THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2023/2024

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : Art

Undergraduate Course: Contemporary Art & Open Learning (ARTX10064)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis School of Art course will introduce you to some of the most inspiring D-I-T (do-it-together) and P2P (peer-to-peer) art programmes, residencies and virtual schools that artists have created this century. It will empower you to organise and share your own practices of artistic learning with your peers and in public art institutions. It will enable you to engage with and practice art-as-education / education-as-art in an open and accessible way. You will learn how to build trust and support communities of practice that extend beyond the art school.
Course description This School of Art course will enable you to make your own contribution to opening access to and widening participation in artistic learning; it will inspire your to support your peers by codifying and sharing your practice.

Art education today is porous and ubiquitous: it exists in a wide variety of formal and informal arts contexts and in can be found in many different cultures and societies. It takes many diverse organisational forms, traversing virtual communities, small artist-led initiatives, international biennials, art academies and artistic practices.

The course combines and practises a range of peer-based learning theories and theories of knowledge production. You will consider how to extend online open access into the types of 'Third Places' (Soja, 1996) frequently produced by artists (galleries, schools, studios, workshops, public sites....) by learning how to practise paragogics, a set of learning principles that offer a flexible framework for peer learning and knowledge production. The course is heavily scaffolded to begin. It slowly removes this scaffold to enable peer-support for each other's learning, then, finally, requires you to lead teaching and feedback.

The course is split into three parts:

Part I: The Art of the Art Assignment

The first series of workshops introduce you to D-I-T (do-it-together) and P2P (peer-to-peer) methods of artistic practice through responding to weekly art assignments. The assignments are short and simple to engage with. Your work for them forms the basis of critical discussion (critiques) each week on art-as-education and education-as-art. These critiques will take place in your small peer-support group, within which you will remain for the duration of the course.

The rationale and context of each assignment is supported by a OER (open educational resource). The OER includes flipped lectures recorded in advance of the workshops which can be viewed online and supporting materials which scaffold your practice and your role as a supportive peer in crits. The OER is also a public site to which you will upload your work for each assignment. The OER enables the workshop time to focus on reviewing and setting live art assignments.

At the end of Part I: you will have been given formative feedback by, and given formative feedback on, the contributions of each member of your small peer-support group.

Part II: Players: Public Workshop

Work Part II centres around a workshop led by the School of Art's Art & Learning Research Group (www.eca.ed.ac.uk/research/art-learning). This will normally be run in collaboration with partner art institution so that it can be open to invited artists and the wider public.

The workshop is metacognitive: taking part in it will teach you how to devise and run your own workshops. You will witness and experience what does, and does not, work in different learning environments and gain a sense of how different learners respond to artistic and educational stimuli.

Part III: Contemporary Art & Open Learning Event

The final part of the course supports you to run your own workshop as part of an art and learning event held in public towards the end of this course.

Your peer-group and tutor will support you to develop your personal project and will, additionally, form part of your audience during the event. Your peers will also take part in reviewing and formatively feeding back on your contribution to this event.

Equally, you will support your peer-group to develop their personal projects and will, additionally, form their audience. You will also take part in reviewing and formatively feeding back on their contribution to the course's closing event.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements This course is only available for students on the MA Contemporary Art Theory programme.
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2023/24, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  50
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 4, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22, External Visit Hours 3, Online Activities 8, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 157 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Feedback You will receive verbal formative feedback from your tutors and peers every time the cohort meets ('workshops'), written formative feedback from peers mid-semester/Part I and end-of-semester/Part III via the VLE.

Summative written feedback on each Learning Outcome with cooresponding grades will be given by your tutor only once the course has completed.

Please note that peer-led formative feedback is a key component of this course's curriculum design. The course requires (and assesses) full-participation in workshops. Each session takes the form of a workshop that enables you to collectively reflect upon and develop the work you have produced over the previous week (learning-to-learn).
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. creatively respond to artistic assignments and provide constructive feedback that supports peer learning
  2. research, design, run and document a workshop that teaches an aspect of your practice
  3. critically reflect upon what you have learned by researching, designing, running and documenting your workshop
Reading List
The resource list will be @Resource Lists (Talis Aspire). The following is indicative key reading:

Corneli, J., C. J. Danoff, P. Ricaurte, C. Pierce and L. S. Macdonald (2016). The Peeragogy Handbook. peeragogy.org, PubDomEd and Pierce Press.

eds. Petrovich, D. W., R. (2012). Draw it with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment, Paper Monument.

Madoff, S. H. (2009). Art School: (Propositions for the 21st Century), MIT Press.

Thorne, S. (2017). School: A Recent History of Self-Organized Art Education. Berlin, Sternberg Press.

Wardrop, A. W., Deborah (eds). (2014). The Para-Academic Handbook: A Toolkit For Making-Learning-Creating-Acting. Bristol, England, HammerOn Press.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Attributes map onto SCQF Level 10:

CHARACTERISTIC 1: KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
You will demonstrate / work with:
A critical understanding of the principal theories, concepts and principles of artistic and peer-led education.
A knowledge and understanding in the specialist practices of art education / educational turn in art, some of which is informed by, or at the forefront of peer-led education.
Knowledge and understanding of the ways in which art education is being developed, including a range of peer-led research methods.

CHARACTERISTIC 2: PRACTICE: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND UNDERSTANDING
Apply knowledge, skills and understanding:
In using a wide range of peer-led educational skills, techniques, practices associated with contemporary art.
In using a few peer-led educational skills, techniques, practices and/or materials that are at the forefront of contemporary art practice/theory.
In running a your own learning programme, and in identifying and implementing relevant outcomes.
Practise in a range of professional level contexts that include a degree of unpredictability.

CHARACTERISTIC 3: COGNITIVE SKILLS
Critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse educational problems and issues.
Offer artistic insights, interpretations and solutions to problems and issues.
Demonstrate artistic originality and creativity in dealing with the above issues.
Critically review and consolidate knowledge, skills, practices and thinking in peer-led artistic education.

CHARACTERISTIC 4: COMMUNICATION, ICT AND NUMERACY SKILLS
Use a wide range of routine skills and some advanced and specialised skills in support of established practices in artistic education
Present and convey your work, formally and informally, to informed audiences (your peers).
Communicate and collaborate with peers and members of the public (your audience) on a professional level.

CHARACTERISTIC 5: AUTONOMY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND WORKING WITH OTHERS
Exercise autonomy and initiative in your learning and organisational activities.
Exercise significant responsibility for the learning of others and for a range of related learning resources.
Practise in ways that show awareness of own and others roles and responsibilities as learners and teachers.
Work, under the guidance of your tutors, in a peer relationship with specialist artistic practitioners.
Work with your peers and members of the public (audience) to bring about change, development and new practices of art education.
Manage complex ethical and professional issues in accordance with current Edinburgh College of Art guidelines.
Recognise the limits of these codes and seek guidance from tutors where appropriate.
KeywordsLearning,Education,Pedagogy,Paragogy,Andragogy,Heutagogy,Contemporary Art,Art,Art Practice,OER
Contacts
Course organiserProf Neil Mulholland
Tel: (0131 6)51 5881
Email: n.mulholland@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Hannah Morrison
Tel: (0131 6)51 5763
Email: Hannah.PM@ed.ac.uk
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