Beyond the studio: Using Voicethread to engaging students in online studio courses, and enhance learning experience Workshop
- Shira Richman The New School/ Assistant Director of Distributed Education
Description
Using a case study of one fashion illustration course, this presentation describes the challenges, and successes that Parsons The New School for Design and Distributed Education faced together in engaging students in an online studio course. The critique is a crucial part of the studio class, providing feedback and support for students as they progress through projects, and therefore posed one of the largest challenges for teaching online. The fashion illustration course has thrived online using Voicethread, an asynchronous, interactive web-based program. Voicethread has enabled instructors to connect and support students across the globe, and allows for dynamic, engaging critiques.
We will be using Voicethread during the workshop, and if participants could create an account ahead of time it would be very helpful. Please follow the steps below to register for a free Voicethread account:
- Go to http://voicethread.com.
- Click “Register”, top-right side of the page.
- Fill out the short form, then click Submit.
- Check your email for a confirmation, and click on the link in the email to verify your account.
Timetable
5 minute introduction 25 minute presentation/workshop 15 minutes Q &A
Interaction
The audience will be invited to participate in a Voicethread created specifically for the DeL workshop session. The audience will engage in the Voicethread digital space, where they will experience the student experience hands-on, posting comments and questions during the presentation. The digital moderator of the workshop will address the posted comments and questions in Voicethread.
Takeaway
It is difficult to teach studio courses online, especially to replicate class critiques which is a key component of studio courses. Voicethread has enabled instructor’s to connect and support a large community of students across the globe, and allows for dynamic, online critiques in a digital space. We have learned a great deal in the process of bringing our first fashion illustration course to life online, and have used that experience in designing a plethora of highly engaging online studio courses. Six years after we embarked on building our first online fashion illustration course Parsons studio-based courses are thriving online.
Outcomes
Blog posting