Art for Non-majors Feedback

Below is a collection of feedback on the Art for Non-majors course. What follows is a selection of work that was made in the course, along with some short exit tickets that students would fill out upon completing the exercises. Most of the exit tickets asked questions about the drawing exercises I was asking them to do that day, after that are images of more student work from the class.

End of course evaluations

These feedback form questions were written by me, they are an attempt to assess my student's experience with the course. For the most part, I think the course feedback is positive. There is some negative feedback that centers around, more options, more one on one teaching time, and the occasional lesson that students did not connect with. I take this feedback seriously, teachers cannot be all things to all people but I do strive to provide the best educational experience I can and these evaluations are important to me.

Exercises and feedback

The following are drawings that were done as exercises. These drawings are often done to get students thinking differently about their approach to drawing by reorienting their intuitive, kinesthetic, aesthetic, and conceptual viewpoint. That drawing is not an established habit, it is a malleable habit, is its strength. The behavior of performing drawing in different ways with different mindsets means that when students start to learn to draw they find themselves cornered. They perform one kind of drawing that satisfies them and never move beyond it, or they perform poorly and never change their approach or way of thinking to get out of that rut. These exercises change how they approach drawing so that they can truly assess what faculties they tap into when they draw, how their muscles move, what they look at, what they map out and consider necessary information. I have broadened the scope of these exercises in the past and this is only a mild selection of the most common approaches, but the immediate feedback is helpful. It is very mixed, some students did not understand the assignments, others did. This kind of formative assessment is key to understanding which students I am properly communicating with and which students I am not connecting with.

The above student was able to accurately render her chosen objects quite well without the assistance of exercises, practice, or any initial drawing training. She probably has a well trained faculty for drawing already. Her text does tell me that she was unwilling to explore the uncontrollable aspects of the extended arm exercise (where one draws with the charcoal attached to a long stick). She also did not take into account that the blind contour is often not about the finished product but rather slow and careful attention to detail, and eye hand synchronicity. While she has dynamic lines and some sense of space, weight, and can create visual interest she does lack a full concrete sense of volume and space, the notebook and cramped composition makes the onion float. It is rounded but not varied in its line work enough to convincingly breath its volume into the space. I think an exercise like line inventories, where students sit and rehearse line types according to the instructors gestures, would help break her from her established habits. A more rigorous exploration of perspective both rigid and informal would help her situate objects in space.

This is by no means a successful assessment of what the student needs, in this particular case even if I did do this with her she might still need more adjustments and input from me to help advance her understanding. Strong students like this one are the most challenging because they have the requisite amount of confidence to pursue their own style, taste, and creative decisions. Rather than talk prescriptively to this student I would approach her from a master to master relationship, and express how I approach the problems she faces as options to add rather than mistakes to correct. This keeps the integrity of what she has accomplished intact while setting the goals for her work higher.

For the exercise above I felt it necessary to prompt the students to articulate a very subjective choice, the choice of which composition to use. I gave a few pointers about formal language, what makes a good composition, and talked to some students one on one about their composition. The feedback on this lesson really helped me understand where students language was, composition and formal aesthetic choices are the hardest to articulate in speech and in writing. This process confirmed that for me. I look forward to augmenting how I approach this kind of lesson in the future so that my students can talk articulately about their work in these terms. Sometimes this is when formative assessment and feedback is the most helpful, when you have the sneaking suspicion you have not done well in helping your students, and you know they lack knowledge about a topic. It is good to confirm this for yourself rather than let it go unchecked.