Discussion Board Assignments: The Fine and Applied Arts

Beginning in the spring of 2000, I required students in the IDST 2310 Fine and Applied Arts in Civilization to complete several postings in their WEBCT bulletin board area. I designed the posting assignments either to stimulate discussion in class and provoke analysis of central concepts, as in the Greek aesthetics and Art as Propaganda assignments, or to require synthesize of diverse materials or application of materials from a discipline or group of disciplines to another discipline (reasoning by analogy), as in the "Journal of a Spelunker," Cave art, "Analyze This: A Meeting Between Freud, Jung, and Rilke," "A Poetic Journey Through the Elements of Art," and Pooh's Lesson on Art assignments. The results of the fall 1999 surveys and my analysis of student work prompted me to seek additional ways to incorporate units in which students could apply the concepts we discussed in class.

In the course surveys for spring and fall 2000, students often remarked that the assignments were time consuming and sometimes inconventient, especially when the network failed, as often happened in the wake of heavy Napster use on our campus in the fall 2000. However, most students who responded to the surveys also remarked that the web postings enabled them to think more deeply about a subject, to process material in a way they had not done to date, and generally to have a deeper learning experience in the class. One of the most successful assignments was "Pooh's Lesson on Art." Students had explored Taoism prior to completing this unit, and were required to predict through a role-playing situation what forms Taoist lanscape art might take. Students were, by and large, very successful in this endeavor, and excited to learn that they were, in fact, able to reason by analogy from one discipline to another. Another of my favorite assignments was the "Analyze This" assignment; this assignment required students to apply either Freudian and Jungian psychology to the journals of Rilke. Again, some students did an excellent job of picking out the psychological aspects of Rilke's journal. This assignment was completed as part of their preparation for producing their own self-portraits.

More difficult was the "Poetic Journey Through the Elements of Art" assignment, in which students were required to analyze a painting and then write a poem whose meter and language captured the same affect.