Emily Somoskey

For this review, I wanted to test a few key components to gauge how easily students are able to access the course. I asked my husband to try to navigate the course without any instruction from me, his goal was to find everything needed to be prepared for the first class meeting at the end of week 1. As he looked through the course I had him describe what he was clicking on, why, and how easy it was to find what he was looking for. As a student at MSU, he is fairly familiar with D2L already so it was pretty simple for him to figure out.

• Welcome Message/professor contact info.
• Syllabus
• Course Schedule
• Discussion Post 1
• Project 1.1
• Slides for 1.1
• Grades

He was able to find everything within a matter of a few minutes. The only aspect that was somewhat difficult was finding the discussion post because he has never used that feature of D2L before. This made me realize that I should add directions on my course schedule on how to navigate to the discussions. Overall, by conducting this review I feel satisfied that the course is fairly clear and straight forward to navigate. Because the course is a hybrid format, I will be able to walk them through any difficulties and answer questions as a group during the first class session. If for some reason the course didn’t meet the first week, I could always create a screencast to show students how they should navigate their way through the course and find everything they need. Another way to better gauge the usability would be to conduct another review with an individual that has never used D2L before, which is something I would consider before I teach this course in the future.

Course accessibility Review

In following the MSU web accessibility guide when creating my course materials, I believe my course is fairly accessible for students of all levels and abilities. My documents all have strong contrast between text and background, images within the project sheets have alternative text, and files have been uploaded as rtf word documents rather than pdf’s to make them accessible to students using screen readers. I made sure to avoid the use of tables, and all lists are clearly denoted using bullet points. One area that could use improvement would be my slideshows, which I plan to give more energy to in the future. Because I did not have enough time this semester to screencast my lectures, they do not provide as much benefit to the course as I would have hoped. In the future I plan to add alt text to all of the images, as well as provide a transcript to go along with the lectures. This semester allowed me to get a good start on developing my color and design hybrid course, but in order to provide maximum accessibility I will need to put more effort into supplying students with multiple avenues for multimedia content.

Elements of an Engaging Learning Space

Learning spaces can take many forms, whether it be in a traditional classroom setting, non-academic environment, or a digital platform, there are certain ways to create engaging spaces for students to succeed and take ownership of their learning. In order for this to happen, I strongly believe that a learning space should offer the following:

1. Clear communication and expectations
2. Room for discussion and collaboration
3. Space for individual exploration
4. Accessible resources and materials

In combination, these elements promote an authentic experience for students to engage with one another and further their learning through active discussion and exploration. I’ve experienced many classroom situations like these within studio art settings. The nature of the studio environment generally promotes individual exploration within a community of students, offering plenty of room for open dialogue between students and instructor to learn from one another. It is very possible to recreate these conditions within a variety of formats outside of the studio environment, but would manifest differently depending on the physical or digital format of the course.  I am excited to see the challenges and opportunities to promote engagement within the hybrid classroom structure.

 

Action Research Proposal

INTRO

Virtual reality has the ability to alter the way we understand and interact with our surroundings. I’m interested in looking at how VR drawing may affect student’s perception and understanding of space within the drawing classroom. In essence, observational drawing consists of perceiving and translating information from actual space into a flat space, and I would like to find out if VR drawing may have a positive impact on how students make these connections.

QUESTION

Does virtual reality drawing (in actual space) help students better understand the perception and translation of space on a 2-dimensional page?

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

There is quite a bit of research on virtual reality and its connection between various disciplines; however, I have not found anything addressing the specific question about the connection to observational drawing. According to Águeda Simó“in his article The Virtual Reality Art Installation Endocytosis: Evolving from a Flat Land into a Three-dimensional World, “Virtual Reality is an ideal platform for exploring spatial effects because of their ability to combine stereo imaging techniques and interactive real-time graphics”. Exploring space (both optical and actual) is a major goal of Drawing 1, so there are overlapping themes between the two platforms that are very intriguing to study. My work would help to fill these gaps within literature that currently exists on the topic of virtual reality.

METHODS

I will first need to administer a pre-assessment to my students to gauge their drawing abilities prior to their VR drawing experience. This pre-assessment will take place within the first 3 weeks of the Spring 2019 semester. After this time, I will have a solid understanding of the students drawing abilities, as well as their rate of progress so far in the course.

After the 3rd week, students will meet in the Virtual Reality room in the Digital Scholarship Lab at Michigan State University to draw in virtual reality for one class session. This activity will allow students to engage their entire bodies, and actively move through space while creating their drawings.

