The document discusses shifting trends in art foundation programs, including the impact of 21st century learners, technology, social responsibility, and rethinking the role of art history. It explores emerging ideas around incorporating new technologies, collaboration, themes and critical thinking into foundation curricula. Breakout groups were tasked with discussing potential solutions and new assignment ideas addressing these trends.

1. “SHIFTING TRENDS IN ART FOUNDATION”
FATE Regional Forum
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
December 2, 2011
10:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Woodbury University
Hosted by
Woodbury University Design Foundation Program

2. Goals for this Event
• Build community
• Exchange ideas
• Improve our programs

3. Traditionally What Do We Do?
• Teach drawing and design (2D and 3D) elements,
principles and core skills
• Provide a preparation for majors
• Provide historical and cultural context

4. Who are we?
• Diverse – foundations, core, first year
• Collaborative and “interdisciplinary”
• Experienced
• Important
• Underappreciated?
• On the front lines
• Not alone - organizations

5. FATE: Foundations in Art:
Theory and Education
• Founded in 1977 • Assignment exchange
• Professional affiliation with • Position announcements
College Art Association (CAA) • Institutional membership
• Mission: Dedicated to the ($50/two years), Institutional
promotion of excellence in the membership ($100/year)
development and teaching of • Website: Foundations-art.org
college-level foundation courses
in both studio and art history
• FATE Biennial (since 1986) and
regional events
• Publish Journal (FATE in
Review) and Newsletter

6. ITI – Integrative Teaching International
• Grew out of FATE
• Founded in 2006
• “Integrative Teaching International (ITI) promotes wide
sweeping discussion about the state of teaching and learning
in the 21st century. Through our annual ThinkTank
event, our journal “Future Forward,” and other sponsored
programs, ITI seeks to foster intellectual skills necessary for
exemplary instruction by master teachers, administrators
and emerging educators.”
• ThinkTank7 – “Foundations Now”, June 6-9, 2012, Chicago IL
• Website: integrativeteaching.org

7. What are the outside forces?
• 21st century learners
• Shifting trends in higher education
• Economy and job market

8. 21st Century Learners
According to the study “A Vision of Students Today” and presentation “Teaching the 21 st Century Learner”
• Social, like to learn in teams and in structured environment that
affords flexibility
• Better at reading visual images than reading
• Comfortable with racial and ethnic diversity
• There will be more women, older students, minorities, part
time, veterans, working learners
• Looking for fast response times leading to short attention spans
• Multitasker, experiential, learn through exploration, need to be
engaged
• Demand things that matter, practical approaches in real world context
• Desire learning options, personalized to learning strength, want to
design own curricula
• Demand more convenience; online, part time, off campus

9. 21st Century Learners
Technology
• Digitally literate
• Fascination with new technologies
• Computers aren’t technology but are a way of life
• Multimedia format is pervasive and they expect
the same
• Internet is the universal form of information
• Students are frustrated by rules that inhibit their
use of technology

10. Institutional Missions and
Learning Outcomes
• Transdisciplinarity • Integrity
• Collaboration • Diversity
• Social Responsibility • Academic Excellence
• Integrated Student • Community
• Communication • Innovative technology
• Critical Thinking • Respect
• Innovation • Flexible learning
• Creativity • Professional
• Innovation development
• Writing Skills • Life-long learner
• Sustainability

11. Economy and job market
• Loss of federal and state funding, loans and aid
• Uncertain level of international students
• Cost of college is growing financial burden increasing the
need to be accountable for the investment and employment
– College is job training
• High unemployment
• Less high school art programs

12. How Do We Respond?

13. Emerging Conversations in
Art/Design Foundation
• Technology
• Social Responsibility
• Meaning
• Art History

14. Technology
“In this age of technology, tactile, embodied experience
is ironically, potentially innovative”
“Empowering innovation” breakout session ITI ThinkTank workshop, FATE Biennial
“Today’s high-school students, the so-called New
Millennial’s, see their educational futures built almost
entirely around technology.”
June 2009 Study by Chronicle of Higher Education “The College of 2020: Students”

