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Teaching and Learning as a Joyful Creative Process with Dr. Shamini Dias, director of the Preparing Future Faculty program at Claremont Graduate University // June 15 – 17, 2021

Kathy Hays

We are honored to welcome Dr. Shamini Dias as our Exchange Host. Dr. Dias works with graduate education students at Claremont Graduate University where she focuses on integrating ideas from complexity science to explore imagination as a creative, adaptive capacity and a critical aspect of human development and leadership. Her research locates teaching and learning in constantly changing, diverse, and inter-connected contexts that define life today. She incorporates this research to help graduate students develop identities as inclusive teachers who strive for educational equity for all learners. In addition to teaching English literature and writing, Dr. Dias is a teaching artist and works with museums, libraries, and schools to develop creativity and communication skills in people of all ages. 

In Chimamanda Adichie’s Danger of a Single Story, she talks about the danger of only looking at one part of the narrative. The same can be said for offering students only one format to share their understanding of information. It’s non-inclusive. Providing students with the sensory experience of incorporating art, role-play, dance, singing, poetry and other activities as a way to express their understanding allows them to connect with others while building a multi-literacy thinking process.    

There are many opportunities to incorporate creative expression in OER Project activities (Draw Your History, Star Comics, Active Accretion, Alphonse the Camel, Our Interconnected World, Traveler Postcards, and the many graphic biographies to name a few). How do you move beyond traditional instructional strategies to allow students the opportunity to creatively share their understanding?  Dr. Dias has shared two documents (see below) with suggestions on how to get started integrating creative learning practices. 

The Exchange will be “Live” June 15- 17 but go ahead and start posting your questions for Dr. Dias in the comments below. You may want to ask how you can incorporate sensory learning into a specific OER Project activity, or to ask for more information on how providing students the opportunity to express their understanding in multiple forms is beneficial. We’d also love to learn from you on strategies you incorporate to allow students to share their knowledge. How do your students respond? 

Whether you are currently incorporate creative expression in your class, or you want to try new strategies, but this is outside your comfort zone, Dr. Dias can answer your questions. Let’s learn from each other! 

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Parents

  • Hi Dr. Dias, thanks so much for taking questions this week.  I really love to have students get hands-on and create tangible projects when it comes to assessing their learning (applying what they have learned over the course of a unit).  During this past year, we had to adapt the hands-on projects from actual physical pieces, to digital pieces.  While my students were able to make the transition from the physical to the digital projects, I did find that the quality of the work was not quite the same as years past when they were required to create an "old school" physical project.  Can you speak to any research that has been done on the quality of student work in terms of hands-on vs. digital?

  • in reply to Zachary Cain

    Hi Zachary - I am sure research will come but it's early days yet for any specific research on what you ask. But in the meantime, here are some considerations to think and talk about.

    To what do we attribute the drop in quality of work? Is it just the online medium? There were many other adjustments in our transition to online learning - home conditions, equipment and space for working, consistent access to virtual time and space, level of comfort and familiarity in navigating and managing work online, our own levels of comfort and knowledge of online teaching scaffolding and support ... 

    That we and our students were able to transition to remote teaching and learning while dealing with the larger life impacts of the pandemic is already pretty good. No matter what we teach, I would think there would have been a reasonable - sometimes significant - drop in work quality for both the student and leacher. 

    What are the particular needs for digital work?  Apart from the technical access to tools, digital work needs a different consideration of deadlines and process, a significant explicit level of scaffolding (we do not have the informal spaces of a comment or question here and a work of encouragement there as we would in on-ground spaces). In short - much more open, emergent, and flexible design of how we assign, monitor, and assess work. 

    I will come back and post some research on the above soon. But for now - I hope everyone in this forum will share ideas and thoughts from practice that speak to this. 

Reply
  • in reply to Zachary Cain

    Hi Zachary - I am sure research will come but it's early days yet for any specific research on what you ask. But in the meantime, here are some considerations to think and talk about.

    To what do we attribute the drop in quality of work? Is it just the online medium? There were many other adjustments in our transition to online learning - home conditions, equipment and space for working, consistent access to virtual time and space, level of comfort and familiarity in navigating and managing work online, our own levels of comfort and knowledge of online teaching scaffolding and support ... 

    That we and our students were able to transition to remote teaching and learning while dealing with the larger life impacts of the pandemic is already pretty good. No matter what we teach, I would think there would have been a reasonable - sometimes significant - drop in work quality for both the student and leacher. 

    What are the particular needs for digital work?  Apart from the technical access to tools, digital work needs a different consideration of deadlines and process, a significant explicit level of scaffolding (we do not have the informal spaces of a comment or question here and a work of encouragement there as we would in on-ground spaces). In short - much more open, emergent, and flexible design of how we assign, monitor, and assess work. 

    I will come back and post some research on the above soon. But for now - I hope everyone in this forum will share ideas and thoughts from practice that speak to this. 

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