Teaching On-Line Studio Art Courses in Two Year Community Colleges in Minnesota.

I belong to a listserv of art educators in the Minnesota State Colleges and University System. For a number of years, the group has been having discussions about teaching studio art courses on-line. The department I belong to at Rochester Community and Technical College has long embraced on-line learning. Their attitudes toward on-line learning and teaching with technology were a big incentive for taking my position. The attitude of many people teaching art in the MnSCU system has not always been welcoming to on-line teaching, which has been frustrating for many of my colleagues here in Rochester.

Recently, a call came out on the listserv for feedback about on-line teaching. The instructor will be representing MnSCU on a discussion panel at the College Art Association meeting this year. None of my colleagues seemed like they were going to answer the question, for fear of having an aneurism or saying something unproductive. So I had a go and summarizing our concerns. The text below is more or less the email I sent, including some typos. It seemed like a useful thing to put on the blog.

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"I suspect that one of the reasons you haven’t heard from more instructors is that the issue of on-line teaching of art courses is so charged within the MnSCU system right now. Looking around the faculty offices here at RCTC, I am aware of a number of people who have strong opinions about on-line learning and have experience teaching on-line classes. But the fear here is that the presentation to CAA will rehash the question of whether on-line learning is good or bad. For what it’s worth, that wasn’t my sense of what your email was asking for – but faculty here who have been teaching on-line have felt in the past that they were shut down or not taken seriously in discussions about on-line learning and are reluctant to go there again. I suspect the situation is more nuanced than that – I believe there are a lot of people on this list who are teaching on-line courses now.

It’s no secret that RCTC has embraced on-line learning. The first on-line courses taught in the art department here were offered in 1997. Two of our faculty members were students at RCTC then, which makes them some of the first art and design students in the country to have taken on-line art courses. Both went on to finish masters programs in Duluth and Mankato, and have returned to teach at RCTC. Both taught courses on-line for RCTC while they were pursuing their Masters degrees – one of them has been teaching on-line for over six years. More than half our faculty teaches on-line courses. Our entire faculty makes use of D2L and technology in the studio – from photoshop to powerpoint and DVDs. I am writing this to put RCTC’s attitudes toward on-line learning into some kind of context. There are programs across the MnSCU system doing all of these things, teaching with technology and offering on-line courses is just what good teaching looks like now. We aren’t special in that regard. RCTC’s attitude is to enthusiastically embrace the opportunities.

Offering an on-line drawing class seems to be a kind of litmus test for where you stand on the issue of on-line learning. RCTC has offered an on-line drawing course for a number of years. For what it’s worth, there is a lot of debate about the efficacy of this course within our department. Our painting and drawing instructor would probably prefer it wasn’t offered on-line, and even the most ardent supports of on-line learning in the department will acknowledge that there are problems with the course.

If you listen to MPR often or have been following election debates vis-a-vis education issues, you have heard governor Pawlenty and all of this years gubernatorial candidates embraced on-line learning (although Dayton was guarded in his support and expressed a preference for in-person courses). What horrified me about the discussion was that each of the candidates cited iTunes University as an example of the possibilities of on-line learning. When I heard Pawlenty discuss on-line learning on NPR, I was not certain he realized that there are actual professors teaching the courses. I worry that our state government thinks learning on-line is essentially automated and they won’t have to hire real people to teach the courses.

Given all of the above, the perspective of the department here is that debating whether or not teaching on-line is a good thing isn’t a useful discussion. On-line teaching in art departments in MnSCU is here now and not going away. The relevant questions now should be how to do it well and about how to address the labor issues that are raised so that we can support faculty who are teaching on-line appropriately. How do we answer calls from the governor to teach via the Internet and still offer meaningful learning experiences? How do we make a case for what effective teaching on-line means versus downloading courses into your iPod?

Can we start by defining what a studio art course is? Graphic Design? Photography? Printmaking? Ceramics? I teach photography and think I am a studio artist, but the term seems to mean something different as different people use it.

It seems like any course that can happen on a computer could be offered on-line. That seems to have been the position of a lot of MnSCU art departments.

It also is a no-brainer that ceramics or analog photography is difficult to offer on-line. The equipment needs are too expensive and the environmental impact is too serious for students to work at home on those courses.

I think that a lot of the objections to offering drawing on-line are that craft is a serious issue in an introductory class – learning to see scale, proportion and perspective as well as figuring out mark-making or line quality – these are all very tactile, hands on concerns that are best taught when we can give immediate feedback to students as they work. I think the same issues crop up in the darkroom, ceramics studio, or printmaking studio.

But are they really an issue in 2-D design or 3-D design, where craft is secondary to an articulation of design principals?

