Curriculum & Pedagogy
The first phase of the Curriculum & Pedagogy group is completed. On April 12th, we presented to the other committees and President Lorne Buchman (see below for the presentation). The next steps are for the President to meet with the co-chairs to have an in-depth discussion. After that, the future activities of this group will be determined, but will probably continue in some form this summer. Stay tuned for an update.
Thanks to all of the committee participants!
Welcome to the Curriculum & Pedagogy Group home page. We’ll be posting our progress here, along with documents we produce.
- This group is co-chaired by Wendy Adest, and Phil van Allen. Laura Cooper has had to step down from her responsibilities as co-chair due to a family emergency, however she will continue to attend and participate in our meetings. Tom Mancuso and Brenda Varda have agreed to assume Laura’s responsibility as co-chairs.
- Meetings for this group are on alternate Thursdays, 11:00am – 12:30pm in the Faculty Lounge meeting room
Meeting Notes April 12: Final Spring Term presentation.
Our group presented along with all the other committees. Below are the slides from our presentation. We are also assembling a summary document that goes into more detail on each topic.
Meeting Notes March 15: Interim meeting with all visioning groups
Our group presented our preliminary recommendations to President Buchman and the other groups Monday, March 15th in the FDR. Below are the slides from our presentation:
Meeting Notes: March 4th
We are pulling together our interim position document for presentation to the president and other committees March 15th. We’ve been tackling major issues, and Phil has summarized the rough draft recommendations here.
Meeting Notes: February 25th, 2010
Several of us met in the Faculty Lounge, and a wide ranging discussion ensued instead of us breaking into our sub-committees. Below are some of the topics that came up. They lead nicely into our mid-March report on the major principles and questions we’re finding.
- What makes up the core knowledge for an Art Center student?
- How can this knowledge be integrated into courses?
- What is critical thinking in the art/design context? How does it integrate with making?
- How can imagination be fostered?
- What is the ACCD definition and approach to the Humanities?
- What can be taught by PCC or other institutions
- What is unique to the concerns of Art and Design at Art Center?
- How does media literacy fit into our program?
- What should the prerequisites be for admission to Art Center undergrad?
- Can more courses be transferred to accommodate students with prior college coursework?
- Can there be a more robust pre-enrollment program? Especially for the increasing number of high-school graduates – not only addressing art/design but humanities, work habits, thinking?
- How can ACCD address the increasing need for lifelong self-learning: new fields, technologies, software, etc.
- How can collaboration be taught and encouraged?
- How can ACCD teach sustainability, socially conscious work, and design research in a more serious way?
- We need to avoid green-washing and faux research
- Should there be tracks/curriculum developed?
- Or are there ways to integrate these ideas more fully into existing programs?
Meeting Notes: February 18, 2010
In order to reduce the number of sub-committees we decided to combine certain ones based on adjacent or overlapping content. Listed below are the four new sub-committees with somewhat altered areas of focus along with volunteers who attended the meeting today:
A – Committee #1 & 2 – Educational Structures (minus the subjects of building capacity and the two campus structure) plus the subject of assessment for tracking program, faculty and student success; and Department Centered/Interdisciplinary Education
Volunteers: Mariana, Kurt, Nik, Wendy and Chelsea
B – Committee #3 & 5 – Community (internal) Faculty, Communication, Student/Faculty ration & relationships and Ethics, Principles & Values, ACCD Identity, Faculty enrichment and Faculty Education
Volunteers: Denis, Annalisa, Will
C – Committee #4 – Technology & Facilities and its appropriate uses, in addition to the questions of building capacity and the 2 campuses, Facilities in general
Volunteers: Dana, Chris, Phil
D – Committee #6 & 7– Curriculum Adjustments, refocusing, creativity, inspiration and the Integration of Liberal Arts craft and conceptual skills
Volunteers: Brenda, Tom, Laura, Brian, Kohei
Action item: If you did not attend today’s meeting you may still volunteer for a committee. Committee B is especially seeking more students.
Meeting Notes: February 11th
Our primary topic at this meeting was to establish a series of sub-committees to address more specific issues. We are to report back to the other visioning committees around March 15th.
The proposed sub-committees are as follows. In the February 18th meeting, we’ll finalize these committees, and make assignments to them. We need input about these committees: Are these names the best? Do any of them overlap, and can they perhaps be combined? Are there issues not addressed by these committees? Other comments?
- Committee #1: Educational Structures
Is the trimester system serving our goals? What are the alternatives? Class grid (2 5-hour sessions), building capacity, two campuses, high/medium/low residency teaching; how does this affect international students vis a vis lite term, internal research to determine how many students graduate in 8 terms straight
- Committee #2: Department centered/Interdisciplinary Education
Rethink the way the departments function as cross-disciplinary education – multiple models. How do we redefine the territory of the department? How are we connected to the outside world, other countries, and other institutions?
- Committee #3: Community (internal) Faculty, Communication, Student/Faculty ratio & relationships
Campus experience of physical space, the need to draw together
- Committee #4: Technology and its Appropriate uses
Using technology intelligently – how does technology help us get to content (and change the way we address content)? How can we better utilize technology to expand the classroom and course content? Digital Interface, Digital Learning Center (required lab time?) ACCD online classes, Digital Shop (a place to create digitally enhanced objects and spaces).
- Committee #5: Principles & Values (ethics) – ACCD Identity – Faculty Enrichment and Faculty Education
Questions of student workload, the kinds of degrees we offer, what kind of students do we attract, what kinds of students do we want to attract? The role of graduate education
- Committee #6: Curriculum Adjustments, refocusing, creativity, inspiration
Recognizing and addressing, through curriculum and teaching methodology, the CURRENT student population. This encompasses age, current levels of secondary education and ESL issues. What do people come in with? How does thinking change? How does “work” happen? Where are the gaps?
