In thinking about this week's artist and our guiding questions I found myself reflecting on my past position as a program lead and my current one as a learning experience designer (LXD). I'm very new to my current LXD job with McGill but I can already tell you that there is a lot of pedagogical progress yet to be made in how the university is thinking about teaching and learning online. Half of our unit is made up of new people so a lot of the first few months has been spent looking at our previous course catalogue (an astonishing amount of purely behaviourist assessment strategies and synchronous lecturing), re-evaluating our design systems and then trying to articulate better practices to our faculty. We want to get ourselves to a place where the social cognitive and constructivist activity/discussion-based designs we believe in have buy-in from our subject matter experts so they'll trust us to implement them in their courses.

As I was watching a few of the samples from Daito Manabe, I thought the push/pull, organic/technological nature of the work resonated with this new job. Whenever we pitch an alternative way of approaching online course design there is an initial resistance and potential retraction away from, or avoidance of, the change within our faculty. In later conversations, there is a yielding to the new idea and a gradual acceptance of using new technology as the design process continues. We have seen positive responses from students so there is additional yielding that occurs after the course has run at least once. This process makes me think of the dancers of ElevenPlay in the way the organic (analogue, if you will) bodies interact and play off of the digital drones. The dancers push forward against or into the drone formations, the drone pull back and hover overhead, and the dance continues until the dancers, drones, light, and shadows make a whole moving installation. It echoes my own experience coming to online learning design from face to face education and the resistance/yielding I see in my faculty.

Three possible uses for future technology in our unit would be using data visualization alongside learning analytics to show gaps in learner success in our online courses, employing intelligent agents in our learning management system (LMS) to relieve faculty of the responsibility of hovering over their class' participation online, and deeper use of our LMS to create more interesting learning paths through courses. LMSs are not emerging technologies necessarily, but the way in which we use them could be considered as emerging. I can speak a bit more to data visualization and learning analytics here. Due to strict Quebec privacy laws, we don't have a lot of access to learner data ordinarily tracked in the LMS. So, previous LXDs in our unit didn't pursue formatting or exporting this data further. One direction our unit could go with the available data, is to visualize it in such a way that its utility is easy to recognize and it can be applied effectively to future learning experiences. Manabe's data-driven artwork that shows patterns and potential futures in the relationships between the analogue and digital point to a way forward in persuading faculty to accept technological features as real and actionable elements of teaching and learning.

Finally, I think being in this course might help me to think about new ways of incorporating technology in our designs, but maybe more importantly, help me to articulate the possibilities of technological tools to both faculty and students.

From my own experience in making technological interventions with students and from this week’s module resources I think that there are several educational benefits and some downsides. First, I’ll talk about some of the projects my students had worked on with the Vancouver Film School and frame the benefits and downsides that way. My program ran first with analyzing still images and then design thinking to understand audiences. In these modules, I used video as a teaching tool in multimodal assignment submissions. Think of it like a choose your own adventure. My learners were all English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners, so if a learner was a weaker writer, depending on the assignment they could challenge themselves to submit in writing, or focus on the topic by submitting a video recorded assignment. Since assignments all related to media arts, these videos were always accompanied by sets of still images such as photography or UX wireframes. In later modules, my program covered live action video, animation, and game design. Every class involved some kind of interaction either with learners creating media content or watching/analyzing/describing video/image/game content. Some groups made short films as purely straightforward live action considering with was in the frame, how it was framed, how the mise en scene reinforced the narrative, etc. Some others chose other media like pixelation (human stop motion – like in the OK Go video from module 1), or to use Minecraft to record their narrative and record video using assets created in Minecraft.

Some apparent benefits emerged with these kinds of assignments:

The learners engaged a lot more with video/game/images than they did with text which is generally less accessible but is especially challenging for some EAL learners.

In the swift and painful pivot to remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic, video assignment submissions and my own recorded video feedback allowed our class to maintain strong ties with each other. A lot like in the Life in a Day films, the use of video allowed us all to see the perspectives and home lives of our class and allowed me to maintain a lot of teacher presence with the group.