As class resumes as normal, I will make observations about how/if the VR drawing experience impacted the quality or accuracy of their  2-dimensional drawings. We will discuss as a class to see how the different drawing experiences impacted or affected one another. We may even go to the VR room at a second time in the semester to see if that provides any additional ways of understanding and translating space.

CONSTRAINTS

This study will occur within the constraints of my STA 110 Drawing 1 course in Spring 2019. Because there are only 18 students enrolled in the course, it is a fairly small sample from which to determine conclusive results. The students will likely come from a variety of backgrounds and levels of experience with drawing, which may also sway the findings. Students with less drawing experience may demonstrate more growth throughout the duration of the course than students entering the class with a high level of skill. The pre-assessment will be necessary in determining growth for all students in the class, leading to more accurate results of the VR study.

 

RESULTS

I’m interested in determining what, if any, connections exist between the translation and perception of drawing through virtual reality and on a 2-dimensional plane. If there is a positive connection between the two, I would expect to see a noticeable improvement of accuracy and depiction of space within my student’s observational drawings after week 4. If there are no noticeable differences after week 4, it’s possible that either the students need more time with VR drawing, or there is no noticeable connection between the two activities.

OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION

STA 110 is a class based on observational drawing, so students will be building these skills throughout the semester. I expect all students will demonstrate growth, so it may be difficult to determine if the VR experience played a major role in the amount of growth or not. I think an additional survey or discussion with students to hear their thoughts about the experience will be helpful in knowing the full impact of the study.

 

Course Quality Analysis

Color & Design: Hybrid course

Overall, my course meets the majority of the elements on the Quality Matters (QM) program rubric for course quality. For the first time developing an online or hybrid course, I think it is expected that I would have many areas to develop and improve upon. Using this rubric allowed me to gain an objective overview of the course, and visualize areas of strength and areas that could use improvement. Strengths of the course include clear and direct communication about the structure, purpose, objectives and requirements asked of students, which are important components to any classroom environment. The areas in which my course showed weakness, were areas that I feel were more specific to an online or hybrid platform that I hadn’t previously thought about. Working through this rubric allowed me to gain insight into areas that need further development, such as explicitly stating etiquette expectations, stating the minimum technology requirements, providing a link to technical support as well as offering course materials in diverse and widely accessible formats. Several of these components are simple fixes that can be easily worked in to my existing course materials. Expectations for proper etiquette is something typically addressed during a traditional face-to-face class, and is generally a very informal conversation about how to interact with others in the classroom setting. In the online environment; however, everything becomes more formalized through writing, and the instructor must think ahead so that students know exactly what is expected of them. This evaluation process was a great way to find specific ways in which my course could be improved and I plan on implementing these changes to improve the experience students have taking my course in the future.

Copyright Case #1

Professor A. teaches a course about American cities, specifically focusing on Chicago and New York City.  As a part of the course in his face-to-face version he uses two video sets, Chicago – City of the Century (http://amzn.to/nEJmh8) and Ric Burns’ New York (http://amzn.to/qSYens). Typically he uses portions of 2 of the 3 discs in the Chicago set, and shows all 5 of the New York videos.

As Professor A begins to move his course to an online format he is faced with the problem of how to show the videos to his online students. Please consider the following questions:

1.    Can Professor A. digitize and stream the videos to his students?
2.    What could he do to minimize the risk of copyright violations and follow fair use?
3.    What are other options Professor A. might consider?

Professor A. can digitize and stream the videos as long as it is limited use only for students enrolled in his course, and not available for public viewing. He is using the videos in a non-commercial, educational setting so this use is not affecting the market or sale of these videos in any way. He is minimizing his risk of copyright violation by only showing relevant portions of the videos to his class, but he may even be able to narrow down his usage of the New York videos even more. Alternatively, Professor A. could have students research Chicago and New York on their own, through the library or scholarly online sources, rather than watching videos provided for them.

Copyright Case #2

Professor G. teaches a course in arts education. He has written many papers on the subject and as he moves his course online he would like to use some of them as readings for his course. He puts several of the articles up in his ANGEL course, but is then told by a colleague that he may be violating copyright law. Upon further inquiry, Professor G. is told that he must pay the publisher a certain amount of money per article, per semester in order to use them in his course.

1.    How do you interpret this case? Is the publisher in the right to request payment?
2.    Could Professor G. make a case for fair use? How?
3.    What are some options Professor G. has for disseminating his work to students?