I’d like to propose that the issue isn’t studio vs. design-based courses, but rather the issue is courses with high craft and tactility needs/with safety and environment implications/with high equipment costs vs. courses with low craft and tactility needs/low safety and environmental impacts/low cost to entry for students. If that’s the case, I think a lot of studio courses could be offered successfully on-line or adapted to be a successful on-line experience.

Additionally, I think there is a concern with time on task for students in on-line classes. In a traditional studio course, even if a student puts no energy into work outside of class, they are guaranteed six hours a week of wrestling with drawing in-class. Time on task, in our world, makes the difference between success and failure. I think it is easy to assume that students working on-line will not spend the appropriate time on the work. Although that may not be the case.

I also think that we tend to see courses as either on-line or in-person, and that division isn’t useful. We really should be talking about a range of possibilities. They would include blended-mode classes that meet regularly and also have an on-line component. They would include in-person courses with web-enabled learning modules. They would also include in-person courses where instructors are bringing technology into the studio or utilizing D2L to facilitate courses. I am sure all of this is going on in your programs – it’s what good teaching looks like now and there are a lot of great teachers looking at this listserv.

At RCTC our drawing instructor is less than enthusiastic about offering on-line drawing. But he does post videos of his demos on D2L, mostly so that students who have missed class have a resource to turn to without bugging him for one-on-one tutorials. Our ceramics instructor shows DVDs of archival footage of artists at work. Both instructors are lobbying hard to have computers and monitors installed in their studios because projection space for PowerPoint lectures is at a premium. The drawing instructor would like student to have access to Google Images for source material, and the ceramics instructor would like to use specific software for glaze recipes. Both instructors would like the ability to show artist’s portfolios to students in an ad-hoc way, as issues come up in the studio. I have been recording my demos on an iPad and uploading the recordings onto D2L, mostly because it is easy and students seem to appreciate having the review available as they are learning to develop prints. I imagine that most of the people reading this listserv are doing some variation some of these things.

I can imagine permutations of on-line drawing courses that would address the concerns of faculty who care about tactility, feedback and craft – a class could meet one evening a week for four hours and have two hours of supplemental work outside of class facilitated by D2L. A drawing course could also meet intensively for the first three Saturdays of the semester and then continue on-line. It would be a boon to working students and a useful compromise for getting students into a studio. The same is true with ceramics or darkroom photography (were students would have access to the darkroom or ceramics studio on campus).

Just because on-line learning enables a course, doesn’t mean the course can’t ever meet in person. It doesn’t mean that the course is taken long-distance. We can address the needs of learners who show up in community colleges and still offer viable, valuable courses using on-line tools. On-line versus in-person is a false dichotomy.

A number of other concerns worth voicing:

1. What are the real costs of offering on-line courses versus in-person courses. The governor’s debates seem to suggest that they think on-line courses are going to be more affordable. You don’t have to build new facilities to house on-line students. But you do have to pay for bandwidth, server space, and faculty salaries. We’ve heard through back channels that on-line courses at RCTC are more expensive to offer than in-person courses, but no one will say officially. Does anyone have real numbers?

2. What are the effects of on-line courses on retention? Especially at a community college in a weak economy? We have better enrollment in on-line courses than in-person courses, and my guess is that on-line learning has kept the school from laying of faculty and staff.

3. What are the implications for our jobs when 3-D modeling can be taught by someone in Indiana, or India, who is sitting at home in their pajamas and the course is as effective as someone teaching in a computer lab in Rochester? Should our unions be setting some conditions for on-line courses that help keep jobs local?

4. How are we compensated for developing on-line courses or time spent training to use software that enables on-line learning? Is that another important labor issue we should be addressing?

5. What is an unreasonable number of students to try to teach in an on-line studio course? We can’t run studio students through a series of automated tests. We need to evaluate and critique original student work as it is created and provide timely feedback. Let me suggest that 28 students is a few too many. How do we set system-wide, reasonable standards for student numbers in on-line studio courses?

6. What equipment and software is MnSCU obligated to purchase to facilitate on-line teaching? Can we bring that equipment and software home as part of tele-commuting?

7. What are the requirements for office hours and a presence on campus? Should the union be advocating for the option of tele-commuting as we teach on-line courses? Can I please teach digital photography in my pajamas while I am printing work at my studio at home? Can we agree to working conditions like that without off-shoring our jobs?

