SIGCSE 2022 Affiliated Event by the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges
New Directions in Computing: Arts and Computing in NYC
Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) contributed by Maria Hwang (maria_hwang@fitnyc.edu);
Barnard College contributed by Mark Santolucito (msantolu@barnard.edu)
Location: This course was conducted between two campuses, FIT and Barnard College in NYC
Undergraduate student body size: FIT: 7900 undergraduates Barnard College: 2750 undergraduates For this particular course: 6 FIT students and 8 Barnard students enrolled
Degree(s) offered: FIT: AAS, BS, BFA Barnard College: BA
Department/major name: FIT does not have a CS major or minor (this course counted as an independent study), Barnard has a CS major and minor but this course did not count for the CS major.
Number of contributing faculty: Two main faculty members (Mark and Maria) and another FIT collaborator (Professor Patrice George) were involved in running this course.
Number of majors annually: FIT does not have a CS major or minor, Approximately 35 students major in CS at Barnard College
Does the department offer any graduate programs? None for both FIT and Barnard
Other context: This particular course was offered as an independent study at FIT but as a regular class at Barnard (but restricted number of students were allowed to join per the faculty’s discretion)
Provide a narrative description of your innovation.
We present a case study on teaching a collaborative course between two liberal arts colleges with drastically different student bodies. Our key curricular innovation is in the administrative design of the collaboration in a way that affords new opportunities and experiences to students at both institutions. We propose that collaborative courses should happen between liberal arts schools of different classifications. Specific to our case, this meant building a bridge between Barnard College and the Fashion Institute of Technology.
To first give context to the course itself, Arts and Computing in NYC was a survey course that brought together students across disciplines to gain an appreciation for the cutting edge of the intersection between Computer Science (CS) and the arts. The goal was for students to take away from the class an understanding of where the future lies for the use of technology in a wide array of arts endeavors. Students received hands-on experience with the technologies used in various digital arts fields through a semester-long project. Students worked in groups formed of students across majors and institutions on a creative project that was displayed in an end of semester gallery show. Fundamental concepts from CS were covered on an as-needed basis to allow students to fully appreciate and utilize the tools necessary for fulfilling the students’ creative visions.
Through the multi-institutional collaboration the instructors of this course were able to truly utilize the resources of their respective institutions in order to fulfill the needs of the other institution. For example, for the final gallery show, Barnard had space available for the exhibit, while FIT was able to provide materials for the individual projects that only an arts school would have regular address to (e.g. pedestals, full size CNC machine, jacquard loom, etc).
Initiating an interdisciplinary arts and computing collaboration: The Arts and Computing in NYC was the full exposition of a series of workshops run by the instructors (Patrice George, Maria Hwang, and Mark Santolucito) in Fall 2019. These initial workshops focused on TurtleStitch, a visual programming language for digital embroidery.
-Make sure students do not have classes right before or after the course as travel time needs to be considered when classes are held at different institutions; -Have a protocol set up for students from other institutions to be on campus and take courses before the class commences (this includes not only access to the buildings but Internet access, Covid testing protocols, etc.); -Have a platform where all students and faculty can communicate with each other as each respective institution will have different Learning Management Systems (For example, we used Google Drive as well as Discord); -If above is established, it makes deadlines and submission of homework assignments easier to manage all in one place (this is important as we do not want to have different evaluation and assessment standards between/among the separate institutions); -Make sure to provide appropriate office hours from all instructors so that students from all institutions can have time interacting with all instructors and take advantage of their respective expertise; -Make sure to collect data on students’ progress and their receptiveness to the different sessions and lectures to gauge their interest and involvement with the material so that improvements can be made along the way;
Specific to an arts class:
-Have the students start on the final projects early, especially if they are making an art installation from scratch that needs time to plan, purchase material, assemble, test, and install in the displayable space; -Have a plan for strike as art installations need time to clean up and disassemble; -Consider having a space on either or both campuses for semi-permanent displays for their final art installations;