“SHIFTING TRENDS IN ART FOUNDATION”

FATE Regional Forum Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

December 2, 2011 10:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.Woodbury University

Hosted by Woodbury University Design Foundation Program

Goals for this Event

• Build community

• Exchange ideas

• Improve our programs

Traditionally What Do We Do?

• Teach drawing and design (2D and 3D) elements, principles and core skills

• Provide a preparation for majors

• Provide historical and cultural context

Who are we?

• Diverse – foundations, core, first year

• Collaborative and “interdisciplinary”

• Experienced

• Important

• Underappreciated?

• On the front lines

• Not alone - organizations

FATE: Foundations in Art:

Theory and Education

• Founded in 1977

• Professional affiliation with College Art Association (CAA)

• Mission: Dedicated to the promotion of excellence in the development and teaching of college-level foundation courses in both studio and art history

• FATE Biennial (since 1986) and regional events

• Publish Journal (FATE in Review) and Newsletter

• Assignment exchange

• Position announcements

• Institutional membership ($50/two years), Institutional membership ($100/year)

• Website: Foundations-art.org

ITI – Integrative Teaching International

• Grew out of FATE

• Founded in 2006

• “Integrative Teaching International (ITI) promotes wide sweeping discussion about the state of teaching and learning in the 21st century. Through our annual ThinkTank event, our journal “Future Forward,” and other sponsored programs, ITI seeks to foster intellectual skills necessary for exemplary instruction by master teachers, administrators and emerging educators.”

• ThinkTank7 – “Foundations Now”, June 6-9, 2012, Chicago IL

• Website: integrativeteaching.org

What are the outside forces?

• 21st century learners

• Shifting trends in higher education

• Economy and job market

21st Century LearnersAccording to the study “A Vision of Students Today” and presentation “Teaching the 21st Century Learner”

• Social, like to learn in teams and in structured environment that affords flexibility

• Better at reading visual images than reading

• Comfortable with racial and ethnic diversity

• There will be more women, older students, minorities, part time, veterans, working learners

• Looking for fast response times leading to short attention spans

• Multitasker, experiential, learn through exploration, need to be engaged

• Demand things that matter, practical approaches in real world context

• Desire learning options, personalized to learning strength, want to design own curricula

• Demand more convenience; online, part time, off campus

21st Century Learners

Technology

• Digitally literate

• Fascination with new technologies

• Computers aren’t technology but are a way of life

• Multimedia format is pervasive and they expect the same

• Internet is the universal form of information

• Students are frustrated by rules that inhibit their use of technology

Institutional Missions and

Learning Outcomes• Transdisciplinarity• Collaboration• Social Responsibility• Integrated Student• Communication• Critical Thinking• Innovation• Creativity• Innovation• Writing Skills• Sustainability

• Integrity• Diversity• Academic Excellence• Community• Innovative technology• Respect• Flexible learning• Professional

development• Life-long learner

Economy and job market

• Loss of federal and state funding, loans and aid

• Uncertain level of international students

• Cost of college is growing financial burden increasing the need to be accountable for the investment and employment – College is job training

• High unemployment

• Less high school art programs

How Do We Respond?

Emerging Conversations in

Art/Design Foundation

• Technology

• Social Responsibility

• Meaning

• Art History

Technology“In this age of technology, tactile, embodied experience is ironically, potentially innovative”“Empowering innovation” breakout session ITI ThinkTank workshop, FATE Biennial

“Today’s high-school students, the so-called New Millennial’s, see their educational futures built almost entirely around technology.”June 2009 Study by Chronicle of Higher Education “The College of 2020: Students”

Technology• Social media:

Flikr, texting, Facebook, twitter, blogs, wiki’s

• Online learning and hybrid classes

• 4D – Time and Motion: art and design disciplines increasingly use time based media and movement

ExampleFrom his paper in FATE in Review, volume 30

“The Multichronic Classroom: Creating an Engaging Classroom for All Students”

The Multichronic ClassroomAnthony Fontana, Instructor of Art and Learning Technologies Consultant, Bowling Green State University, and current President of Integrative Teaching International

• “Creation: Blogs replace the traditional journal, allowing the students to publish their creative brainstorming processes and critically analyze the research they find online.”

• “Collaboration: A wiki, created by my students and me, replaces the textbook and gives the students’ artwork, exercises, and research an online home for the benefit of others.”

• “Communication: The social networking site Facebook allows for more versatile out-of-class dialogue that is available “where” and when the students want it.”

• “Interaction: The virtual world of Second Life allows for practical interaction with other professional artists from around the world.”

• Also uses a Wii to teach arm movement in drawing

Advantages

• Relevant to student’s experience - engagement

• Efficient – repetition, reiteration, communication

• Movement

• Relevant to skills and principles required in many majors

Challenges

• Expense – university or student

• Keeping up with new technology

• Faculty training

• Space and logistics

• Plagiarism issues and role of ownership

• Faculty less an oracle than a guide to information

Social Responsibility

“What does it mean to say there is no work when there is so much work to be done?”Jasmine Aber, Institute of Urban Design and Regional Development and Center for Global Metropolitan Studies

“Problems turned into projects”Kim Yamuda, Art Department of California Santa Barbara

Social Responsibility

• Service learning, “Citizen Artist”

• Community and collaboration

• Meaningful purpose, not jobs

• Participatory, Experiential learning

• Sustainability

Social Responsibility

Learning OutcomesJim Elniski, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

and Eileen Doktorski, Mt. San Jacinto College

• Empathy

• Awareness

• Self-Esteem

• Self-confidence

• Purposefulness

• Community

• Listening

• Compromise

• Leadership

• Communication of ideas

• Division of work

• Leadership

• Courage

Example

Open Container ProjectKim Yasuda, Professor of Spatial studies, Art Department of California Santa Barbara

• Distance learning versus Proximity research

• First assignment: prepare a meal together

• “Open Container” project

• Friday Academy: “encourages flexible programming in response to immediate social and environmental concerns”

• Class as artwork and exhibition as school

Advantages

• Serve and create community

• Collaboration

• More ambitious scale

• Visibility

• Learn through practical experience

• Expand view

• Learn responsibility and empathy

Challenges

• Individual assessment difficult

• Unpredictable outcome

• Liability and risk

• Continuing new relationships afterward?

