In a typical high school art classroom, students create individual works of art that are as unique as the students, themselves.  Students develop their own artistic styles as they learn each media and find inspiration in the artists they study.  Students work at their own pace, completing their works of art as they meet with their instructor to determine whether the piece passes muster or must be reworked.  In fact, the art room may be the most striking example of constructivist learning on any high school campus.

As we move toward more technology-driven education in our schools, one might think that the art room would be unaffected by this shift.  In fact, this thinking is common among the decision-makers in schools, who often overlook the arts classrooms when choosing how to allocate funding for technology.  But, this is an unfortunate oversight, as professional artists are often at the forefront of technology usage, and denying arts students the opportunity to work with technology as their professional counterparts do, deprives them of the skills needed to be successful artists as adults.  

As an art teacher, I’ve had to advocate for technology in my classrooms, often going so far as to having to seek funding from outside sources to get the needed technology for my classroom, while my coworkers who teach core subjects have had no trouble getting tech.  While this process has been frustrating, I am proud of the programs I’ve built, and excited to have added some connectivist learning philosophy to my program.  This has allowed me to build an online course in which I will provide students with a wide variety of resources that they can choose from to find the path to understanding each objective that works best for them.  They will always have their resources available to return to, should they need to, and they will be able to communicate with me from home when they need additional help.  In an art class, this means that they will spend more class time creating art and less time being fed information that is geared toward the larger population.  Instead, in my flipped-class model, they will access resources on their own time and choose what piques their interest.  

I used the Understanding By Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) model to plan my course out.  This outlining method makes it easiest to design a course around specific outcomes and then build activities that will lead to those desired outcomes.  While there are many design methods that work backward from the end goal, I like the Understanding By Design method because it allows me to look at the “big picture” of what I want to accomplish with the class, while also planning very specific tasks and assessments to get there.  For instance, my outline for the Introductory Course allowed me to design backward from my state standards to the specific understandings I wanted my students to grasp, what activities they would do to gain this understanding, and then how I would assess it.  I then used my resulting outline as a blueprint for creating this course, making each part of it an activity or assessment in my online course.  

While I do not have much experience teaching online courses, I am very pleased with this online introductory course, and I am excited to build on it as I move more of my instruction to an online platform.  This year, I moved to Silicon Valley to teach in a new school that has embraced online instruction by providing each teacher with access to Google Classroom, and all teachers and students with Google Apps for Education.  While I am not new to technology, I am just learning all the possibilities this brings to my teaching and — more importantly — to my students’ learning!  Many of my students are English Learners, and are already using Google Translate to communicate with me as I struggle through their native languages.  I can provide resources in English, and students can translate through this app.  While the translation isn’t perfect, it works well enough that they can understand it, or at least ask me to call a student translator over to assist them.  Without this system, I would be struggling to speak to these students and they would definitely be at a disadvantage as they spent more class time trying to get the meaning of the resources and less time learning and creating art.  In fact, moving instruction online is a great way to help students with many different kinds of challenges to succeed in learning.  According to the 2016 NMC CoSN Horizon Report (Horizon Report, 2016), “The most wicked leadership challenge is the achievement gap that persists, in which low-income students and other underserved learner populations struggle to stay in school and graduate with skills that translate to gainful employment. Schools need ongoing leadership around devising solutions for disadvantaged students. In New Zealand, teachers help each other identify and address at-risk learners through the Ministry of Education’s Investing in Educational Success initiative, and the complementary Teacher-Led Innovation Fund supports the co-design of activities that improve student success.”  Many of these activities include online instruction that allows students accessibility options that will help them work at the same level as more advantaged peers.

Another benefit of my online course is transparency.  My teaching coach can see what my students are doing and can track all interactions and student work online.  Though much of our work is done in class, all my resources are in Google Classroom so she can log in and see what I’m covering.  This is great because she can offer feedback to me that students can’t see so I can improve my teaching.  She can also see when I add a resource, assignment, or assessment to my class, just in case there is some confusion about a due date or test.  In fact, every administrator in my school can easily log in and see everything happening in my online course so there is never any misunderstanding about my course.

Perhaps the most exciting benefit to moving a lot of my instruction online is that my students can access the course materials at any time, and can revisit them as many times as they want.  A student who might need to watch a demo a few times can always log in and see the demo as many times as needed to grasp the concept, whereas before, I would demonstrate a technique or media in class and in order to see it again, a student would have to come over to me and wait for me to become available to demonstrate again.  Students who miss a class can log in and get materials from home, and won’t fall behind.  Also, students who need more information can access the extra materials I’ve included in the class so they can explore a subject in greater detail.  My students self-differentiate my course through the choices they make within it.

The importance of providing online instruction to students is becoming more and more apparent as I learn through creating my own online course.  By allowing students to make choices in their learning, I am giving them the opportunity to create the learning plan that works best for them, whether they need more time, more access to materials, or help translating my materials into their native languages.  Because they are in charge of how they learn, they are also more engaged in learning as they use only the resources that they need.  Students love being able to log in from home to check assignments and ask questions, and they know they will get a response in a very short time.  And I love that there is no confusion — from my students, administration, parents, or even other teachers — because everything I do is viewable by everyone.  This also keeps my teaching fresh, because when something isn’t working, it is easy to change my lesson quickly.  

The relevance of online teaching is that these students are likely to take online courses in college, and to collaborate digitally in the workplace.  Giving them the opportunity to learn online will give them skills needed and make them more comfortable working in this environment.  Schools want to provide students with everything they need to succeed in college and the workplace, so it makes sense that we would be teaching in this way.  I am very fortunate that my new school has embraced this teaching style.  I am excited to put it to good use!

In a 2014 study by Project Tomorrow and Blackboard (Trends in Digital Learning, 2014), the benefits to online teaching and learning is apparent.  Some highlights from this study are as follows:

• More than 9 out of 10 administrators say that the effective use of technology within instruction is important for achieving their school or district’s core mission of education and preparation of students.
• Over three-quarters of parents (78%) say that the best way for their child to develop the college, career and citizen ready skills they will need for future success is to use technology on a regular basis within his or her daily classes at school.
• Two-thirds of middle school students (64%) agree that effective technology use increases their interest in what they are learning at school.
• Three-quarters of principals attribute increased student engagement in learning to the effective use of digital content in their blended learning classrooms
• 52% of teachers in blended classrooms say that their students are developing collaboration skills as a result of using technology within learning; 61% of their students agree!
• Almost three-quarters of technology leaders (73%) say that their school or district is now offering online courses for their students. Top subjects offered: Math, Social Studies/History, English Language Arts, Science and World Languages.

 

The enduring understanding that I can take from this experience and apply to my teaching is that students learn best when they’re given the tools they need to personalize their learning experience.  By creating this online course, I’m giving a lot of the power of the classroom over to my students, which is a scary prospect for some.  But what I am learning is that my students want to learn, and they want to succeed, and when given ownership of their classroom (even in digital form), they are more active learners and less passive consumers of content.  This results in much deeper understanding of the content and mastery of skills in a more authentic learning experience.  This system also results in better productivity for me, because I can maximize my time with students while automating many of my day-to-day tasks.  I also have greater transparency with my school, because there is constant communication about what is going in in my classroom.  While creating an online course is a lot more work up-front, it is definitely worth the effort in the payoff in student learning and teacher efficiency.  

 

Resources:

 

NMC/CoSN (2016). Horizon Report 2016 K-12 Edition. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc–cosn-horizon-report-2016-k-12-edition/

Trends in Digital Learning. (2014). In Speak Up. Retrieved from http://www.tomorrow.org

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design (expanded second ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.