Intellectual Output 1: Gathering of Digital Tools for Art Making in Art Education (Work Packages 1 & 2)
Work Package 1: Inventory and Classification of Digital Tools for Art Making in Art Education
As of time of the project application in October 2020, universities across the EU territory were teaching online again, as they had entered their second COVID-19 semester. Schools were still open, yet blended learning was practiced in many schools with students unable to attend because of the pandemic situation. Therefore, the three main target groups of the DIDAE project, (1) higher education faculty in art education departments offering teachers’ training programs, (2) art students, who are student teachers as part of their curricular requirements, and (3) art teachers in schools were in dire need of an easily accessible overview and collection of the digital tools readily available for art making.
In particular, there was and will be for the foreseeable future a strong need for these target groups to understand which digital tools are particularly suited to further social inclusivity and which tools are helpful to counteract the existing digital inequity resulting from poverty and economic disadvantages in societies across the EU territories. The intellectual output of a new inventory of digital tools for making art will include, amongst others, digital tools for drawing, painting, sculpting, animation, augmented reality, video, photography, gaming and game development, graphic design, photo editing and photo manipulation.
This inventory does not exist yet and will be useful to all the target groups including HE art education faculty, art education students who need to gain experience as student teachers as part of their curricula, art teachers, and, of course, pupils in secondary schools. It will enable the target groups to benefit from the transnationally consolidated knowledge on digital tools from the participating organizations thus saving time and trouble in identifying the digital tools needed. Furthermore, such an inventory of digital tools for art making will expand the palette of tools available for online art teaching across the EU territories. In addition, in future times, hopefully after the pandemic, such an inventory of digital tools for art making will aid HE faculty in art education and art teachers to provide their students with digital creative skills and competencies.
Work package 2: Instructions and Classroom Assignments for Digital Tools in Art Education
The work package builds on the results of work package 1 ‘Inventory and Classification of Digital Tools for Art Making in Art Education’. The analysis of needs shows that the target groups HE art educators, art education students, and art teachers are not only in need of an overview of digital tools readily available and easy to use for digital art making, but that they also need step-by-step easily to follow instructions or instruction manual on how to use these tools and creative assignments for the digital classroom.
While these instruction manuals may be text-based, the expectation is that they will much more likely result in video manuals to be used by HE educators, advanced students studying to become teachers as well as secondary school teachers and their pupils. The element of innovation in this output is that tools, instructions, and assignments will be brought together and linked with each other.
The intellectual output of both work packages will be an inventory of digital tools for art making and a collection of easy-to-follow step-by step instructions how to use these digital tools. The instructions will make these tools accessible to HE art educators and art teachers in general. Furthermore, the output is a collection of creative assignments for the expanding digital classroom. The expected impact is list of digital tools for artistic practice that has been probed and tested by the partners and better use of these digital tools for art making and a much wider variety of creative classroom assignments.
Intellectual Output 2 Digital Didactics and the Potential of the Body in Art Education (Work Package 3)
Loss of creative curiosity and experimentation due to remote teaching and working with digital tools as well as the ever-present digital fatigue are major challenges for HE art educators and school teachers. The analysis of needs highlights that the target groups need more tools and knowledge when it comes to not losing the potential of the physical body in art education.
Connecting the digital interface to embodied and performative ways of working is therefore crucial to innovative and future-oriented digital didactics in art education. The output is a repertoire of embodied practices that can easily be taught and incorporated into online art teaching. The expected impact is a better combination of digital tools for art making and embodied practices. Improved alignment of the dimensions of digitality and corporeality will have great impact as it will keep art education lively and productive.
Intellectual Output 3: Online Platform Digital Didactics in Art Education DIDAE (Work Package 4)
The output of work package 4 will be the Online Platform ‘Digital Didactics in Art Education DIDAE’. This work package builds on the first three work packages and brings together the intellectual output and content generated.
The partners will develop a multilingual and transnational online platform which will contain the following four elements: Firstly, the survey of digital tools systematically classified according to the criteria open access; data economy; clear user interface; low-threshold usability; data protection; online stability; running on different platforms and end devices (desktop, tablet, phone etc); community-based exchange and peer-to-peer learning among users; creative expression. Secondly, easy-to-follow instructions how to use these digital tools in the languages English, German, Hungarian, and Dutch and picture-based instructions. Thirdly, creative assignments for making art using the collection of digital tools. Fourthly, the online platform will provide assignments for embodied practices and bodily performances in the languages English, German, Hungarian, and Dutch as well as picture-based instructions. Age-adequacy and degree of difficulty will be explained.
The Online Platform ‘Digital Didactics in Art Education DIDAE’ will have a clear interface and easy navigation. The DIDAE platform will be inclusive as it will be designed according to the 2016 EU guideline on Web Accessibility which has been adopted as Austrian Act on Web Accessibility in 2020.
The analysis of needs shows that such online platform offering a survey of digital tools according to transparent criteria, easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions how to use such tools, and creative assignments is currently missing and therefore very much wished for by HE art educators and art teachers alike as it would save them time and nerves and make online art teaching much easier for them and much more creative for their students and pupils.
We expect that the DIDEA platform will become a go-to hub for higher education arts faculty as well as secondary school teachers for identifying level-appropriate digital tools and creative assignments. Moreover, it may safely be assumed that beyond teacher education and school education the materials may be of interest to higher arts education institutions in general for the teaching of artistic practice. In addition, the materials gathered on the platform will be useful for post-pandemic times in using digital but also integrated into the physical classroom in post-pandemic futures. In addition, this will help tackling a specific skills gap by supporting the development of HE faculty’s and teachers’ digital didactic competences. The primary target groups for the DIDAE digital platform are instructors in higher education and teachers in secondary schools teaching art making/artistic practice. It is expected that this will significantly enhance online teaching and thus benefit students in higher education and pupils in schools as well. In addition, we hope that will have the added value of a positive impact on families and care givers tasked with home schooling.