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Letter from the Advisor - Summer 2020

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2020 19:18:24 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - Summer 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/01/2020 - 13:18

Beth Osnes

Communicating Serious Content in Fun Online Forms

One of my great pleasures that is part of my research and creative work is working with a group of �鶹ӰԺ middle and high school girls known as Young Women’s Voices for Climate. We meet weekly and use arts-based methods for climate action and vocal empowerment through SPEAK, which I co-founded with Chelsea Hackett.

Along with CU students Lianna Nixon, Jeneé LeBlanc, and Sarah Fahmy, we worked together to create an online gallery exhibit entitled Recipes for Change, which was originally designed to be displayed at the �鶹ӰԺ Public Library Canyon Gallery in May 2020, now moved to an online platform due to the library closure because of the pandemic. Don’t forget to check out the music video of them as rapping fruits and vegetables at the end!

As the Faculty Advisor for ASSETT, I share this example of an online gallery to help spark ways you might guide students in creating an online platform for whatever you are teaching. BuffsCreate could be used as a platform for this type of a project. We used this exhibit to share arts-based approaches focused on food to help reverse global warming. It may seem a bit frivolous when perusing the exhibit, but this online platform is being used to creatively communicate a solution that can ensure our survivability as a species.

By partnering with Project Drawdown, we are focusing on top climate solutions. The term “drawdown” refers to “the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline (The Drawdown Review, page 2).” According to Drawdown’s 2020 revised list of the top solutions for reversing global warming, Reduced Food Waste is the #1 solution and a Plant-Rich Diet is #3. (For the scenario that seeks to reach drawdown in 2060, see The Drawdown Review, page 86, available for free download at https://drawdown.org). In scenario number two (The Drawdown Review, page 88) in which projections of top solutions are based on achieving drawdown by the mid-2040s, Reduce Food Waste is #3 and Plant-Rich Diets is #4. By adding the total CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gases reduced and/or sequestered by these two solutions--according to either scenario-- focusing on food is clearly the number one solution for reversing global warming!

Online platforms that feature fun and creative communication strategies can effectively communicate important content. I wish all of you and yours good health and a vibrant adjustment to whatever integration of online learning we employ in the future.

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Supporting Google Maps to Chronicle Creative Communications about Climate

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 20:55:03 +0000

Supporting Google Maps to Chronicle Creative Communications about Climate Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/07/2017 - 14:55

Does green suit your city? Beth Osnes and Tara Riedl hopes it does! In Spring 2017, Student Fellow Tara Riedl worked with Dr. Beth Osnes (Assistant Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Theatre and Dance) to support a participatory project for her course, called “Green Suits Your City.” Students dress in a quirky, green suit and take photos of themselves across the nation, chronicling their experiences via a collaborative Google map. This project was meant to be a conversation starter, as well as an embodiment of awareness to issues around climate change.

Dr. Osnes is co-founder of “Inside the Greenhouse,” an endowed initiative on the CU campus that promotes events and discussion about climate change. She teaches “Creative Climate Communication” (CCC), which is the second of a two course series. Through CCC, Beth encourages students to express stories about climate in a variety of ways, so the message about climate change is communicated to as many different people as possible. She found that many of her students were Environmental Studies majors that brought a lot of background knowledge to the class. Her hopes were that these students would be able to communicate that knowledge in a unique, and effective way.

Tara helped students taking CCC use Google map for Green Suits Your City, as well as Facebook Live for the comedy night. She provided both in and out of class support, teaching students how to use different features of the technology to help them complete their class assignments. When asked about the Teaching Technology Assistance Program, Dr. Osnes said, “In general I felt very well cared for, the larger staff beyond just you [Student Fellow Tara Riedl] was so attentive and really listened to the project we were trying to do and were really responsive.”

This partnership between a faculty member and Student Fellow is an example of the kinds of services that are provided with the Teaching Technology Assistance Program, which started in the Fall of 2016 as a new initiative. This program helps students and faculty think about technology in new ways, to help improve teaching and learning in the College of Arts & Sciences. If you’re interested in having a Student Fellow help implement a technology into your class, please contact ASSETT.

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UROP Sponsors New Opportunity for Academic Departments

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 17:25:34 +0000

UROP Sponsors New Opportunity for Academic Departments Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/10/2017 - 10:25

By Joan Gabriele and Tim O’Neil

What is research like in the arts and humanities? That’s a question students in several CU programs and departments will soon be able to answer thanks to new initiatives in Jewish Studies, Theatre and Dance, and English, which are supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)’s new Department Grants. With funding generously provided by the College of Arts and Sciences this year, UROP initially offered these new awards to arts and humanities departments to kick start the development of cultures supportive of undergraduate research, scholarly and creative work. Department Grants are now available to any department/program working to help majors understand scholarship in their field and provide opportunities for students to take ownership of their education.

