This text considers some of the challenges encountered then teaching online, in particular the feeling of disembodiment and the shared sensory challenges for students and for teachers that this format entails. I run online courses for students so this is something that is of pertinence and interest for my teaching.
One of the main implications of teaching online is the change of sensory experience and the removal of a shared space with the sounds and smells of the studio are replaced by the cooperate jingles of your chosen online meeting platform:
“The absence of other sensory experiences of touch, taste and smell in the institutional context, related to materials such as musical instruments or art equipment added further to the abstract and disembodied quality of the teaching and learning experience.”
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The text seeks to answer 3 main questions in relation to online teaching:
(1) How can artistic/embodied/relational teaching in a real environment be maximised in the digital environment?
I think this the fundamental challenge that online teaching presents. With teaching painting and drawing, I find that online teaching necessitates a very different level of organisation. Firstly, I have put increasing emphasis on the need to plan and other up exercises and material suggestions to students with plenty of notice in order for them to be able to make in the moment. The chief difficulty I have found with online teaching as opposed to in person teaching is that it can curb creative instinct, as a teacher, I really value being able to offer up additional material options from a store room to encourage students to experiment.
In addition to this, I have always found the disembodied nature of online teaching requires but also covers up a lot of the preparatory work involved in providing lesson material, often I will only turn my camera on at the start time or students will log in late or appear without the camera turned on. I really like the following idea from this text:
“As a lecturer in visual art, Michael chose to turn on his own camera before a lecture to allow students to observe how the preparation of materials works. Eileen, a philosopher, noted the importance of ‘setting the scene for a lecture’ and observing how the students respond to the invitation regarding what has been set out before them.”
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This is something that I will try out in future online courses that I run. I think this is a really simple and clever device to show students that online learning is not an excuse to engage less, I think it shows the importance of preparation and of showing up.
(2) What can we learn from critiquing our own successes and failures to inform our future teaching?
In my online teaching experience I have found that there is more temptation to fill the space with speaking, which comes from an instinct of feeling less connected and less secure in my own teaching in this environment. I have managed to become more settled in this mode of teaching and to recognise and let this feeling float by when it comes up. As noted by the authors in this text:
“Developing mutual trust and confidence as teacher and learner transcends the online environment. As teacher educators, we gradually grew to understand that being mute and invisible could enable the learner to achieve higher levels of engagement with cognitive elements”
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(3) How might our learning recast possibilities for arts curricula and inform teacher education pedagogies through digital modes of teaching and learning?
One of the possibilities of online teaching is the openness it can provide, it has the potential to open up another space where we can access resources and learning in a different mode of being. For example, learning something technical from in person teaching has multiple layers built into it, person to person dynamics, the presuure of performance on the tutor, the pressure felt by students to support this process and a myriad of underlying factors such as this. Using prepared videos of technical demonstration in online teaching allows for a lessening of this factor and allows both teacher and student to sit outside of this space and engage with it in less complicated way.
“In many cases there were online examples of teaching a particular concept from genuine classroom contexts. I … would have relied on ‘still’ images or our own retelling or a classroom re-enactment/experience. But ironically, because of wanting to make the experience as vivid as possible, we sourced these online clips. They were all very realistic, authentic experiences and so rich in learning. In that regard, the students noticed different things from the practices in the classrooms, whether it was a teacher’s instruction, or the pupils’ responses, or unintended responses. It also helped to clarify the teaching objective. “ (Regina, transcript, spring 2021)
I found this text to be a positive and interesting read that provide some new ideas on how to make the experience more embodied useful for my own online teaching.
References:
- Regina Murphy, Francis Ward, Una McCabe, Michael Flannery, Andrea Cleary, Hsiao-Ping Hsu & Eileen Brennan (2022) Recasting embodied and relational teaching in the arts: teacher educators reflect on the potential of digital learning, Irish Educational Studies, 41:1, 213-224, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2021.2022525, page 217
- Regina Murphy, Francis Ward, Una McCabe, Michael Flannery, Andrea Cleary, Hsiao-Ping Hsu & Eileen Brennan (2022) Recasting embodied and relational teaching in the arts: teacher educators reflect on the potential of digital learning, Irish Educational Studies, 41:1, 213-224, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2021.2022525, page 217
- Regina Murphy, Francis Ward, Una McCabe, Michael Flannery, Andrea Cleary, Hsiao-Ping Hsu & Eileen Brennan (2022) Recasting embodied and relational teaching in the arts: teacher educators reflect on the potential of digital learning, Irish Educational Studies, 41:1, 213-224, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2021.2022525, page 218