Providing multi-modal content and activity design yielded some incredibly creative assignments and projects from my class. One group used Twine only with sound to create an interactive ghost story, for example. Another pair used the constraints of working with materials at home to stop motion animate a Mortal Kombat intro using only figures made of sticks.

This leads me to my last benefit for this discussion: my EAL learners were able to engage with each others’ media cultures and North American media culture by exploring available media and referencing it, building on it, or riffing on it in some way as in the Mortal Kombat example above. I was also able to share Canadian content from the NFB like what we saw this week, such as Halifax artist and animator Andrea Dorfman.

Some drawbacks:

I had a hard time refocusing my learners to do written work with this type of assignment set up. I also had a hard time encouraging them to read, even if the reading was scripts or books/stories that had been adapted into other forms of media.

Since they each wanted to express their ideas their own way, group work was often fraught. It took me a long time to work out how to get the groups to really pitch and evaluate ideas equitably so for some cohorts, the focus wasn’t so much on creating engaging content, but was rather on getting through the term together! A kind of interesting micro example of the human condition playing out in real time?

Last, (beware this is a plug), I was particularly interested in Fort McMoney this week since like most displaced East Coasters, half of my family worked at different times in Fort McMurray. Cape Breton illustrator and graphic novelist Kate Beaton has a new graphic novel coming out with Drawn & Quarterly called Ducks. It’s about her experiences as one of the only women working in ‘Fort Mac’. Here’s some press: Comics Beat: Ducks (Links to an external site.) (I am extremely excited about this book).

It seems that often, the frameworks in these resources are framed as intersecting circles (the same as the Community of Inquiry model). In fact, they closely resemble Venn diagrams. In the second model showing community collaboration from Paloff & Pratt (2013), the model is cyclical which is another common visual representation for a process or framework. Potentially, using Venn diagrams and cycles both acknowledge that the concepts represented in the models are not distinct from each other and also emphasize in what way they intersect.

The models also tend to be presented with items in groups of three, except for the model describing community collaboration. In both the TPACK and Paloff & Pratt (2013) Elements of the Learning Community model, one can then create connections between any 2 elements of the models, for example in TPACK, TP/TC or all three (TPC) and then potentially in different hierarchical or nested categorical configurations (CPT).

The combinations of items in the TPACK model were new to me and I think useful as an explanatory tool for thinking about how to approach making appropriate technological choices for content domains while keeping pedagogy in mind. I thought the way the items in the model could be seen as pairs and then in different nested combinations also intuitive and useful for making these kinds of choices. I have had the experience of folks getting really excited about a technology (most recently 360 video) but not fully realizing its affordances and challenges. In the case of the videos, the courses were being taken by learners in places without enough bandwidth for the videos to load properly. But the academic designing the course was attracted by the novelty and was granted funding specifically for it before user testing. That might be something missing from the TPACK model. The Paloff & Pratt (2013) model includes people. I think the TPACK model would benefit by including the learners in addition to technology, pedagogy, and content.

In my view, a key limitation of using frameworks to understand learning is that there is an inherent data loss in trying to pack something complex into something small and neat. I think the Community of Inquiry model demonstrated that with the later additions other academics believe should be part of the model. The initial three-part model may seem too simple or too intuitive to fully describe online learning through community and inquiry. So, adding to it might feel more nuanced and encompassing. I think this also leads us to an additional problem. Models that are simple tend to also be sufficiently vague so as to capture as much information as possible. Too vague and they can risk including information not intended to fit into the model, making them not so useful as descriptors. Too detailed and they might exclude relevant information.

References

Palloff, R. M. and Pratt, K. (2013). Lessons from the virtual classroom: the realities of online teaching. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Common Sense Education. (2016, July 12) What is the TPACK Model? [Video]. YouTube.

I thought I'd introduce some of my ideas around the kinds of language used to describe different types of artistic work, particularly in the genre of photography. I reference the Subhani (2015) article throughout and the mention of photographers Robert Cohen and Paul Nicklen in the scope of the photographers permitted as part of the assignment.

Not mentioned in my video are a few other things. First, would a photographer like JR be considered for the assignment given by Subhani (2015) and why? As in why is only 'photojournalism' (a title I focus on in my video) the only genre of photography that merits such rigorous research? The naming of a genre of photography such as photojournalism as 'worthy' of the research excludes other genres which work equally hard to provide exposure to important stories from street photography to classic portraiture.