This year, Department Grant recipients will host social events for faculty to share their work with students and initiate collaborations. Because Jewish Studies is interdisciplinary, faculty will come from several departments. English will host discussions with faculty on archival resources and material culture as well as how creative writers produce their work. Both will include field trips. Theatre and Dance will also revise their website to highlight opportunities for undergraduate engagement.

Jewish Studies students will delve into Holocaust denial literature and Jewish renewal manuscripts in Norlin library, working with the Archive Project Director and Chief Archivist. Faculty in Theatre and Dance will integrate research into the curriculum of existing courses. And English students will visit Professor Lori Emerson’s Media Archaeology Lab and Professor Adam Bradley’s Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture.

Students may emerge from these experiences with new ideas for career paths, their own independent projects (including honors theses), a desire to work in the archives, or assisting a professor with their research or creative work. Grant recipients will share their experiences at a symposium in Fall 2017 which will be open to all faculty. In anticipation of the upcoming grant deadline of February 17th, interested departments can get more information at http://www.colorado.edu/suep/urop/faculty

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BFA Theatre and Dance Applicants Submit Materials through DocuSign

Anonymous — Fri, 29 May 2015 16:25:00 +0000

BFA Theatre and Dance Applicants Submit Materials through DocuSign Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/29/2015 - 10:25

Theatre and Dance Associate Professor Chip Persons implemented DocuSign to support Bachelor of Fine Arts students' development of professional portfolios.

[video:https://youtu.be/66Ng2MqgHrE]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Pedagogical Problem or Opportunity

I teach in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Performance in the Department of Theatre & Dance. This is a conservatory-style actor training program within the Tier1 academic setting of CU-�鶹ӰԺ. The Performance faculty guide students in developing an understanding of their craft, freeing their unique artistic voice and talents, and initiating professional practices that they need to practice outside of our institution.

Student actors may find themselves disheartened and disillusioned by the notion that the primary day-today work of a professional actor is spent getting acting work. It is the constant plight of the freelancer who defines and runs their own business, in which they themselves are the product. In a 1988 LA Times article, esteemed actor James Earl Jones put it thus: “I'm a troubadour, going from castle to castle looking for an open door through which to walk and sing for my supper. That's the way it is; it never changes.” This is as regrettable as it is disillusioning to a young actor in the profession. And it’s not where the bulk of our training of them is directed.

Students need to be introduced to the technology of their field and practice using it as they apply to our BFA Performance program and then matriculate through it, just as we hope they will in the profession. The craft of acting dates back millennia, but the business of acting these days relies less on face-to-face contact and more on leveraging contemporary technology and modern business tools.

My department is investigating ways and means of tracking student outcomes through portfolios of their work and faculty responses to it. On the individual level, this may involve the student building an ePortfolio using GoogleSites, perhaps with the guidance of the OIT Academic Technology Design Team (See http://www.colorado.edu/oit/services/academic-technology/academictechnologydesignteam). In fact, students are already building their own websites in our department’s new course, Professional Orientation (THTR 3149), currently taught by my Performance colleague, Assistant Professor Tamara Meneghini.

On the departmental level, this may eventually involve utilizing a client relationship management (CRM) platform to track a student’s progress from admission through graduation and afterward as they become (hopefully illustrious) alumni (See http://www.colorado.edu/oit/sites/default/files/Project%20Status%20Report%208.5.2014_0.pdf).

The coming years hold opportunity for tremendous change in the use of these technologies to enhance student development. But rather than bite the sandwich whole in this ASSETT Teaching with Technology workshop, I am focusing on just the beginning of it, when students apply and audition for acceptance into our selective BFA Performance program.

Each year, the Performance faculty audition and interview nearly 30 students for admission to the program. A large part of this process revolves around the application materials that each student submits. These help us to know information about a student’s experience, talents, abilities, and interests.

When I first arrived at CU, my Performance program received handfilled forms, and printed photographs and resumes submitted by each student actor. But the use of email and of casting websites do not use hard copies. In keeping with professional practices in the “real world”, I believed it was important that students submit themselves to the Performance program electronically.

For a few years, student applicants, their referees, and I traded forms and files via university email. I then asked OIT and university admissions to let us borrow an existing electronic application system, but that was not feasible. Last year, after OIT gave the campus access to Google Apps, I researched and built my own jerry-rigged online student application system by harnessing Google Forms and third-party Google add-ons.

