just noticed this post-
we ran a distance education undergraduate diploma for 12 years out of the ceramics Workshop at the Australian National University. a couple of observations that may be of interest…
1. the course was a blended delivery, an intensive on campus workshop plus continued work on projects back in home studios- supported by an online discussion group and email.
We made in house videos of demonstrations by tutors, which students took home and (in many cases) watched over and over again. This meant that they had repeated instruction (every time they watched the video) from that video, but it was teaching the same thing that had been taught at the intensive school, so was more easily understood and absorbed.
2. we determinedly did not make the videos ‘slick’ productions. They were home movie quality, and acted as a stimulus to take the remote student back into the on campus classroom, as well as to repeatedly and tirelessly demonstrate technique in a way that face to face teaching can not afford to do. (these demonstration videos have also become a very rich resource for on campus students.)
3. we found that when a student came back at the end of semester for assessment (and the next workshop), if they had struggled with some technique or understanding at home, , they only had to be shown the technique once and they ‘got it’ much more quickly than on campus students who tend not to get the repeated demonstrations
4.the online discussion groups became a real network where students started answering questions that other students had posed. Although staff monitored the responses- if they were accurate, we did not intervene. They also often provided local knowledge about available materials/ artists etc that we did not have to hand.
5.generally the off campus students performed better in assessment than on campus students, but this may have been because of the demographic- generally committed mature age students who were focussed and hard working, with real world experience.
6. the lack, or cost, of broadband access for many students limited what they could download and so limited what we could deliver equitably.This continues to be a problem with off campus students who do not live in substantial population centreswhere access to broadband is assumed.
7. we did look at new technologies such as the ‘haptic workbench’ being developed at CSIRO (and which is used to train off campus medical students in skills like injection giving and operating. There was not the financial imperative to follow this through in an area like craft skills training, but it did give insight for staff into how to better describe various forming processes such as throwing.
8.In dispersed populations in a country such as Australia, remote education does work and have value, and there is a long history of it in primary & secondary schooling. But after 12 years we are convinced can never fully replace watching a real live person telling it. There is learning that happens ‘in the cracks’ in live teaching that would never get written into a lesson plan. The videos we made allowed those cracks to re-open at home.
9.There was also in the early stages of the course’s history, a trial of a software called ‘Fieldscreen’ that had been developed at the School of Art by the Field Studies studio (John Reid and Gilbert Riedelbauch). This software had the huge advantage of making it possible for the teacher and the student to have a shared screen which each could contribute to, but which could be transmitted via an ordinary telephone modem that operated at relatively slow speeds.
10. The numbers of students studying remotely from art school campuses is not likely to diminish. The convenience of not having to be at a particular place at a particular time to attend classes or lectures is very attractive in busy lives. (we found that ofetn we had local students enrolling in the distance course because of that convenience). But for those courses to be successful in craft discplines, there needs to be face to face teaching at on campus schools or workshops as part of the blend, and ideally supported by filmed segments of those same demonstrations.
11. one last thing I would add is that there is a misconception that it is cheaper to educate off campus than on campus. It is not- either in time or in cost.
I would be interested to hear of other experiences in skills training of remote students- especially as we are moving into remote graduate study, which needs less of the manual skills training, but more of the discourse surrounding the practice. This should be easier.