15. Technology
• Social media:
Flikr, texting, Facebook, twitter, blogs, wiki’s
• Online learning and hybrid classes
• 4D – Time and Motion: art and design
disciplines increasingly use time based media
and movement

16. Example
From his paper in FATE in Review, volume 30
“The Multichronic Classroom: Creating an Engaging Classroom for All Students”
The Multichronic Classroom
Anthony Fontana, Instructor of Art and Learning Technologies Consultant, Bowling Green State
University, and current President of Integrative Teaching International
• “Creation: Blogs replace the traditional journal, allowing the students to publish
their creative brainstorming processes and critically analyze the research they find
online.”
• “Collaboration: A wiki, created by my students and me, replaces the textbook and
gives the students’ artwork, exercises, and research an online home for the benefit
of others.”
• “Communication: The social networking site Facebook allows for more versatile
out-of-class dialogue that is available “where” and when the students want it.”
• “Interaction: The virtual world of Second Life allows for practical interaction with
other professional artists from around the world.”
• Also uses a Wii to teach arm movement in drawing

17. Advantages
• Relevant to student’s experience - engagement
• Efficient – repetition, reiteration, communication
• Movement
• Relevant to skills and principles required in many
majors

18. Challenges
• Expense – university or student
• Keeping up with new technology
• Faculty training
• Space and logistics
• Plagiarism issues and role of ownership
• Faculty less an oracle than a guide to
information

19. Social Responsibility
“What does it mean to say there is no
work when there is so much work to be
done?”
Jasmine Aber, Institute of Urban Design and Regional Development and
Center for Global Metropolitan Studies
“Problems turned into projects”
Kim Yamuda, Art Department of California Santa Barbara

20. Social Responsibility
• Service learning, “Citizen Artist”
• Community and collaboration
• Meaningful purpose, not jobs
• Participatory, Experiential learning
• Sustainability

21. Social Responsibility
Learning Outcomes
Jim Elniski, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
and Eileen Doktorski, Mt. San Jacinto College
• Empathy • Leadership
• Awareness • Communication of
• Self-Esteem ideas
• Self-confidence • Division of work
• Purposefulness • Leadership
• Community • Courage
• Listening
• Compromise

22. Example
Open Container Project
Kim Yasuda, Professor of Spatial studies, Art
Department of California Santa Barbara
• Distance learning versus Proximity
research
• First assignment: prepare a meal
together
• “Open Container” project
• Friday Academy: “encourages flexible
programming in response to
immediate social and environmental
concerns”
• Class as artwork and exhibition as
school

23. Advantages
• Serve and create community
• Collaboration
• More ambitious scale
• Visibility
• Learn through practical experience
• Expand view
• Learn responsibility and empathy

24. Challenges
• Individual assessment difficult
• Unpredictable outcome
• Liability and risk
• Continuing new relationships afterward?
• Funding

25. Meaning
“Don’t abandon skill but expand context”
Maureen Garvin, Dean, School of Foundation Studies, Savanna College of Art and Design

26. Meaning
• Concept, themes and narrative
• Mine personal experience for content
• Critical thinking – learn how to learn
• Conceptual and inquiry based skills cross fields
and disciplines

27. Example1
artCORE
Dan Collins, Professor, 2D studio, Arizona State
University
• Inquiry based
• Matrix combining the three
components on assignments ie.
Studio skill = time
theme = protest and persuasion
Methodology = collaboration
http://www.asu.edu/cfa/wwwcourses/art/SO
ACore/homelive2.htm

28. Example 2
The Alfred Line
Michelle Illuminato and Brett Hunter, Alfred
University
• 5’ x 1 mile line is the focus of a
freshman studio research course
“which asks participants to study their
world through experiential research
and the exploration or creative ways to
share this knowledge.”
• “Explore, observe, collect, analyze, edit,
organize, communicate”
http://thelineproject.wordpress.com

29. Example 3
Concepts Course
Susan Meyer, Denver University – Four foundation courses: 2D Approaches, 3D Approaches,
Drawing, Concepts
• Concepts Course description: Two topics will be explored:
“culture and context,” and “time, space and duration.” A greater
complexity of studio activity will be stressed through
collaborative exercises, and individual approaches to themes.
Greater exploration of context and concept will be expected,
with emphasis on visual communication and personal
awareness.

