Week 8, Fall 2019

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Guest Blogger

Laura T. González

Anthropology

Using Arts-based Assignments Online

I’ve been teaching anthropology online for literally 20 years. But I never considered using art in my online assignments until I attended a FLEX presentation by my colleague, Dr. Laura Pecenco.

As you may know, Laura runs an arts-in-corrections program at Donovan Correctional Facility east of Otay Mesa. During the presentation, we talked about the benefits of using arts based assignments, including gaining clarity on the important issues, problem solving, developing tolerance and respect, and having a deeper impact on memory. This struck me as absolutely true – I have a crystal clear memory of building an ancient Egyptian pyramid out of sugar cubes in my 7^th grade Ancient History class.

Now my students can opt to express their learning through either an essay or a comic panel to illustrate and comment on the Scopes Trial.

Students who choose to complete an assignment about identity can draw or make a collage using online images of the five things that they would take to a foreign island in order to symbolically represent themselves to the native people there. They accompany the images with explanations of how each item represents them.

 What I love about allowing students the choice of completing an arts-based assignment (whether partially or fully) is that they are still engaging with the topic while allowing their creative confidence to shine. In many ways, these are more detailed and nuanced than text-only responses. Plus, I really look forward to reading them, something I can’t always say when I’m in the third hour of grading all-text essays. Arts-based-assignments have been a great addition to my online courses.

Resources & Links

Top 100 Tools for Higher Education 

Kathy Schrock's infographic on Apps to support Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

I was just at a conference where the plenary speaker had us map out our engagement with technology and the web as Digital Residents and Digital Visitors. It was interesting to examine what I use institutionally vs. personally as well.

Did you notice the SDCCD Open Educational Resources shell in Canvas?  

• If you are teaching this fall, you have been automatically enrolled in the shell as “teacher” and should have received a Canvas invitation.  
• To participate, please accept the invitation.  
• You will then see the shell on your Canvas dashboard.  
• The shell includes OER sites as well as the ability for participants to upload your own OER to share.   
• If you did not receive an invitation, please send an email to Trenton Tidwell at ttidwell@sdccd.edu and he will gladly enroll you.
• If you do not want to participate but want to browse around, you may click on this link to view the site:  https://sdccd.instructure.com/courses/2372966 (you will need to login to Canvas).

To Do

Please take a moment to complete the Unicheck (anti-plagiarism software) survey by October 11. So far funding is only secured through this fall. Quantitative survey responses will help move us move foward to secure future funding. Link: Unicheck Survey.

There is limited space for the SDCCD Distance Learning Summit on Friday, October 18. Register here: Distance Learning Summit Registration.

Can-innovate is the following Friday, October 25 and not to be missed! View the full program and register here: Can-innovate 2019 Registration. Remember Miramar's Viewing Room is H-108.