For my Practicing Digital Fellowship period, I used the time to experiment with several different changes to my courses that included aspects of digital pedagogy, open education, information literacy, and other creative approaches to teaching and learning, while incorporating hybrid course design. Below are the changes I incorporated into my courses and a discussion relating to my experience implementing these changes.
ART 460: Digital Studio
- Embedded Flipgrid as a creative discussion forum.
ART 280: Introduction to Photography and Digital Imaging
- Embedded Open Educational Resources from the OER Commons into the course.
ART 205: Art, Technology, & Society
- Embedded two learning modules based on the K. Patricia Cross Academy’s “Online Resource Scavenger Hunt” and “Fact or Opinion” teaching techniques.
- I opened my Art & Society lectures that were part of this course to the other Digital Fellows.
Discussion of implementation:
ART 460: Digital Studio:
In my ART 460: Digital Studio Course I embedded Flipgrid as a new discussion forum in the class. Previous iterations of the course had used the standard Moodle discussion forums. For my Practicing Digital Fellowship, I was looking for new ways to engage my students with technology as they studied the ways artists in the past have engaged with and adapted new technologies into their practice. I embedded Fligrid as a discussion forum into a discussion about the creative use of early video technology as it emerged in artistic practice. Much of the work in the early years of video art employed long takes and minimal editing because video editing equipment did not exist. For my student’s responses, to a screening of a collection of early video art, I asked them to use Flipgrid which has a similar immediacy as well as a lack of video editing functions built into the program. They were asked to creatively respond to the works in this screening, and comment on their classmate’s posts using Flipgrid as a creative medium. The implementation was a great success. They really loved directly engaging with the material in this way and demonstrated connections to the works in the screening in the ways they engaged with Flipgrid. Beyond the creativity demonstrated in their discussions, I also had them fill out a Google Forms survey about their experience with Flipgrid in this assignment. In the survey I asked:
- Have you ever used Flipgrid before, if so please describe
- Did you like Flipgrid as a discussion forum in general
- Did you like Flipgrid for this assignment in particular
- What were some of the elements of this assignment you enjoyed the most
- Is there anything you would change about this assignment
My students with few exceptions had not used Flipgrid previously. They stated they liked it in general and it made sense for this assignment in particular. As far as aspects they enjoyed the most, they stated they enjoyed listening to others’ responses rather than reading them, they enjoyed the various ways they could personalize their video response with text, filters, stickers, and gifs. They also stated that they particularly enjoyed using effects that related to work from the screening. In this way, they saw a direct connection to these early video artists and were able to see the legacy of the techniques these early video artists developed. Overall, this project accomplished what I set out to do, and the students engaged with the material in a fun and creative way.
ART 280: Introduction to Photography and Digital Imaging:
In my ART 280: Introduction to Photography and Digital Imaging course I scoured and embedded several Open Educational Resources sourced from the OER Commons. These resources were supplementary to the main course materials, but many students commented on the usefulness of the additional resources.
ART 205: Art, Technology, & Society:
My ART 205: Art, Technology, & Society course is a research and writing-intensive course in which students are introduced to all of the services and resources available to them through the Mulva Library (one-on-one research assistance, navigating the library’s physical and database collections, making use of InterLibrary loan, etc), and online research methods as they practice art historical research. With online research methods being a component of the course I adapted and embedded the “Online Resource Scavenger Hunt” and “Fact or Opinion” teaching techniques from the K. Patricia Cross Academy. I did not use these resources directly but adapted the material to suit the needs of this course. These techniques provided a solid foundation for the students in assessing the suitability and reliability of the sources they encountered online in their research throughout the semester.
Additionally, as a Practicing Digital Fellow, I opened my Art & Society lectures that were part of this course to the other Digital Fellows. I hosted two visiting artist lectures through Zoom. I hosted the Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer Kite on February 24th and the Italian conceptual artist and hacktivist, Paolo Cirio on March 10th. Both of these artists use technology in interesting and innovative ways. Cirio’s work embodies hacker ethics, such as open access, privacy policies, and the critique of economic, legal, and political models, and Kite’s research is concerned with contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Both of these lectures were supported by the Faculty Mini-Grant Program through the Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice, and Public Understanding.
The lectures can be viewed at these links:
Kite SNC Lecture 02.24.2022: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/681551994/04dc653e6c
Paolo Cirio SNC Lecture 03.10.2022: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/686840449/debd07d51d
