Yes to a large extent.
Playful and experimental? – yes
Boundary challening? – yes
Experience over assessment? – yes
Participatory? – yes
Relational? – yes
No, to some extent.
A lot of the provocations in the manifesto assume that what happens offline is classroom based (chalk-n-talk as normative). If that’s not what happens – and for me it isn’t – then it’s not provocative. For example, the idea that we need to move away from exams seems archaic (we have never had any exams in any of the programmes I teach on). I think this manifesto ultimately sets the bar low in this sense but I realise that it has to start somewhere (the bar for LEARN is limbo-level). The imagination required to teach differently could be ignited by engaging more with online learning, or simply through a more blended approach, but a fertile educaitonal imagination needs to be present in the first place. Do we have the human resources for the job? Or do we need to make different appointments to pull off the transition?
In my field, online education is very rare since the bias is towards experiential and performative learning. Using online tools is a good way of triggering experiential and performative learning that takes place offline. It’s an ideal platform for establishing more inventive art assignments (a tried and tested studio approach). Here’s a famous example:
The online platform becomes a great tool for reporting back on, sharing ‘documenting’ and archiving what took place offline. Or at least it could be all of these things – if art schools engaged with online teaching (which they generally don’t).
For some learners (I’m thinking here of artists), of course, online is a place in which they work exclusively (because they are web artists, coders, demo-ers, etc.) This is a whole field in its own right. It requires a completely different approach. For such artists, digital is a plastic medium. It is material. It has its own aesthetics and rules of engagement. So the manifesto elements that are focused on aesthetics are the components that do resonate with me.
I think other forms of practice-based or practice-led education (e.g. sports, nursing, teaching, medicine, law, management, music, dance, acting) are more diverse in terms of what constitutes the offline learning environment. I’m interested in how such disciplines conceptualise online teaching when they share a common concern with instilling practice and wherein that practice has a somatic or performative dimension.
3 February 2020 at 11:20 pm
Hi Neal,
Great post … I didn’t know anything about the ‘Learning to Love You More’ project before, so if nothing else you’ve introduced me to something new (online learning!).
I think the manifesto for online teaching tries to say something quite broadly about teaching practice – which varies heavily across disciplines. Clearly exams are still very much baked-in to the curricula of some disciuplines (and we have to work quite hard to stop that from seeping into the design of their online courses … which would be quite a disappointing). So I think that those provocations still need to be made. But good point that for other disciplines some of these appear to be setting the bar low.
What do you think an art-college focussed manifesto would like? I don’t doubt someone has already done something like this?
Really interesting posts. Keep up the good work,
Stuart