achieve the stated objectives of the project. Please include major milestones to indicate when you will initiate project development, when you will implement project with students, and when you will conduct evaluation.
Phase 1: (May 2015 – September 2016)
Currently, student consultation establishes a the highest demand is for technical demonstration tools to be available online. As this seems to be the most requested and pressing component to have online capabilities, as well as being the lengthiest and most distracting use of current contact teaching hours, it will be the first phase of the project. I will devise a plan of the technical curriculum and scripts, adjusted to demonstrations of distinct small areas of learning, in order to properly create a foundation for the library. Through July and August of 2015, Teaching Assistants and myself will begin producing small video’s using screen capture. This component will be ready for trial run by January 2016, and run as an accompaniment to the current structure of the course in the January term. During this time students will be consulted as to their experience using the tools, and adjustments will be made upon feedback. Online quizzes will also be implemented to specific sections of the trail class, to translate and reveal learning achievements and challenges of the video archive. Statistics calculated from the video’s will also be observed, to study student habits while viewing, video’s that had the most use, or areas of video’s that were commonly paused. The statistics from student use will aid in appraising how the library is currently working, and adjustments and additions that need to be made for the next term. During the summer months of 2016 final adjustments will be executed for full implementation of the technical demonstration library in the September of 2016 term.
During this first phase, I will also be generating a carefully re-focused curriculum for the lab component of the course. I will plan and issue a proper re-purposing of the contact hours, and refocus them to the core learning issues of the course. The transition of the contact hours will include focused activities, readings, and discussions that will developing the relationship of intuition to intellect and the ability to think through vision exposed through a contemporary art issues and practices. Extended in-class critique and discussions on the student work will refocus the course into learning outcomes of artistic practice and creativity as new avenues that allow us to producing meaning. Issues of the visual, its effect on meaning, subjectivity, and ethical perspectives involved in the implications of making will also be enforced, in order to enact a responsible citizenship, the role of the artist to the society at large. This renewed focus aligns with the goals of the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, and the enforces the described outcomes of our BFA degree.
Samples of the online technical demonstration library can be found here.
Phase 2: (September 2016 – June 2017)
As of the Fall of 2016, I will work with technology services and appropriate programmers to create an online social forum for specifically directed discussion, annotated interactivity, workshops, and anonymous critique. The skeleton of the online collaborative discussion area will be created to aid in facilitating online collaboration and collegiality of the students. In current discussions with Arts Instructional Technology Support, it has been indicated that the use of Collaborative extensions of Connect, namely ComPAIR software might be an appropriate for this project. At the start of this phase I will research and be working with technology services and programmers to determine what would be the best software for this specific use, and build the system to allow for the unique interactive online opportunities I wish to create. Beta testing for our set up will start in the January 2017 term of the course.
Samples of the online peer critique can be found here.
Describe expected outcomes and explain how this project will contribute to enhancement of teaching and learning.
The specific outcomes of the blended learning structure into VISA 110 are:
- From theory to praxis; put into practice elements of the innate characteristics of the electronic to digital that run as subject matter for the actual course by way of digitization of specific components of the course.
- Create directed online videos demonstrations that focus on the software technical knowledge needed to create specific artistic projects of the course. The videos will serve as an archive that students can refer back to in their time in the course watch at their own personal pace, and will test and demonstrate their technical knowledge.
- Facilitate a directed online venue that initiates and practices collegiality, communication, and critique specific to the course.
- Extend beyond lecture-hall facilities, to the inclusion of media features such as interviews with prominent local artists, gallery tours, studio visits, and other mixed media components that relate to the content of the lectures.
- Employ the benefits of a blended learning approach of teaching in order to refocus contact hours in class towards reaching a productive and deeper understanding of the foundational core content supported through online preparation.
- Increased teacher interaction and discussion time in labs will better utilize Teaching Assistant resources, expertise, and individual specialties, cultivating a better sense of fulfillment and developed maturity towards the subject matter of Visual Art.
Re-organizing the course into a blended learning flexible classroom will help to create a focused sense of purpose for many elements of the current course.
The creation of a technical demonstration archive can be used in future renditions of the course, as well as be used as a resource for other areas or courses in the University. The sustainability of the technical demonstration library will be altered and added to upon edition changes and adjustments in software throughout the years, but the foundation base of technical understanding of the visual arts software, (such as Adobe Photoshop) and when and how to implement this knowledge, will be a long-standing and a useful archive for years into the future. This archive will benefit students in the short term as well as for a long-term foundation base.
The technical demonstration library will become a resource that can help the rest of the University as well, in a way that they haven’t been able to do before. It has the potential to be used for other courses that rely on building the same technical skills. On many occasions graduate students have approached me from various departments, (such as Journalism, Music, and even Art History) asking to take the class for the development of technical skills. Being a first year Undergraduate class has been difficult to offer them a seat, as the class would not count for their post-graduate degree. This resource can be used for special cases like this and allow teaching and learning to be extended through different means in a variety of ways. I would be open to how this resource can help the rest of the University and implement ways for various students to have access to it.
Most importantly, VISA 110 is an Introductory Digital Media course for Visual Artists. The theme of the course studies the change to the Visual Arts because of the introduction of the ‘machine’, (as seen in the camera, film and most lens-based electronics into the current digital phase) and how it effected representation and visual art throughout its development spanning from the early 1800’s to the present. The assignments in the course not only develop technical skill to execute artistic projects of photographic and moving image mediums, but more importantly, the use of electronic components in teaching directly speak to the philosophical issues of how knowledge and meaning is accessed as well as determined by electronic mediums, thus the implementation of online components to the curriculum. The performed interaction will impact their classroom growth to the understanding of the ‘machine’ as a being; utilizing and experiencing the tools they will philosophically dissect, will inform their knowledge of the discipline.
Evaluation Process
Through a phased execution process over the next two years, the major outcome to the VISA 110 course would be to transition of the amount and purpose of contact hours of the class. The trial phases of implementing the resources will allow me to gather analysis and make decisions to inform the next steps and adjustments, to the foundation elements of the class and how they are distributed.
An essential outcome is to re-direct the focus of contact hours in labs by removing preparation and extraneous, (but also much needed) components of the course to online learning, and to re-focus attention on core outcomes of the class, namely, a more focused and developed understanding of contemporary Visual Art. This will also utilize Teaching Assistant expertise and specialties to a more direct focus of what it means to make art today.
Further, extending to online discussion and interactive workshops will incite new habits of learning by way of collaboration software and tools, and will expand class learning and collegiality into an online environment and be emphasized in class. It will bring about methods of peer review around their work and the art making process, into the ability to create an environment that they will use throughout their degree.
Over the past and current year I have been measuring student’s experience in each term of the course through surveys in focusing on how their experience could be enhanced online, or what components of the course they would like to perform online. There has been an astounding request for the technical demonstration tools to be available online, followed by a request for an online archive of lectures within an organized development of class themes and topics. With the pursuit of this project, I will be consulting with current students through more directed questions, and open forums for new suggestions. Teaching Assistants have also taken on a leadership role in trying to identify which components of learning are sacrificed in lab because of elements that could be done online.