Adapting curriculum online (in a pandemic!)

I feel I cannot stress this enough. We are responding to a global crisis. Everything you do from this point on is already exceptional and beyond the call of duty. This part of the guide walks you through a couple of practical steps for adapting your course online.

Before we jump into strategies, however, I wanted to take a step back and refocus this conversation from a perspective of continuing instruction. The unspoken and often unnamed element of our classes is social interaction. As artists, we talk, we share, we give feedback, we take criticism, we grow through other people engaging with our work. The core to our classes, whether we realize it or not, is often the community aspect.

So before we break all of our classes into online modules and never see each other again, let’s regroup and remember what we took from our classes in college. For me it was the incredible friendships I made through sharing and working on things together.

Making art together is one of the best ways to build community, and community is crucial in a crisis. So please, focus your energies on building connections where you can between your students. We can facilitate them staying socially engaged, and if that’s the only thing they gain from the rest of our class, then that alone is worth it.

A few key points:

• Scale back assignments as much as you can while still meeting core objectives. For example, a narrative filmmaking project might need to scale the project back to a slideshow of hand-drawn and/or photo-based storyboards.

• Revise group projects, either in the form of turning them into solo projects or creating a way for students to collaborate that doesn’t require them to meet at the same time.

• Incorporate the use of found objects and media, and reframe your projects from the perspective of what is available in a house (with no studio or tools).

• Plan for alternative assignments. It might not be possible to find a project that fits the needs of all your students’ situations. Ask them what’s possible/manageable.

• Grade for completion, and break into smaller parts. I’m serious—if your students get any work done during this period, that’s more than enough to warrant an A.

• Be flexible in cases where students cannot get work done.