8. How do we enable the supervision of adjuncts and first time teachers who are teaching on-line?

9. How do we effectively mentor older faculty who are teaching on-line for the first time? It’s rough to be a thirty-something faculty member who is in the position of being de-facto technology support for a department of baby-boomers. Likewise, its difficult to have taught for 25 years, to be an expert teacher of painting or ceramics, and find yourself needing the advice of someone just out of their MFA program. Can we establish a framework for sharing expertise where we all feel adequately compensated? Where we all feel like our strengths are taken seriously?

10. How do we draw on the experience and teaching strengths of long-time studio instructors and bring it to our on-line courses? If you are retiring in the next few years, could you please have someone video tape some of your demos so that your expertise and knowledge are not lost when you leave?

11. How do we convince MnSCU to support rich content on D2L? You can’t host streaming video on D2L, which is the only way to teach on-line studio courses effectively at this point. Can we describe what tools we need and make an across the system demand for an upgrade of servers, server spaces and software to facilitate richer on-line learning experiences?

12. How do we effectively address the differences in student computer competencies in our on-line courses? An on-line drawing course might be more feasible if you knew that all of your students could photograph their work with a digital camera, upload the image to their computer and submit it on D2L. I couldn’t promise you that my students this semester could do that.

13. Can MnSCU offer translation or transcription services for faculty who are teaching online and want to offer rich content and still be ADA compliant? I am producing videos of demos at a furious pace this semester. But if I had a student who could not hear, they would be dead in the water. I can spend hours transcribing that material myself or I could move ahead and create more content. What does MnSCU want me to do?

14. It could be that transcription services, video hosting services or other helpful resources are available commercially for cheap or free. It’s hard to know what technologies work and what technologies are available because we work in isolation. Someone teaching in Lake Superior may know about really useful tools that we haven’t heard about in Rochester – we don’t have system wide discussions about best practices on-line because we are so often bogged down in debating whether or not studio courses belong on-line. We could make huge improvements to what is offered if we could share knowledge. We need a framework and infrastructure for doing that.

15. I can’t keep up with the amount of on-line material I would like to generate for my in-person classes. I can’t imagine how hard it is to generate demonstrations and other material for on-line courses. It would be a great benefit if we could collaborate on on-line learning objects – I just finished a reasonable demo on scanning with a Nikon film scanner. I would be happy to release it as a Creative Commons video and handout and share it with anyone in the system to use or change to fit the equipment and policies at their school. We don’t have a place to share that kind of material. We don’t have a way to discuss how coordinate efforts to create that kind of material. Why are we all always starting from scratch? How can we collaborate on the hard work of teaching studio classes on-line so that we elevate the quality of courses system-wide?

16. Do our administrations understand that it is vital that we don’t offer on-line courses at the exclusion of in-person studio courses? Everyone at RCTC understands the value of working in the darkroom. Everyone here has been in classes where the feedback of the community of students has pushed our work forward after a critique. Everyone knows what it is like to have an instructor walk over and gently guide your hands as throw your first bowl on the wheel. Those experiences are vital and even though all of us support on-line teaching, no one would ever want to see the kilns or darkroom disappear. How do we communicate and advocate that position to an administration who sees on-line learning as a dollar saving measure?

17. Who is teaching on-line courses in our departments and how does that our perceptions of success or failure of on-line courses? Is it only adjuncts who are new to teaching who are teaching on-line courses? Are long time faculty with decades of teaching experience willing to take on teaching on-line courses? Are full time faculty who are teaching on-line course proficient in using technology? Have they taught one semester of an on-line course and decided teaching on-line is a waste? At RCTC we've seen a spectrum of experience and adjuncts/full-timers teaching on-line, and not surprisingly, it seems to impact the quality of the courses. I don't mean to privilege full-time over adjuncts - at RCTC it is often adjuncts who have the most experience teaching on-line.

18. Does anyone have any assessment data to support their conclusions about on-line courses? At RCTC we have been pretty on top of assessment, but couldn't provide you with an example of an instructor who has taught on-line and off-line versions of the same course using the same assessment rubrics. Is there anyone across the system that has any data collected that way who would be willing to share it? At least then our discussion about the success or failure of on-line learning could be slightly more objective. And I bet if we were collecting data honestly and holistically, we would see that while there were ways an on-line drawing course was lacking, there might be areas in a course where students where more successful than their in-person counterparts. For example, maybe they have a difficult time using the negative space effectively, but are more articulate and thoughtful when they are critiquing each others work because they have been forced to write those critiques instead of hiding in the back of the studio. More importantly, if available data showed deficiencies in on-line studio courses, maybe they would give us insights into how to teach on-line courses more effectively. If you have a strong feeling, for or against, about on-line teaching, now is the time to start brainstorming ways to collect thoughtful data to back up your arguments. That is the information your administrators are going to pay attention to."