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.\u00a0 In sum, the project included:<\/p>\n
This project will extend \u201cVisual Arts Digital Foundation\u201d studio course into the digital realm.\u00a0 Embracing the larger thematic topics of the course, namely \u201chow the machine influenced art-making\u201d these changes proposed will embrace the multitude ways that the transfer of knowledge can be expanded by way of the electronic.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019 learning process.<\/p>\n
Artistic practice and creative thinking thrives on a built community of collegiality, critique, and peer review.\u00a0 With the rise of digital art making, this component of the studio artist has been sacrificed.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The traditional lecture will be able to expand into a multitude of experiences by embracing digital media.<\/p>\n
Expanding on UBC\u2019s Blackboard Connect Tools, I aim to create an activated online environment as constructive component of the course.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Currently, student consultation establishes a the highest demand is for technical demonstration tools to be available online.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Through July and August of 2015, Teaching Assistants and myself will begin producing small video\u2019s using screen capture.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 During this time students will be consulted as to their experience using the tools, and adjustments will be made upon feedback.\u00a0 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\u2019s will also be observed, to study student habits while viewing, video\u2019s that had the most use, or areas of video\u2019s that were commonly paused.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
During this first phase, I will also be generating a carefully re-focused curriculum for the lab component of the course.\u00a0 I will plan and issue a proper re-purposing of the contact hours, and refocus them to the core learning issues of the course.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Samples of the online technical demonstration library can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 The skeleton of the online collaborative discussion area will be created to aid in facilitating online collaboration and collegiality of the students.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Samples of the online peer critique can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The specific outcomes of the blended learning structure into VISA 110 are:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This archive will benefit students in the short term as well as for a long-term foundation base.<\/p>\n The technical demonstration library will become a resource that can help the rest of the University as well, in a way that they haven\u2019t been able to do before.\u00a0 It has the potential to be used for other courses that rely on building the same technical skills.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Most importantly, VISA 110 is an Introductory Digital Media course for Visual Artists.\u00a0 The theme of the course studies the change to the Visual Arts because of the introduction of the \u2018machine\u2019, (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\u2019s to the present.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The performed interaction will impact their classroom growth to the understanding of the \u2018machine\u2019 as a being; utilizing and experiencing the tools they will philosophically dissect, will inform their knowledge of the discipline. 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Over the past and current year I have been measuring student\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 With the pursuit of this project, I will be consulting with current students through more directed questions, and open forums for new suggestions.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Bringing Visual Arts 110:\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In sum, the project included: Researched, organized and devised a successful proposal for TLEF funding to establish a blended … Continue reading TLEF Proposal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/donofrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Phase 2:<\/u>\u00a0 (September 2016 \u2013 June 2017)<\/h3>\n
\nDescribe expected outcomes and explain how this project will contribute to enhancement of teaching and learning.<\/em> <\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nEvaluation Process <\/strong><\/h4>\n
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