“I have been just been commissioned to create an Artist’s Toolkit that is a comprehensive open educational resource (OER). I’ve been advised that I should avoid making assumptions about the learners that will use this Toolkit. Since I will only be paid when I complete the commission, I have very few resources at my disposal. How might I achieve this task?”

I chose to use the 5R framework for reflection.

• Reporting

At the beginning of the week 3, I received a module on Open Learning & Modding. There are some important concepts such as OER, which refers to open (easily accessible to teachers and students) course content, materials and activities. Most OERs are free or relatively inexpensive, usually produced by members of the community rather than publishers or suppliers, and easily accessible. OERs are themselves becoming a trend in digital learning innovation and are considered to be a substitute for textbooks.

On Tuesday the 4th of October, Beth and my Basho had a simple practice of creating an OER together.We were divided into groups of three to conduct research and interviews to learn more about what OER is all about.

Before week four I took the Art Assignments & Learning Theories module, where we had to select art projects that interested us to complete and contribute to our portfolios, and analyse these art projects using three learning theories.

On Tuesday 11th October, Beth and my Basho shared the art projects that we had each done, as well as other different art projects that we had each chosen again, and we chose the same art project together again. We tried out a number of art projects together in practice and Beth asked us questions about what did you learn from these art assignments? How can these art assignments help people achieve the purpose of art education?

On Thursday 13th October, Neil took us on a tour of ESW, an established studio, or rather a complete artist’s toolkit. We talked to the organizers, spoke to the artists in residence and tried our hand at making art activities, playing with clay, building blocks etc .

• Responding

I have been familiar with the concept of OER and have even used it. It is actually not a very new concept, but there are not yet particularly many empirical studies published. I think OER has its place, especially in terms of cost savings, and more and more professors and students are looking to use it as an alternative to textbooks. In addition to its use in higher education, OER is also applicable to developing countries or countries with even poorer educational resources.

The artwork format is also a good attempt at art education and I can feel many of its advantages, such as accessibility and the ability to involve anyone who wishes to participate in an art project. The cost involved is very low and some art assignments can be completed with just a photograph and a few words written. At the same time the format is not as serious and is a relaxed approach.

I really like ESW and I will focus on analysing it in the next sections. I love what ESW does for artists, the model is worth fostering, I know it’s difficult to build a platform like this because he is offline and it costs a lot, but I think it’s really very rewarding.

• Relating

I understand that the journal 《International Review of Open and Distributed Learning Research 》focuses on empirical research in open educational resources. While most of the research is on MOOCs, which are still prevalent in higher education and which I used at undergraduate level, I really feel that the results are mediocre; MOOCs do not do much to provide quality higher education learning opportunities for students at post-secondary level, and at the same time many institutions are finding that MOOCs are not an innovative solution for online education. However, there is still a place for them in higher education.

The art assignment I can associate with an art project I’ve followed (unfortunately it doesn’t have a video in English, but I’ll still put the link below). A young man in China has transformed a four square metre warehouse and renovated it to look like an art gallery. There is a framed whiteboard in this ‘gallery’ where everyone can come and create, and everyone can come and see what others have left on the whiteboard. This is a novel experiment, in a way similar to the practice of art assignment, in that it is also low-barrier, low-cost, entertaining and invites anyone who wants to participate in art to do so.

http://【《如何28岁当上美术馆馆长》-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/oQy15Ma

I can think of a lot about ESW, and there are actually some studios for artists in China, but these are not charitable organisations like ESW, they are still essentially commercial in nature. For example, the 798 art community in China and the Songzhuang painter’s village in Beijing. Although these communities provide some free help to young artists, the artists still have to create works that can be sold in order to make a living, and this is likely to result in a lack of artistic freedom; ESW not only provides a lot of help to artists, but also makes many attempts at art education, including working with two primary schools in the neighbourhood to provide free art education to children. This kind of educational practice for children is not the kind of thing I have seen, like teaching painting techniques or taking children to museums and galleries, but actually involving children in the creation of art (which may not be creative, of course), really looking at the world and learning about art itself rather than art forms.

