Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Art schools are expensive: small classes, safety regulations, specialized equipment and technician support abound, while the relatively small student body limits the scalability of courses that don’t have those constraints and therefore could offset some of that cost. And, in my region, since 2019, unhelpful governmental funding and policy decisions have exacerbated those structural issues. These challenges put a premium on administrative and pedagogical imagination while provoking fear-induced stasis. So, this year, I am piloting an approach to confront these issues by combining experiential, intensive learning—with real-life impact—in an international context with cost-of-delivery savings in excess of 60% and no increase in faculty workload. And, since the course centres on a collaboration with the amazing organization Scholars at Risk, it does this by advocating, globally, for the pro-democratic, pro-free expression values that, today, are shamefully under attack around the world. How so? For over a decade, Scholars at Risk has been running “Student Advocacy Seminars,” enabling university faculty world-wide to connect their students with SAR case workers advocating for the release of unjustly imprisoned academics, artists, students and journalists. Building on this hands-on approach that links students around the world through shared causes, my course assigns double-credit value to students to allow for the intensive engagement that this course prompts, without demanding more faculty time. In addition, the course combines senior undergrads with Masters level students, thus creating an intensive, team-based learning experience, while saving the cost of three instructors. Clearly, this approach won’t work everywhere—some learning goals simply won’t align with it. But where students self-select into an intense, results-oriented learning situation, particularly when focused on collaboration, this model can combine high-impact learning with high-impact savings.