Virtual school in regards to the art classroom

At this point in time, everyone knows about virtual learning. During the pandemic, it was the only way to continue educating people and now we are living with the after affects. I started my UTK college career as a studio art major in the fall of 2020. This posed a lot of challenges. For one all of my classes were online or hybrid. For my gen ed lecture style classes this was fine. Did I retain as much as I would in a physical classroom? Probably not, but I figured out a system to keep myself engaged. Studio art classes were a different story, however. How do you take a class that is so physical in its foundations and bring it into a digital format? 

Really, that first semester was a mess of trial and error. My foundation classes for art were taught by MFA students who were in the same boat as us. None of us knew how to handle it, because art for all of us was  deeply interpersonal and needed collaborative setting. As artists, we build upon each other's ideas and give constructive criticism and feedback and teach each other new skills. It is a lot harder to build this creative relationship when there is no in-person meetings. We figured out that a strictly virtual class was not the way to go. The studio needed to be hybrid. 

For the most part, the structure became this: 

Demo day: This is the class day that the instructor would demonstrate the skill required for the assignment. Zoom meetings were great for this because they could screenshare videos and use demo cameras to show how they were working through the skill. 

A picture of me at a park drawing
from life during studio class time

Studio days: These are in-class work days. When the weather was nice we would do class outside for social distancing. We were able to start building those relationships that are so critical for art. If the weather wasn't good for outside class, we would have to upload progress shots on canvas either as assignments or discussions to hold ourselves accountable and allow our instructor and peers to provide feedback on how to make our work better.

Crit day: One of the most important parts of art and an art classroom is critique day. This this the day you and your peers dissect each others work and pull out the successful parts and the parts that still need work. Without a good relationship between each other, the crits are useless. I won't respect a peer's comments on my art if I haven't built that relationship and recognize they have merit in their suggestions. It can also promote anxiety if you feel like people are attacking their work. Zoom meetings are the best solution for this in an online setting. This way, students learn how to document their art in a professional way to be able to show on the computer and their peers' tones are not lost like they might be in a discussion post. 

Once these practices were put into place, teaching art in a virtual space was almost as good as in an actual studio. The other thing that really helped was making sure materials were accessible for everyone. The materials needed for most of these assignments were very basic art supplies that most of us had, but sometimes we had to get creative. Other times, were were able to pick up supplies from the school.