Unit Plan: Fine Art Professional Practices
Lesson Plan
Using multimedia tools, students at the end of this unit will have a professional artist statement personalized to their practice.
Target audience: Third and Fourth year BFA students studying Fine Art.
Tools used: Google Drive, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat
Year: 2021
Overview
This artifact from my EMDT program is a lesson plan instructing students on how to create a breadth artist statement. Learners in my fictional Professional Practices class have a history of creating art and sharing their thoughts in a college critique setting, but may lack the experience of translating those thoughts into a cohesive written format. Although I am not an instructor now, creating this lesson plan, and the entire unit plan, allowed me to flex the instructional design knowledge that I gained over the term. This lesson plan allowed me to design effective teaching strategies for skill development using scholarly research as the foundation.
EMDT Program Learning Goal(s):
Students will evaluate and create instructional media and technology to support teaching and learning.
Students will analyze and evaluate effective teaching strategies in the design and development of curricula.
Students will incorporate and analyze higher order thinking skills in the design of assessments
Instructional Goal of the Artifact: Design effective teaching strategies for skill development in a Fine Arts class using scholarly research as the foundation.
Process
With the entire unit plan, I decided to use backward design to help guide my choice of assessments, activities, and materials. Wiggins (2003) shares that curriculum should be inferred from the results sought. I utilized backward design to help organize my overall learning objectives and create the foundation for the lesson. Since this lesson plan is focused on practical skill development and knowledge, I began with my desired results and created learning objectives to help guide the activities.
Curriculum Map and Learning Goals
With the actual course content, I gave students the flexibility to choose their path of creation. In a previous course, I created an infographic laying out four paths to guide the creation of an artist statement. This asset allows students the flexibility to work with a path that best fits their own needs and goals. I also included a rubric for assessment; however, the actual assessing of the statement will be in a future lesson plan. This is to allow a space for feedback and critique before a final grade is presented. Feedback is important for skill building according to Dirksen (2016). A variety of feedback should be utilized, and the frequency should be often enough to allow students to adjust the draft in real-time.
Final Unit Plan
One other thought to mention about the design of this lesson plan. I intentionally included my own personal breadth artist statement as a reference source to help create an environment of trust. Sharing your thoughts as an artist is hard. The classroom space should be a judgement free zone where students are comfortable enough to share their thoughts. This occurs through relationship building and trust with peers and instructors. If I can’t share my own work with students, how do I expect them to share theirs with me?
Results and Takeaways
In this unit plan, I successfully accomplish two of the EMDT program’s learning outcomes. First, I evaluated and created instructional media and technology to support teaching and learning. Each lesson plan incorporates multimedia objects designed and chosen to best support the population I will be working with in the future. Second, I analyzed and evaluated effective teaching strategies in the design and development of curricula. Like mentioned above, I incorporated backward design in my development of this unit plan.
References
Dirksen, J. (2016). Design for how people learn (2nd ed.). New Riders.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Pearson.
