Goals
Instructional Goals & the Learning Experience
The Exquisite Learning collaborative activity is inspired by the "exquisite corpses" accidental activity game invented by the Surrealists. Rather than the unconscious and/or spontaneous activity of the surrealists, we use it as a way to consciously build the self within a collaborative context.
A group of users, within a real-time online artboard, will be able to "construct" a group self by sequentially adding to the image. Once the "group self" exists, the group will collaborate to understand the visual clues of how a) the individual creator's emotions affect the choices made and b) how the parts work together to impact the whole self. One aspect of the tool will be to provide an environment to use visual means to investigate the various activities of the brain: creativity, thinking and emotions.
The "thinking tools" in the lab space will ideally include a 2D artspace, 3D artspace (in a later version), palettes for color, line, texture, form, lighting, and a functionality to import or paste in other artwork.
The instructional goals are two-fold: in the first aspect, the user will visualize their thinking & creative processes alongside an awareness of their emotions in the process. In visualizing themselves, they will be enabled to create their intellectual, creative, and emotional selves and in collaboration with others, explore & understand themselves within the community and the other members of the community. A second goal is to develop a tool that will allow further research studies related to the visualization and understanding of art, creativity, thinking and various aspects of the interrelationship of thinking, emotion, and the self within the learning process.
The primary activity will be creating self-portraits - visual or written, either as individual "journals" or as collaborative projects. Social and emotional skills of self-awareness and empathy will be enhanced through activities of expression, reflection, and reasoning. Analytical thinking and creative skills will be enhanced in an environment that will foster risking taking on both the intellectual and emotional levels.
Activities are centered on a fully interactive, real-time, collaborative art board in which students can either upload or create their own images. The art and writing boards (the expression boards) will allow both private, individual work and real-time, collaborative interactions. Students can work together to modify or create an original image. In the process, students will keep a private reflection journal in a text box and communicate in a chat box - discussing the processes and ideas they think about and use in the creating their portraits. The expression spaces provide students the opportunity to think and reflect about their visual pieces and in the process, learn to understand and communicate with others on deep levels.
Click on the illustration below to see a possible path through the learning activity:
Skills
& concepts that will be learned:
While creativity
is encouraged, there is also a significant component of reflection - why
an image (sound, word, geometry, emotion) was selected; how it fits or
extends the whole; what it might signify…
Students will develop social skills, interpersonal intelligence, as well as self-awareness. There will be an "individual art studio" and a "collaborative art studio." In the individual studio, we emphasize self-awareness (i.e. users can upload pictures, drawings, photos, images, favorite music) and have their own journal writing and reflection accompanying the media the students upload. Cognitive and Social/Emotional skills will be developed through individual exploration and through social interaction and communication in group activities and reflections. Although the "expression space" is an open environment, the students will be given "inspirational prompts" designed to encourage exploration and learning within a context, rather than allowing a completely free activity. These prompt phrases will open the activity and be implemented in two ways. The first method is random generation when the student enters the space. A second method will allow a teacher to generate phrases in order to have more control within a classroom setting.
The significant instructional design challenge that we present is how to balance an open, process oriented environment with the goal of providing a pedagogically meaningful learning experience.
Skills that will be developed:
- Critical thinking skills
- Aesthetic thinking skills
- Emotional intelligence (especially empathy, self awareness)
- Logical reasoning
- Analytical skills
- Writing skills
- Verbal communication
- Emotional communication & understanding
- Development of personality
- Visual and motor skills
- Elements of psychology
- Integrating "seeing" with thought
- Creativity
- Self expression
- Collaborative skills
- Cultural & interpersonal awareness
The target student is at the secondary level (7-12) for this version.
Technology:
Although we will not be using, the link to Groupboard gives an idea about
the technologies we are investigating. http://www.groupboard.com/javascript/designer.html.
Last updated: December 7, 2002