In this situation, I do not believe the publisher is in the right to request payment. Professor G. wrote the articles and it is in his right to use them in this private, educational setting. By posting the article within his ANGEL course, it meets all four factors in ensuring its fair use status. The articles are being used for educational purposes, the nature of the articles relate to the objectives of the course, the amount of articles have been limited to ensure their relevancy, and posting them does not affect the market or sale of the articles. Professor G. is allowed  to disseminate his work in this private, controlled setting for the benefit of his students.

Copyright Case #3

Professor M. is an avid “screencaster,” often creating several short narrated slideshows each week that she puts online for her students. Because Professor M. knows the power of imagery, she often uses visuals to help illustrate her points. Her students often give her positive feedback about these materials. Professor M. uses Google’s image search to find relevant images for her presentations, then puts them into her slideshows. One day, a publishing company approaches Professor M. about using her slideshows in an upcoming textbook. Please consider the following about Professor M’s case.

1.    Is Professor M. violating copyright/fair use by using images from Google’s image search?
2.    If you determine she is in violation, what might she do to come into compliance?
3.    What about the offer from the publishing company? Can Professor M. sell them her slideshows?

Professor M. is violating copyright/ fair use by using images from Google images if she is not citing the sources in which she found them.  As long as she includes the url from which she pulled the images, she would be able to use the photos for private use with her students within the limited academic setting. Professor M. would only be able to sell the publishing company her slideshows if she was given rights to the photos that she utilized. I believe she would be violating the copyright of the images, even if the sources were cited, if she made money off the sale and distribution of the images without proper rights.

Copyright Case #4

Professor D. is a tech savvy instructor who teaches film studies and multimedia creation in an online format. As a part of her course, she has an assignment where she models several video “remixes” – videos created from one or a variety of sources that often take inspiration from or follow known storylines (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic) – that she has created and then asks her students to create their own remixes and share them with others via YouTube.

Professor D. also takes short clips from Hollywood movies and presents them to the class as a part of her lectures to illustrate various topics associated with film creation and criticism. She owns the DVD’s of each movie and uses a “ripper” to pull portions of the clips, then places them into her University’s learning management system so only her students have access.

1.    Is Professor D violating copyright/fair use in her remixing activity? Why or why not?
2.    Are her students violating copyright/fair use in their remixing assignment?
3.    Is Professor D violating copyright/fair use in her use of the short Hollywood clips? Why or why not?

Professor D. is not violating copyright/fair use in using the video clips for both the remixing and lecturing activities because the purpose of the clips is transformative from their original purpose. She is not showing the clips for the student’s entertainment, but rather for limited educational purposes for the benefit of her students. She is also being selective in the amount of content she is using with the students, rather than showing the entire films, students are only experiencing clips that relate to the educational objectives of the course. This may intrigue the students to watch the entire film in the future, perhaps even having a positive impact on the market and sale of these films. It seems that Professor D. is meeting all four factors in ensuring the material’s fair use status, and not violating the copyright in anyway.

Color & Design

COURSE OBJECTIVES

This course is an introduction to the fundamental concepts of two-dimensional design.  Students will deal with these concepts in a series of problem solving creative projects, supplemented by discussions, critiques, slides, and written assignments.  Specific goals will include:

• to explore the six basic design elements–color, line, shape, value, texture, volume–in relation to seven major design principles–balance, contrast, repetition, movement, emphasis, proportion, and economy
• consider form, craft, concept, and content where it applies.
• become acquainted with a range of methods and materials including drawing, painting, and collage
• work in representational and non-representational modes, and points in between.
• work from a variety of sources of creativity/ideation; find new ways to think about and start making art
• further develop hand-eye coordination, facility
• think in terms of spatial organization
• build on ideas from sketch stage through a developing process, to finished piece
• learn from relevant historical and contemporary references
• learn related ideas and professional vocabulary

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

There will be four major projects segmented into multiple parts.  Each project group relates to a chapter of the text Design Basics, and includes longer major assignments and shorter activities.  Work outside of class will be necessary—expect to spend at least 10 hours working on course work each week, including completing projects and reading text.  Participation will be expected in discussions and critiques, and a comprehensive final exam covering vocabulary and key ideas learned will be given at the end of the semester.  