This year, however, out of concerns for electronic security on campus, OIT has blocked the use of Google add-ons, which were the essential glue that held the pieces of my machine together.

And so my Performance colleague, Associate Professor Cecilia Pang, and I went back to OIT and ASSETT in hopes of another solution.

Implementation of Technology

Plan for Implementing Technology in Course

For this first part of what I hope will begin a full, three-year evaluative catalog of a student’s work in our BFA Performance program, I’ve been looking for a an electronic submission apparatus that, for students, mimics the online tools used in the acting profession (e.g. ActorsAccess.com, NowCasting.com) and that, for faculty, is administratively user-friendly.

Grant Matheny and Dan Jones at ASSETT referred my colleague, Cecilia Pang, and me to Kevin Notheis at OIT, who oversaw a pilot of OIT’s newly-acquired online forms workflow application, DocuSign, which is intended to make it easy to replace existing paper forms with electronic documents and signatures.

Working closely with Senior Business Analyst Mark Diekhoff at OIT, the application forms for the BFA Performance program were converted to PDF documents that could be automatically delivered by DocuSign to the student applicant, then to a referee whom the student has selected, and finally to the BFA Performance faculty for evaluation of the applicant.

(All screenshots below are courtesy of Mark Diekhoff)

In so doing, we have replaced our use of Jot Form, GoogleForm, Googe Spreadsheet, Form Mule, Auto Crat, PDF Mergy, Google Drive, as well as hours of my own brainpower...

...with DocuSign.

Below is an explanation of the process.

If a student wants to apply to enter the BFA Performance program, they visit the Theatre & Dance Department website and follow a link to a unique DocuSign landing page.
On that landing page, the student enters information for themselves and their referee.
DocuSign sends the student an email that contains a unique code number. The student uses that code to log in to DocuSign.
A welcome message to the student reminds them of the steps they’ll need to complete in applying to the BFA Performance program.
As the student completes their application form, an arrow points their way to the next field that they must complete.
DocuSign can be used to collect file attachments. At the bottom of the student application form, the student is directed to upload their headshot and resume. These attachments are sorted directly into their application package. Note the arrows pointing the student’s way through the application process.
After the student completes their last step, their submission is confirmed. If they wish, they can download their own PDF copy of their application package, including their headshot and resume.
After the student completes their portion of the application package, DocuSign sends an email to their referee to ask them to complete the reference portion of the application package. The referee follows the link within that message.
An arrow leads the referee through each field in the reference form in the application package.
The referee can see what the student has submitted, but the student will not have access to information that their referee enters.
After the referee completes their last step, their submission is confirmed. If they wish, they can download their own PDF copy of the entire application package. At this stage, the student still cannot see what the referee has entered.
Throughout all of the steps, the faculty, as administrator of the application process, can view the status of all of the application packages that students have initiated. This is useful because DocuSign works in a linear fashion. The student’s application package will not be fully complete and ready for review until after their referee has submitted their reference information. The referee cannot begin their portion of an application package until after the student has submitted the student portion.
Within DocuSign, the administrator can view a status bar that shows a summary of all of the application packages that students have initiated.
Also within DocuSign, the administrator can access each of the applications in-progress or completed via an Inbox-style list.
The administrator can also download a spreadsheet showing data about the status and completion times for each person who is contributing to an application package.

Indicators of Success

The audition and application process for the BFA Performance program is a pre-assessment.

The Performance faculty outline the steps required for students to formally apply to the program on our website and in email announcements via the list-servs in the A&S School of the Arts.

Students are asked to submit themselves electronically for consideration. This offers the faculty a glimpse of how the student presents themselves, of their level of self-initiative, and of their level of proficiency in using professional practices while they’re still in school.

The required application materials include a short statement of intention, a headshot (a full-page photograph of the actor’s face), a one-page resume of their performance experience and training, and the contact information for a referee, who then completes an evaluative reference form on the applicant’s behalf.

The applicants must also sign up for a an individual appointment with the Performance faculty.

In that meeting, the applicant takes the stage in the University Theatre to present a private performance for the faculty of two contrasting monologues, and is then interviewed by the faculty. After the last individual audition, all of the applicants to our program join together for a group workshop, so that the faculty can assess how each person handles themselves in a group and contributes to the ensemble.

Successful candidates demonstrate to the faculty:

a positive and professional attitude
an ability to work expediently, effectively, and supportively as a member of an ensemble
an ability to focus and express themselves believably by harnessing their psychophysical connection to their body and voice within the context of a dramatic situation
an appreciation for and interest in the artistic process of building a character within the world of a play
a willingness to take personal psychological risks
a potential for obtaining work in the profession
a worthy level of academic achievement

If the applicants carry out the requested steps on time and demonstrate a professional manner, then they are given serious consideration for admission. It’s the very first step in their training in the program.

