Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Susan Clements-Vivian, School of Interactive Arts and Technology

Project team: Adam Ashraf-Abadi, research assistant

Timeframe: December 2011 to April 2012

Funding: $2695

Course addressed: IAT 100 – Digital Image Design

Poster presentation: View a poster (PDF) describing this project from the 2012 Symposium on Teaching and Learning.

Description: This project is a continuation of my previous Smaller Teaching and Learning Grant “Performance and participation in medium-sized (72 students) lecture courses.” This next grant will be used to further develop participatory process-based (creative) learning activities that can take place in large lecture groups.  I have termed this style of lecturing a Studio Lecture.  The challenge in this next study will be to apply and extend the principles learnt in the first grant to work in larger groups (in this case a class of 200 students).  The following discoveries were made in the first round:

• theory should be covered at least one week prior to the activity,
• students are able to self organize with minimum assistance in groups up to 10 (this is the maximum size we tried),
• collecting results and giving timely feedback is important part of the learning process,
• and breaks between activities are needed to prevent student burnout.

This next project will focus on identifying a successful model that works with a larger, first year group based on our previous research.  For IAT 100, we anticipate that the following changes will be necessary:

• Activities will need to be broken down into smaller segments to keep students focused and to minimize the number of questions.
• Activities must be designed so that they came be completed by students while seated in theatre style seats.  This will be a major design challenge, as the rows are stepped and cramped.
• i>clickers will be integrated with most activities for the class to get a “snap shot” of how teams are progressing and for the teaching team to identify any roadblocks or general problems.
  

Questions addressed: The larger research question I am addressing is how current research and interest in participatory student centered lectures can be adapted to aid in the teaching of art and design curriculum. The specific questions investigated in this grant are:

• What resources are needed to successfully run a studio lecture activity in IAT 100?  Is the one-hour time slot adequate to successfully run studio lecture activity in IAT 100?
• Did the students enjoy participating in the studio lecture activity in IAT 100?
• How can we evaluate results from IAT 100 teams through the use of i>clickers?
• Did the students understand the goals of the activity and feel that they were met?
• Do you feel you would be able to apply this technique to another image?

Knowledge sharing: I will present the project at a brown bag lunch in the Spring 2012 semester.  If I can find an appropriate venue, I would also like to present this at a conference on teaching.

Clements-Vivian, S., & Ashraf-Abadi, A. (2012, May). The studio-lecture: Practice based learning in lecture courses. Poster session presented at the Symposium on Teaching and Learning: Leading Change @SFU, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.