I'll also point out that JR's work is what one might call site-specific in which the place the work was made, the part of the city in which it is viewed, and the wall or roof or steps on which it is pasted make up the work, not just the image. In the case of his work in India, the very dust in the air makes up the image. It made me think of Lloyd's (2013) description of space and where some folks are permitted or not permitted in certain spaces, and what actions they are allowed to take in those spaces.

In a way, the language around the work created by photojournalists, by calling them photojournalists permits them entry into certain spaces, while JR's less formal, subversive work permits him the same thing, in different spaces and in different communities but subverting local laws and norms.

References:

Lloyd, J. (2013). Trouble comes to me: The mediated place of the urban citizen. Space and Culture, 16(3), 306-322.

Subhani, K. (2015). Photos as Witness: Teaching visual literacy for research and social action. English Journal 105(2), 34-40.

TED (2021). Use art to turn the world inside out | JR [Video]. YouTube

This week, I took a look at the STEM into STEAM website from our selection of good links. As a student, I remember feeling very less-than, especially in high school as our cohort divided itself into those interested in pursuing science and those interested in something else. I found myself having trouble, especially with math (though biology and chemistry were good friends) and came down on the art side in this preliminary self-selection. I later discovered its consequences when scholarship funding was allocated largely to those students pursuing STEM subjects and who also held GPAs at the top of their class. Why did those things correlate? More self-selection? I did receive my piece of the pie, but I suspect it was because I was the only arts student to land in the top of the cohort. The pool of candidates good at the game of education from the arts side was as small as the pool of funding leftover for them. In short, we were a product of a distinct epistemological perspective of education that favored creating economically viable citizens with a clear sense of what information was correct and incorrect insofar as they would be rewarded (Kincheloe, 2008).

Incorporating art into STEM curricula (or incorporating STEM into art curricula, as I'll soon discuss) provides another perspective through which to consider the epistemological purpose of education by allowing learners to become producers and constructors of their own learning. Further, by employing technology for example in moving from visual arts to media arts, learners gain access to even more possibilities for creative expression and production (CCCB, 2019). Such control and influence over the learning has the possibility of empowering learners as political citizens to both realize and exercise their own agency (Banet-Weiser, 2007; CCCB, 2019). Finally, this way of offering learners opportunities for agency rewrites the narrative that they have nothing to offer by creating space for their voices and ideas in the construction of knowledge (Loveless & Griffith, 2014). It has been my view and my experience that for a teacher trained in an empirical way to measure learner progress, the key (aside from structural reform) in providing such spaces is trust. Trust that with help, learners will take the learning in the direction that's best for them, and that at the end of the learning they'll be ready for their future.

This all relates to my past project of building a new program (or academic unit) with the Vancouver Film School. When you build a program from scratch, there are organizations that requires the school to submit paperwork ensuring sufficient academic rigor in the proposed program. You need to establish with reasonable clarity the learning outcomes, and how they'll be measured. Moving from the activity design which was largely constructivist in nature to meet these of program requirements was extremely challenging. There were full assignments I'd designed in the program that could be interpreted and submitted any number of ways. They were often interdisciplinary. For example, one assignment asked students to do primary research with survey data (with a large enough n to draw limited conclusions) in order to create a pitch for an app design. Another assignment used what we know about how brains perceive visual information to talk about both animation and color theory, then to create a piece of animation which is inherently interdisciplinary even when done by hand. Both projects used science-based approaches to inform artistic practices.

It took almost 4 years to (somewhat) perfect rubrics that allowed for effective grading and feedback on these assignments so that progress could be measured beyond our teaching team's consensus that the work had been done well. I used a lot of rubric descriptors like 'in progress' or 'is working on it - but nearly there!'. On my leaving the program, we had our first cohort to graduate without me needing to change the rubrics. I suppose we were at the data collection stage at that point (Lynch, 2015). After this week's readings, even given that our program needed to pass through external quality assurance, I wonder if I pushed the envelope far enough, or if I ceded too much ground in how we defined and measured our learners' success. I guess I just have to trust them to define what success is to them.