• Reasoning

The popularity of OER is predictable, including MOOCs, which are seen as a trend in digital learning in higher education. Much of this is due to the breadth of OERs and the availability of data. MOOCs, for example, provide many important datasets for researchers to explore the use of data to enhance their understanding of learning. As well as the emergence of coronavirus in 2020, online courses have gone a long way to easing the pressure on teaching and learning. However, there are also problems with OER. We all know that educational resources are not free, especially in higher education, where students pay an expensive tuition fee when they enter university, so why should students still pay high tuition fees if everything they get to learn is free?OER also dissolves the position of the teacher, which in one respect seems to be a good thing. On the other hand, although breaking the channel of knowledge instilled by teachers, it will also create new barriers to knowledge, especially in areas where educational resources are underdeveloped. The educational resources that people in these underdeveloped areas receive from OER are likely to be defined by academics in developed areas, as these underdeveloped areas are not involved in the construction of OER.

As for Art Assignment, it is a good attempt to be entertaining and open-ended so that everyone can participate, but it is notable for its lack of academic aspect. It is true that it is not necessary for everyone to receive a professional art education, but this format predetermines that if an amateur wants to make some professional attempts at art, it is not enough to rely on art assignments alone, perhaps in combination with OER to obtain some art resources or to receive some more professional art education.

The ESW model (I hope I can call it that) is likely to be the future of artist studios, and it may well be the best example of art education radiating from charities to local towns. It is completely close to an ideal state of art community. If there is a defect, I think his investment cost is too high, and it is unrealistic to develop an art institution of this scale in many small and medium-sized towns.

• Reconstructing

Now I have to solve the Problem Scenario for Sprint 2.

I was confused by the problem scenario “I should avoid making assumptions about the learners who will use the toolkit”, but there is no educational resource that can be used without analyzing the audience, as no educational model can be suitable for everyone. Using some of the OERs I saw earlier, the MOOCs are aimed at higher education learners, and the ESW education programmes are also aimed at primary school students, beginners in the arts and art practitioners. The participants (audience) in art assignments are also supposed to be people who wish to participate in art projects. So I can’t do that without making any assumptions to build my OER, and the only online network that can make it possible for everyone to learn something is probably goole.

We can also avoid this point, so I turn the question into if there is already a profile of the learner, how do I integrate my limited resources to build the OER?

My idea is that if my money is limited, then what can I do, first of all, is to draw on the resources that I should have. I am a current postgraduate student at Edinburgh College of Art and I should know some of my classmates who are also studying at the College of Art and who most probably come from different art disciplines, such as graphic design, landscape design, architectural disciplines, film studies, etc. They would be able to offer something that they have learned or could share the results of. We can start by building an on-campus arts network. Of course we wouldn’t mind any organisations or anyone from outside the school joining.

Perhaps we will initially have a small organisation, and although OER is online, I still hope he will have some offline activities. For example, sharing sessions where each student studying art can share their ideas or projects they are working on, which will bring more inspiration to each other. Online we can publish blogs, upload our work and invite professors from the school to join us, hold thematic projects and use any art form to express the theme (similar to an art assignment but not exactly the same).

I certainly want our organization to be as good as it can be, but it is important that we need some financial support. I would like our organisation to be non-commercial, like ESW, but I’m not sure if student arts organisations can get sponsorship from the city. So maybe I need to contact some brands and ask them if they would be willing to offer to sponsor our arts organisation and in return I would be willing to give them a certain amount of exposure in the website layout and put the brand’s name in the sponsor.

Then the next step, when our student art institution has a little bit of influence, maybe we can do the same art project at Glasgow School of Art, which I know also has a lot of brilliant students, and maybe they have the idea of building an art school student OER as well.

This is an OER built by art students, both for all art students and for those who want to learn about the artistic ideas of today’s young students.

Sprint 2: Open Toolkits&Problem Scenario / Nuanxin Zhang / Contemporary Art & Open Learning (2022-2023)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0