30. Example 4
Reorganized School of Foundation Studies
Savanna College of Art and Design – only dedicated School of Foundation Studies in U.S.
In addition to the usual courses:
• Creative Thinking Strategies
• Design III: Time
• Drawing on a Theme
• Drawing III: Content and Interpretations
http://www.scad.edu/programs/foundation-studies/index.cfm

31. Advantages
• Student Engagement
• Relevant to many departments
• Address “technologically savvy, conceptually
immature” student
• Develop Integrated Student
• Critical thinking skills

32. Challenges
• Distraction from core skills
• Breaking the Bauhaus formalism paradigm

33. Art History
“today’s child is bewildered when he enters
the 19th century environment that still
characterizes the educational establishment
where information is scarce but ordered and
structured by fragmented, classified
patterns, subjects and schedules.” Marshall McLuhan
1967
What does this have to do with me?

34. Art History
• Survey of art history versus potentially more relevant
modern era - depth versus breadth
• Presence or absence of Design History in design
curricula and who teaches it? Few Design History
Ph.D. programs nationally
• Diversity – non-western, feminist, multi-ethnic
• Dwindling electives versus art history accreditation
requirements

35. Survey of Art Advantages
• Verbal and visual vocabulary
• Naturally interdisciplinary:
math, english, culture, humanities, social studies
• Looking at evolving themes and meaning
• Context
Survey of Art Challenges
• Only painting, sculpture and architecture
• Too much material – little depth or analysis
• Not enough time for 20th century
• Little discussion on process and materials
• Many students pursue design majors
• Learning needs are more practical
• Less relevant to contemporary student

36. Example
New Art history curriculum
Elizabeth Fowler – Syracuse University
• All students take two courses:
“20th and 21st Century Art in Context”
“20th and 21st Century Design in Context”
• Limits scope to 1850 – 2000 – in depth modern era:
mechanization, commercialization, and sustainability
• Able to discuss process and materials
• Able to discuss issues and themes
• Begin to see the relationship of art to design

37. New Curriculum Example
First Year Experience – Six, 8 week workshops
Gary Setzer, University of Arizona
“The focus of the program is to foster inventive and resourceful
students, who can express complicated ideas in a manner that is both
technically and conceptually sophisticated.”
• Mapping – observational drawing (req.)
• Space – 3D additive and reductive (req.)
• Surface – color elements of design (req.)
Three of the following:
• Gaze – photo
• Experience – 4D time
• Amalgams – installation and mixed media
• Propaganda – visual communication
• Body – drawing the figure
http://art.arizona.edu/students/first-year-experience/

38. Challenges to Innovation
• The need to assess and adapt – It may be difficult
to gain approval for new foundation curricula, and
once introduced, may not work as well or be
accepted
• Too much innovation may make articulation of
transfer students more difficult
• Already overstretched two or four year program
requirements make the creation of departmental
specific first year courses more attractive, and the
dissolution of Foundation programs more
attractive

39. Conclusion
Given our vital role in the journey of the art/design
student, and particular interdisciplinary nature of
Foundation programs, there is an opportunity to not
only respond to change but to lead it.

40. Breakout Groups

41. Breakout groups
• Each group will be asked to address and present
experiences, possible solutions, ideas or issues that
come up from the discussion
• Identify a scribe and presenter(s) for the group
• Present a brief description for a new foundation
assignment using the topic

42. Breakout Groups
1. The role of technology, social media, online
learning, and motion/time in Foundation curricula
2. The role of Social responsibility and collaboration
in foundation curricula
3. The role of themes or meaning as well as critical
thinking in foundation curricula
4. The role and scope of Art history in contemporary
art and design Foundation Curricula