Facilitating Collaboration in a Flipped Digital Art Classroom

Underachievement in prerequisite Art 112: Digital Art courses at Leeward Community College slows matriculation through digital media programs. A wide variety of students enroll in these classes for both elective and prerequisite credit, personal and professional experience. Limited class time, access to Adobe Creative Cloud software, and work time outside class add challenges to learning graphics, especially in light of the high-level thinking skills required by the course. To successfully complete the class, students must integrate conceptual knowledge with compositional, creative, and communication techniques to make authentic works of art.

Existing research suggests mixing social learning theories and strategies to increase academic and behavioral outcomes and boost creativity in technical fields of study. The purpose of this instructional design project was to create a module to facilitate collaboration in a flipped-curriculum Art 112: Digital Art course at Leeward Community College. The researcher created a Google Sites module to guide learners through the art-based concepts and skills necessary to work as a design team in creating an advertisement for a client using Adobe Photoshop software. Students will also use with Laulima Learning Management System (LMS), Google Docs, and Google Drive to collaborate, communicate, and submit classroom artifacts. The designer used backward design to create and iterate module content from existing student learning outcomes (SLOs).

This session will reveal instructional design decisions, iterative evolution, and final reflection.