From the analysis of the interview under sociocultural perspective, several
issues, that were enlightening students’ attitude towards the subject of
perspective drawing, were identified. However, for practical reasons (limited
time) the range of the research question should be further limited. After
reporting and discussing the results with the students we decided to select and
focus only on one issue.
Your attitude
towards the subject of perspective drawing might be influenced by:
·
Previous knowledge,
previous drawing lessons, foundation courses, experience from other courses,
etc.
·
What you hear from
your family, your friends, from what you perceive to be a successful interior
designer, etc
·
The way we work in
class, the subject material, the available time you have, the help I provide
you, etc
·
The use of specific
tools and techniques that are probably outmoded and different from your
interests and experiences
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In every stage of the research, biases might have occurred. Even, the
way, I interpreted the data according to my judgment and made the above
summary, could affect students’ judgment and guided them towards a desirable
direction.
|
Summarizing (and simplifying) the results in order to present them to
students for discussion
|
Finally, we decided to focus on the last issue and on the fact that the
course of perspective drawing was criticized by them as outmoded, separated
from everyday experience of young people and restricted to a few old-fashioned
tools. Moreover, the technique of perspective drawings was characterized as
‘poor’ and not impressive. It seemed that for the students, the ends of the
learning have no significant value and due to this, their interest and
motivation was low.
So the research question was further defined by the following statement:
Increase student’s interest and motivation for
experimentation by encouraging them to enrich the subject with alternative
tools and techniques
Stage B: Designing and participating in an activity in
order to investigate the above statement:
The focus of the learning activity was to abolish many of the typical
restrictions of the course, in order to embrace new tools and techniques, encourage
students to bring in class those practices that are inspired by their youth
culture, probably experiment with several tools of information and
communication technology, enrich institutional knowledge with aspects of
student’s everyday knowledge.
Many details of the learning activity (theme, schedule, etc) were delineated
in collaboration with the students. The project was named ‘Blade Runner’ since
it was inspired by the atmosphere of the movie.
Students had to work individually at their homes, since the institution
did not provide any alternative equipment (computers, photographic machines, internet
connection etc) apart from the typical (drawing tables, pencils, rulers, etc). However,
it was agreed each student to select and ‘donate’ one art-work in order a
bigger collective project to be created.
Stage C: Assessing the activity in relation to the research statement:
The activity could not be observed and assessed as it happened, since students
worked mostly at their homes and the available time of the course (4 hour/week)
was extremely limited. Consequently, the assessment of the activity could alternatively
focus on the learning outcomes and/or on student’s own opinion.
Finally, it was decided to give anonymous questionnaires (given to each
individual) that would attempt to assess the degree of student’s
experimentation with alternative tools and techniques and the impact on their
creativity and originality. The questionnaire was asking students to self
assess and grade:
- the originality both of the collective and individual art work,
- the degree of experimentation with alternative tools and techniques
- their own creativity
- the impact of the activity on the understanding of the overall course
The questionnaire, apart from the individual opinion, was also aspiring
to capture and represent the collective meaning. For this, it was conceived a colorful,
answer scale that was based on color theory, and on the nature of the colors to
get mixed together, providing a new/ unique color.
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| By mixing the colors of individual answers, a unique color is created (the collective ‘judgment’) |
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