I believe I covered much of the rationale for the assignment on my initial blog posting, but to reiterate (perhaps with more clarity?):
My experience in teaching in the studio art field is that students, particularly Freshmen, dislike discussing and defending their art work in class. Much of that dislike is no doubt due to being at a new school, taking new classes and talking in front of people they don't know well. Artwork to a student is a very personal thing and to put it out in the public domain for the purpose of criticism by others, whether positive or negative, is a scary thing.
By putting them out of eyesight/earshot of each other in a place where they can contemplate the imagery before them without other interference, they should (in theory, anyway)be more open to being themselves and communicating more of what they actually feel, believe, and understand(or don't understand)about the piece of art they're examining. In addition, the dialogue generated on the blogsite, by myself as well as the students, is very likely to ellicit a response, whereas in class there may be many comments that students won't respond to orally unless prompted to by me. After the assignment has been completed, we would then have an in-class discussion regarding the comments made on the Critique blogsite.
The goal of the exercise is to increase student dialogue regarding artwork, by having them "break the ice" via online comments and then using the printout of the blog posts as a follow up or to generate conversation in a later class.
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4 comments:
I agree that this would be a great way to get students to open up. All the reasons you cited would potentially limit classroom discussion, and perhaps the anonymity of the internet would allow the inner critic to emerge
Scott, the online studio critique is a good plan to capitalize on the energy of group discussion, and the pleasure an artist naturally feels in having one's work publicly acknowledged, while allowing the responders to dwell more meditatively with the work before they respond. If it works as well as threaded discussion often does in eCollege, you might get some really high-quality work out of the students in addition to breaking the ice.
Scott,
Sounds like a viable approach to increasing student discussion, although nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunately, usually discussion will only happen if it is subject to grading, you direct it, and make it lively.
Will students be commenting on each other's posts, or just reading them? Online is a good place to practice, but doesn't always transfer to in-class discussion. I think you will have to actively lead the discussion, so it won't be a repeat of written comments.
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