Tips for Studio Art Courses

Overview

Creative courses, such as studio art or photography, can pose unique design challenges, both on-campus and online. Some key aspects of creative courses that impact course design include:

• The majority of course goals are skills-based rather than knowledge-based, so a large amount of time must be devoted to practice.

• A class section may have a wide range of student background and comfort levels with specific creative skills.

• Designing graded assessments can be difficult in creative courses, particularly because evaluation of creative projects can seem subjective. Setting clear expectations and providing detailed rubrics is important for student success.

• Peer to peer collaboration and frequent feedback is a critical part of most studio course experiences as students work to drive their creative projects forward.

• Because of the collaborative nature of some creative courses, students tend to build strong communities with their classmates.

Fortunately, the asynchronous and synchronous online teaching model can be leveraged very effectively for creative instruction. As you design your studio-based course, follow the guidelines below to leverage the benefits of the blended model to support your students.

Assessments

Create ungraded, or low-stakes assessments that allow students to first practice with new concepts or skills that students will be required to use in graded assignments.

• Low-stakes practice opportunities create a space for repetition, experimentation, failure and reflection.

• Be explicit about how these ungraded assessments are similar to or different from graded assessments.

Build in opportunities for peer and instructor-led feedback before the final deliverable is due.

• Use digital annotation tools to comment on student work and be sure your selected tool supports the file type and size used in your deliverables.

• You can also provide live annotation by asking students to share their work in live sessions while you use the annotation tools built into Zoom. When you’re finished, ask students to take a screenshot of your feedback. Learn more about the annotation tools available in Zoom here.

• Discussion forums can also be used for enabling students to post their work and receive instructor and/or peer feedback via commenting.

• Plan for several rounds of ungraded feedback, and explicitly state when project updates should be submitted.

• In addition to more structured feedback, encourage the use of class-wide communication and sharing through low-stakes communication tools like the course wall, discussion forums, Slack channels, Gchat, or other social spaces.

Provide clear grading rubrics for project-based assignments.

• Be sure to include specific skills or techniques that should be demonstrated or used in projects.

• Emphasize the student’s progress rather than correctness. Frequent feedback loops and process journals can help foster a growth mindset and track individual progress made on specific projects.

Design assessments so that they build in challenge and complexity as the course progresses.

• Smaller projects that ask students to demonstrate specific creative skills can help to increase confidence for larger, all-encompassing projects found in the latter half of the course.

Synchronous Instruction

Use polls at the start of class to better understand how students are doing with the course content and project-based work.

Avoid lecturing in the live session.

• Introduce topics and skills in asynchronous video and text segments that can be referenced and re-watched by students as they begin work on their creative projects

• Reserve the synchronous session for collaborative activities and social learning so that students have the opportunity to learn from their peers and receive formative feedback on their work.

• Lecture in the synchronous session may occasionally be appropriate if your asynchronous practice activities are indicating that students are struggling with a specific concept or skill.

Utilize live session time for additional skill demonstrations when needed.

• For example, you might share your screen while you are using an editing software in a photography course or share your document camera while you demonstrate sketching techniques in a studio art class.

Use breakout groups for in-class creative collaboration.

• Split students into their working groups. These might rotate with each new project or with each new live session to increase exposure to different perspectives amongst the class.

• Visit each group to provide support and to check in on progress

• Ask students to share their work while you utilize the annotation tool in Zoom to provide targeted feedback. Students can screenshot your annotations for further reflection and iteration after the live session.

Asynchronous Instruction

Reserve lecture and demonstration materials for the asynchronous portion of your course where possible.

• Creative courses are highly collaborative in nature so you will want to reserve live sessions for highly participatory activities like project presentations or peer reviews.

• Students benefit from the ability to rewatch recorded lectures and demonstrations as needed, especially when it comes to more nuanced topics and skills. Be sure to use descriptive titles so students can easily find the videos they wish to rewatch.

Use modeling and demonstrations to build on skills associated with upcoming projects or to set expectations for how students should be engaging with certain components of your course.

• Consider filming demonstrations in the first-person perspective where applicable as this angle is easier for students to follow along with and replicate.

• Narrate the steps you are taking during demonstrations. Students will benefit from your expert-level thinking and rationale behind each step you are taking.

• Break up complex demonstrations into smaller segments and use descriptive titles so students can easily refer back to specific steps as needed.

• Follow up demonstrations with low-stakes practice opportunities coupled with formative feedback.

On-campus studio courses can often include “head-down” work where students are simply creating and iterating on their projects. You may want to to account for this time in your asynchronous instruction plans.

• This type of work can be individual or group work, depending on what you would like students to accomplish.

• If your course is highly collaborative or includes group assignments, consider rotating groups to ensure students are benefiting from the diverse perspectives and experience levels of each student.

• Create guided prompts to help ensure students are making the proper amount of progress on their projects. Be explicit about what students should be accomplishing during this time.

• Provide space for students to submit the progress made during individual or group work and build in opportunities for faculty or peer-based feedback and commenting.

Use examples to boost inspiration and build confidence.

• When introducing new creative skills or concepts, be sure to share plenty of examples.

• Consider asking students to find other examples and share them through discussions/forums in order to boost inspiration.

• Share your work, inspiration, and thought processes in order to model expert thinking for your students.

Include post-processing reflection activities or process journals to help students reflect on their creative process, learning and practice strategies, and track their own progress.

• Each week, ask students to reflect on their learning experience with the assignments, group work, feedback, and exercises. Discussion forums can be a great tool for reflective exercises.

• Weekly reflective prompts will provide tangible documentation of each student's creative journey throughout your course, which can help you assess effort and participation.

Additional Resources

2U has not endorsed these resources, and is not responsible for the content within the links. We share them in the hope that they might be useful.

• Hypothes.is is a free browser extension that allows you to annotate documents, including PDFs, on your computer, and can be a useful tool for sharing detailed feedback on visual materials.

• Zoom annotation tools are extensive, and can support both instructor-to-student and peer-to-peer live feedback and critique.