References

Banet-Weiser, S. (2007). “We, the people of Nickelodeon”: Theorizing empowerment and consumer citizenship. In Kids rule! Nickelodeon and consumer citizenship (pp. 1-37). Duke University Press.

CCCB (Jul 2, 2019). Henry Giroux: “All education is a struggle over what kind of future you want for young people" [Video]. YouTube.

Kincheloe, J. L. (2008). Introduction: What we call knowledge is complicated and harbors profound consequences. In Knowledge and critical pedagogy: An introduction (pp. 3-26). Springer.

Loveless, D. J., & Griffith, B. (2014). Teaching and learning in complex times. In Critical pedagogy for a polymodal world (pp. 1-22). Sense Publishers.

Lynch, T. (2015). Soft(a)ware in the English classroom. English Journal, 104(3), 88-90.

The object I chose to reflect on from Turkle's Evocative objects: Things we think with (2007) was The World Book encyclopedia set written about by David Mann. We share startlingly similar experiences of growing up and the effect of having access to a set of these books. I also read the chapters on the Polaroid and on knots which also resonated but I hadn't thought about The World Book in so long and it really made me think back to life before the Internet, and a time before I was free to make my own choices.

Compared with Wikipedia nowadays or even with the CD-ROM version of encyclopedias from before Web 2.0, the physical presence of a set of these encyclopedias occupied so much physical space. They were imposing, taking up entire shelves of bookcase space. In his story, Mann describes moving a lot which means hauling the information with him in boxes from place to place. A very basic comparison here between this way of storing information and storing information virtually is down to space. What is 'known' about the world now would take up a lot more space I think, than the 1952 version The World Book. But online encyclopedias can go with us everywhere, and take up space only in data.

The benefits for me of having childhood access to The World Book was huge. I grew up in a place that was too poor for TV and where the local elementary school was grossly under resourced and made up of split grades. I found a partial set of old encyclopedias in my grandparents' attic, and another few in our nearly empty school library. The information was out of date but I read them all, anyway. The information was also only unidirectional and although the volumes had an index in the back, I don't think the listings included what concepts in the encyclopedia might be related to each other except in the index. The CR-ROM version included hyperlinks to related listings, but you couldn't add to these for yourself. With online information by contrast, learners can not only feed back on the information they receive, but they can shape in themselves in the case of wikis. They can also determine what concepts are related themselves and hyperlink to innumerable other pieces of information, whether the creator of the information felt it was related to the original concept or not.

The challenge then is in the curation of useful information. If information can be co-constructed online, we have problems situating which information is accurate. If information forms a never-ending web, filtering information that is important becomes another challenge. So, rather than leaving me to my own devices buried in my encyclopedias of so-called verified facts, teachers and learners need to learn to navigate the quality and quantity of available information.

I chose to reflect on the implications of Shapiro's (2014) second chapter on How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning. Full disclosure, I taught several game design modules in my program at the Vancouver Film School (VFS) and recently too ETEC 544 Digital Games and Learning so this topic is still really fresh for me. I began with this chapter because I think that for many educational contexts and institutions, games are still a little bit out of reach for logistical purposes. In my own classroom, the kinds of suggestions Shapiro makes at the beginning of the chapter on equipment would not have worked given that each student brought their own device to class, if they had one or wanted to (higher ed), and that then these devices didn't run on one standard operating system. Unless classes take place in a university lab, games in higher ed are harder to facilitate due to lack of widely available equipment.

I can also describe a bit of a difference between how I have approached games in the classroom and how Shapiro describes his starting point. I view games as a starting point for learning design. Games have learning structures and patterns that underpin them, and approaches that can be exploited for the design of learning. I always used to think of them that way - interactions were analogous to points of interest in a game. Design for learning over a term could be laid out like a map in a game. Meaningful choices and constructing one's own identity in online learning were also tenets I drew from games. Shapiro mentions adopting serious games as their own interactions for review or consolidation. I agree this is a nice place to start (one could easily adopt Kahoot! or another like gamified system for learning), but games offer more than that, right down into their bones.