Additional information

This is a class that I have experience teaching in a traditional studio setting, so I would like to see how it could be modified and adapted to fit a hybrid structure. I’m still a little unsure about the overall structure of the class and how to allocate the face-to-face time to make the most out of it, and I think that discussion (individual and group) would be the hardest aspect to try to replicate online so I plan on using our time together that way. Depending on how much time I will see the students each week, I could utilize that time to critique their work, answer questions, and discuss/clarify areas where the students would like more information. I think that it will be easy to upload course information, such as lectures and vocabulary onto an online platform, but I am concerned about students completing the studio component independently. I will need to create a system of formally and informally assessing my students to make sure they understand the objectives of the course and are able to apply these concepts within their artwork. I could possibly have students take photos of their work at different stages of completion so that I can make sure they are working in the right direction before they submit a completed piece for grading.

Translating the components of this class to a hybrid structure will require a lot of modification and consideration to make sure that students get a similar experience that they do in a traditional setting. This structure could offer many benefits for students, such as flexibility with scheduling. Because studio classes typically meet for 6 hours in class each week, students will be able to make up those hours on their own time and create a schedule to complete their work that works best for them.

Research Article Review

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ864281

“An Investigation of Students Attitude and Motivation toward Online Learning”

In this study, Evelyn Knowles and Dennis Kerkman take a look at motivation and attitude amongst students enrolled in ‘Introduction to the Visual Arts” online at Park University. Research was conducted through surveys administered to students at the beginning and end of the semester regarding their experience. Both surveys asked students questions about their attitude regarding their experience with online learning. Questions regarding interest, self-management, and locus of control were asked only at the beginning of the course, while the end of class survey included questions on study process approach. General findings include that students had a more positive attitude about online learning at the end of the course than the beginning, and that students possesed a strong internal locus of control.

The researchers took a look at internal vs. external locus of control in order to identify the source of motivation for students. Motivation was studied in five different ways: Interest, Self-management, Locus of Control, Study Process and Attitude. Questions were asked in each of these categories to essentially determine a numerical score to measure their findings and collect data amongst the students. The study found that although most students had a high internal locus of control, it was the students that were more externally motivated that scored the highest on exams. The grading for this course consisted of 3 exams as well as a final exam in which students were asked questions regarding recall of terms and concepts introduced throughout the course. Students also showed a high level of interest in the course content, which would also play a factor in their overall success in the course.

Overall, I feel that this study provides interesting results regarding the learning experience amongst this specific group of students; however there are limitations in this study because information is only collected from one class of students rather than across different groups of students in various online courses. I feel there is not enough variety to make conclusive statements about student motivation regarding online courses in general. Beyond this survey, I agree with beginning the semester with a survey to gather information about student interests and motivation. Whether it is an online, blended or traditional class I think it’s always important to know the students in your class and to be aware of their interests, expectations, and motivation for taking the course. This information will help make the course more productive and worthwhile for all students, and even help them reflect on these questions and understand how they are approaching the class. Ultimately it is up to students and instructors to work together to find ways to make the class successful.

Current Trend in Digital Technology:

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/8/students-as-partners-for-informed-and-inspired-teaching

“Students as Partners for Informed and Inspiring Learning”

Pulse on Learning (PoL), a recent initiative by Mercy College, is a system that allows faculty to obtain feedback from students mid-semester, rather waiting until the end of semester evaluations. This initiative allows instructors to gain significant insight into the student learning experience, and indicates specific areas of their teaching that need adjustment or intervention. PoL is rolled out to students in the form of a survey, allowing faculty to hear student voices on a level that is simultaneously personal and macro-scale within 48 hours of completion. Because surveys are conducted at the 3rd of 4th week of a 15 week semester class, students are able to communicate areas of complication early on, giving the instructor plenty of time to enact changes or modification within the learning environment. PoL is a highly beneficial tool that allows institutions to better serve their students within all areas of instruction, allowing students the opportunity to become more involved in their own learning. In hearing student voices in this way, faculty are ultimately able to be more responsive and insightful into the needs of their students and how the learning environment is perceived amongst their class as a whole.

Within the area of visual art, much of the student learning objectives provide a visual outcome, where students demonstrate their ability to apply concepts in the form of an art piece or exercise. Informal assessment happens frequently during class, making if easy for instructors to overlook deeper reflection on the student learning experience. If a student is producing evidence of the learning objectives, faculty may not feel it necessary to inquire on ways to improve or modify instruction. With the use of PoL, visual art instructors would be able to gain access to information and deeper insight into how students are processing information, and ultimately aid their ability to differentiate instruction and serve their students at the individual level. PoL can also help identify trends within the classroom learning environment, allowing faculty to make revisions to their instruction to utilize in future courses with different groups of students. Whether utilized in a visual art setting or other areas of instruction, PoL provides an outlet for students to be heard and instructors to listen. This technology can only improve the student-faculty relationship and help to streamline the educational experience for all students.

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