• Funding

Meaning

“Don’t abandon skill but expand context”Maureen Garvin, Dean, School of Foundation Studies, Savanna College of Art and Design

Meaning

• Concept, themes and narrative

• Mine personal experience for content

• Critical thinking – learn how to learn

• Conceptual and inquiry based skills cross fields and disciplines

Example1

artCOREDan Collins, Professor, 2D studio, Arizona State University

• Inquiry based

• Matrix combining the three components on assignments ie. Studio skill = time theme = protest and persuasion Methodology = collaboration

http://www.asu.edu/cfa/wwwcourses/art/SOACore/homelive2.htm

Example 2

The Alfred LineMichelle Illuminato and Brett Hunter, Alfred University

• 5’ x 1 mile line is the focus of a freshman studio research course “which asks participants to study their world through experiential research and the exploration or creative ways to share this knowledge.”

• “Explore, observe, collect, analyze, edit, organize, communicate”

http://thelineproject.wordpress.com

Example 3

Concepts CourseSusan Meyer, Denver University – Four foundation courses: 2D Approaches, 3D Approaches, Drawing, Concepts

• Concepts Course description: Two topics will be explored: “culture and context,” and “time, space and duration.” A greater complexity of studio activity will be stressed through collaborative exercises, and individual approaches to themes. Greater exploration of context and concept will be expected, with emphasis on visual communication and personal awareness.

Example 4

Reorganized School of Foundation StudiesSavanna College of Art and Design – only dedicated School of Foundation Studies in U.S.

In addition to the usual courses:

• Creative Thinking Strategies

• Design III: Time

• Drawing on a Theme

• Drawing III: Content and Interpretations

http://www.scad.edu/programs/foundation-studies/index.cfm

Advantages

• Student Engagement

• Relevant to many departments

• Address “technologically savvy, conceptually immature” student

• Develop Integrated Student

• Critical thinking skills

Challenges

• Distraction from core skills

• Breaking the Bauhaus formalism paradigm

Art History

“today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects and schedules.” Marshall McLuhan 1967

What does this have to do with me?

Art History

• Survey of art history versus potentially more relevant modern era - depth versus breadth

• Presence or absence of Design History in design curricula and who teaches it? Few Design History Ph.D. programs nationally

• Diversity – non-western, feminist, multi-ethnic

• Dwindling electives versus art history accreditation requirements

Survey of Art Advantages• Verbal and visual vocabulary

• Naturally interdisciplinary: math, english, culture, humanities, social studies

• Looking at evolving themes and meaning

• Context

Survey of Art Challenges• Only painting, sculpture and architecture

• Too much material – little depth or analysis

• Not enough time for 20th century

• Little discussion on process and materials

• Many students pursue design majors

• Learning needs are more practical

• Less relevant to contemporary student

Example

New Art history curriculumElizabeth Fowler – Syracuse University

• All students take two courses:

“20th and 21st Century Art in Context”

“20th and 21st Century Design in Context”

• Limits scope to 1850 – 2000 – in depth modern era: mechanization, commercialization, and sustainability

• Able to discuss process and materials

• Able to discuss issues and themes

• Begin to see the relationship of art to design

New Curriculum Example

First Year Experience – Six, 8 week workshops Gary Setzer, University of Arizona

“The focus of the program is to foster inventive and resourceful students, who can express complicated ideas in a manner that is both technically and conceptually sophisticated.”• Mapping – observational drawing (req.)• Space – 3D additive and reductive (req.)• Surface – color elements of design (req.)Three of the following:• Gaze – photo• Experience – 4D time• Amalgams – installation and mixed media• Propaganda – visual communication• Body – drawing the figure

http://art.arizona.edu/students/first-year-experience/

Challenges to Innovation

• The need to assess and adapt – It may be difficult to gain approval for new foundation curricula, and once introduced, may not work as well or be accepted

• Too much innovation may make articulation of transfer students more difficult

• Already overstretched two or four year program requirements make the creation of departmental specific first year courses more attractive, and the dissolution of Foundation programs more attractive

Conclusion

Given our vital role in the journey of the art/design student, and particular interdisciplinary nature of Foundation programs, there is an opportunity to not only respond to change but to lead it.

Breakout Groups

Breakout groups

• Each group will be asked to address and present experiences, possible solutions, ideas or issues that come up from the discussion

• Identify a scribe and presenter(s) for the group

• Present a brief description for a new foundation assignment using the topic

Breakout Groups

1. The role of technology, social media, online learning, and motion/time in Foundation curricula

2. The role of Social responsibility and collaboration in foundation curricula

3. The role of themes or meaning as well as critical thinking in foundation curricula

4. The role and scope of Art history in contemporary art and design Foundation Curricula