- Committee #7: Integration of Liberal Arts, craft and conceptual skills
Concept and craft together – rethinking the divide of studio and lecture courses. Enhance narrative skills via writing and aural components of all classes. Integration of HDS into studio classes, cultural exposure, history…
Kick-off event – January 14th
On January 14th, 2010 the school held it’s initial visioning event. The Curriculum & Pedagogy group had 50-60 people attending, and after introductions, we broke up into 3 smaller groups. Here are summaries of the three groups
February 19th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Greetings All, Sorry to miss the meetings — I’ve been out of town at TED (where the Kipps boys spoke on the Kipps method of teaching & learning and Sir Ken Robinson gave his talk on the dire future of linear education and how we can change the course of action); I plan to attend the next meeting on Feb 25, with an interest in Committees 5,6, 7, especially #6. Happy to share what I’ve gathered from TED and from my own research in to neuro-edu.
February 20th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I’m going through the findings (thus far) at
http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project with the idea of looking at the primary text sources for current students – and how they are used.
Established in 2005, Transliteracies brings together scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and computer science in the University of California system whose work contributes to research on the impact of digital, networked technologies on reading practices. Transliteracies has established multiple working groups, brought the different approaches of those groups into conjunction behind a shared technology development initiative (the RoSE Research-oriented Social Environment); disseminated research; and trained a large number of graduate students working at the intersections of technological, social, artistic, and humanistic disciplines.
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Correction to the last post – Committee D is made up of subcommittees #6 and #7. Sorry for the confusion.-W.
March 11th, 2010 at 6:49 am
MA- March 1st I
Interview Notes with
Steven Heller, School of Visual Arts, NY
http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/grad/index.jsp?sid0=2
profile on Heller at: http://www.hellerbooks.com/docs/about.html
As part of our visioning process, and taking advantage of scheduled work in NY, I had the opportunity to visit with Steve at SVA who has been a key contributor to propeling the very entrepreneurial culture of the graduate school at SVA–he advises the president on new program—and is behind many of the programs started since 1983.
From their site: In 1983, the School of Visual Arts introduced its first graduate offering, a Master of Fine Arts program in painting, drawing and sculpture. Since that time, SVA has added twelve more graduate programs: MFA Art Criticism and Writing; MAT Art Education; MPS Art Therapy; MFA Computer Art; MFA Design; MFA Design Criticism; MPS Digital Photography; MPS Digital Photography Online/Summer Residency; MFA Illustration as Visual Essay; MFA Interaction Design; MFA Photography, Video and Related Media and MFA Social Documentary Film. In the fall of 2010, the College will offer two more Master of Professional Studies programs: MPS Branding and MPS Live Action Short Film. Each of these highly individual professional degree programs shares certain important characteristics that reflect the School of Visual Arts’ unique approach to the education of artists.
On Graphic Design Discipline and designers careers: a discipline that is changing “ one has to have a multi-media frame of mind; we realize that there are no longer clear job descriptions designers anymore.”
On importance of Humanities and integration of liberal arts and sciences as part of design curricula: “ There will always be push back from students (they do not necessarily appreciate the importance of their needing this knowledge base in their work to make it better; also studio faculty pressed for time—it is natural that they will push back.”
Big emphasis on writing and written language. 50% of graduate students at SVA are international; often applicants are not accepted if their English skills are not sufficiently proficient.
We also discussed his provoking essay from 2004:
“What the country needs is a Good Five- Year Design Program”
Read at http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/what-this-country-needs-is-a-good-five-year-design-program?searchtext=steve%20heller
It is interesting to find that many of his points remain valid today. He mentioned that the original talk became the basis for the MFA Design Criticism Program that was launched a year ago.
About international opportunities: SVA has a number of summer programs and a few at the grad level; no scholarships at all.
Transdiciplinary education: does not happen at SVA grad level. Each program has a very full course of study.
How do you define/measure success in these educational programs?
Steve felt it was a good question, but had no scientific answer other than saying: “ we are successful when we continue tracking our graduate who leave with a sense of accomplishment, and having gained something new—if they are happy.”
April 5th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Greetings all,
Apologies for missing the last several meetings — my studio visit schedule is currently in conflict with our assigned meeting time.
A few points of interest in light of topics raised:
1) Here’s a link to Thomas Frey’s commentary on the future of education. Frey is an internationally heralded futurist and systems designer (who happens to be an advisor to my own start up institute). He was recently interviewed in the Huffington Post on the subject we’re grappling with at A.C.:
http://www.davinciinstitute.com/papers/the-future-of-colleges-universities-blueprint-for-a-revolution/
2) For those interested in the neuroscience of education/art:
NeuroEd: The Society of Neuroscience along with Harvard and Hopkins have started an initiative to address bringing k-12 and university pedagogy up to date with an eye on neuroscience and cognitive science research. Be on the watch for programs and conferences on the topic.
For example, check out the Learning and the Brain Society Conference slated for May 5 & 6 focusing on the Attention research.
Also see the LBS website: designed for k-12 teachers but worth a look for our outreach programs and implications of dealing with ‘teenage brains’ i.e., reaching ages of 24 and 25 — the arc of our current undergrad population.
NeuroArt or Neuroaesthetics: Hopkins and Harvard have started an initiative to address research in neuro-aesthetics. As a participant in the dialogue, I will keep you posted on future summits etc.
Happy to answer any questions regarding the above info.