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Development Awards: Dancing on the Digital Stage

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Development Awards: Dancing on the Digital Stage Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/20/2012 - 00:00

When you hear someone say they are dancer, immediately an image of a person performing on a stage in front of an audience appears in your head. Generally, our view of dance as an art form tends to exist within a narrow scope that is bounded within the diameters of the stage. According to this view, posting dance performances on the Internet simply allows performers to post filmed material, originally performed live, online for the masses to view. So, really, the art of dance only occurs live and the web is just a place for old, recorded performances to be re-viewed, right? No. Within the arts, there is a growing trend known as internet art, in which artists are creating pieces where the Internet is their primary medium as opposed to the stage or the canvas.

Professor Michelle Ellsworth, an instructor of Dance in CU’s department of Theater and Dance, encourages her students to move beyond the stage by viewing the Web as a new performance platform, possessing its own unique capabilities and limitations. Just as television changed the way people received the news and consumed entertainment, the Internet provides new opportunities for dancers to alter the many preconceived notions about their field.

Students involved in the university’s Theater and Dance program are eligible to take part in a two-semester long independent study, overseen by Professor Ellsworth, during which they develop their own website. The young artists enrolled in this program elect to create an online portfolio, an internet art space, or a combination fusing the characteristics of both. As part of this process, Professor Ellsworth said she is “encouraging them to think of [the websites] as free-standing art pieces for web art purposes so it isn’t just a self-promotional tool.”

Unlike a live performance, internet art can take on numerous forms and configurations. Some artists, like Professor Ellsworth herself, create online spaces extending their live performance into the digital realm by uploading videos of their performances and other complimentary material. Internet art challenges the idea that a dancer’s work only occurs in front of a live audience: these websites are meant to be viewed as their own free-standing performances, continuing to exist long after the curtains close.

Engaging in the creation of internet art will push the student’s perception of dance beyond the confines of the stage as they will create work solely geared for 2-D viewing within the dimensions of a computer screen. As we spend so much time on the web, Professor Ellsworth argues, “It’s so much part of our experience. I can’t imagine the extent to which I spend on the Internet not seeping into my work and my work not seeping back into it.” It is only natural that the web enters into an artist’s work as its influence permeates into the mundane aspects of our day-to-day lives and part of their job is to respond to the cultural changes of their times.

During the first semester, the individuals work closely with a web developer to create the design and architecture of the website, and then in the second semester they will create the actual content. Discussing the use of these websites, Professor Ellsworth noted, “the person I’m working with on the back end is creating a content-management system so that they can change their videos, so they will not be static…I want them to be completely free standing, so that the architecture of the website gives the students a lot of flexibility in changing content.” It is essential that the design of the website provides the students with the ability to easily change and alter content as they are creating pieces of art, continuously evolving as their artistic imagination reaches new levels. If a painter could not add more colors to a piece of work, then their work would never advance. The same idea applies in this medium: if the students do not possess an easy mechanism to upload new content, the internet art could not progress as they develop as artists.

Before working with a web designer was incorporated into the course, dance students produced their own websites using free blog sources such as wordpress or blogger, but these tools could not gratify the young artists’ visions. Reflecting on those early creations, Professor Ellsworth lamented, “The parameters of those websites were so set that they look rather similar and oddly standardized. It was hard for them to express their individuality or their aesthetics in those pre-made, pre-fab, free sources.” As her students are artists, she knew these freely available blogs confined their development and growth within the visual arts; she wanted to provide her students with the tools to fulfill their own perceptions about internet art. Or as Professor Ellsworth put it, “have the website manifest their own aesthetics as opposed to conform to those of wordpress.”

Clearly, the Internet will not disappear anytime soon; it will continue to evolve and become even more entwined into our lives. The goal of teaching, as Professor Ellsworth explained, is that the classroom should be relevant and beneficial to students' future endeavors. Students and teachers must embrace the technological changes of our times as these new developments are reconfiguring many of our preconceived notions about the world. Certainly, enrollment in this program is preparing students for the new frontiers they face upon leaving college, which is ultimately the very purpose of higher education.

To look at some example internet art pieces, click some of the links below to view Professor Ellsworth’s own creations.

To look at a student example, click the link below.

Letters to Lila

Professor Ellsworth received an ASSETT Development Award for the Spring 2011 semester. This grant helped fund the web developer for this independent study. Development Awards are given out each semester to CU professors using technology in their courses to push education into the 21st Century.

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