In this post I have my articles for my literature review. I have identified the following topics that I will categorize these articles into and explore:
Themes: Digital Can Bolster Creativity
Themes: Traditional vs Digital
Themes: Permissions in Art-Making
Spring 2021 Annotated Bibliography
Research 7200
Dr. Ruth Smith
Themes: Digital Can Bolster Creativity
Hung, H.-C., & Young, S. S.-C. (2017). Applying multi-touch technology to facilitate the learning of art appreciation: from the view of motivation and annotation. Interactive Learning Environments, 25(6), 733–748. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1080/10494820.2016.1172490
A qualitative and quantitative study was conducted by the researchers and authors of this study to explore the effects of technologies ability to effect student motivation in an art appreciation class. Studying two college groups of students, one given digital tablets and the other traditional resources. The study followed these research questions:
(1) Are there any differences in students’ motivation with or without adoption of tablets? How can the use of tablets motivate students?
(2) Do the multi-touch screens featured in tablets facilitate college students’ learning of art appreciation? If so, how do learners interact with the digital content via the multi-touch screen?
Using a system called ARCS, developed by Keller (1987) they compared the motivation of students to the subject matter prior to and after taking the course.
Keller (1987) synthesized existing research on psychological motivation and created the ARCS model which stands for Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and
Satisfaction. This model contains strategies for promoting and sustaining learners’ motivation (Keller,1987). (Hung, Young, 2017)
Learners cited convenience, ability to cross reference and investigate detail a major advantage with the tablets. Also the ability to annotate on the content at hand further added to the “investment” into the subject matter. Additionally, the use of graffiti and sketch allowed for creative notetaking.
They wanted to annotate that the key point to distinguish the differences between these two styles of architecture is the roof of the building. Therefore, the student used the creative graffiti, the Spider man and the snake, for a deeper impression. (Hung, Young, 2017).
In conclusion, statistical data and qualitative interview data supported the conclusion that students were more motivated using multi-touch methods rather than notebooks computers and paper.
The approach of learning art appreciation with tablets and multi-touch technology has a greater ability to motivate student involvement and art appreciation learning (Hung, Young, 2017).
Compared with the conventional approach, the multi-touch gestures support student's annotation skills, such as graffiti, for creating visual comments that could be shared easily among peers. Multi-touch technology could play an important role in art appreciation learning to (1) change the view of learners on the art materials; (2) listen to lectures at a flexible and personalized pace; and (3) create efficient and intuitive annotations(Hung, Young, 2017).
Sakr, M. (2019). Young Children Drawing Together on the iPad Versus Paper: How Collaborative Creativity is Shaped by Different Semiotic Resources. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 20(17–20), 1–26. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.26209/ijea20n20
The researcher seeks to find if touch screens and iPads facilitate more collaborative and creative drawing activities in young children over traditional paper and pencil drawings. She considers the preconceptual notions of drawing on both paper and iPads. She organizes her findings into three themes: 1) attitudes to space 2) momentum of the line and 3) pathways to representation.
As theorists of possibility thinking have found through observations of learning environments and child-adult interactions, making choices about the physical environment in which activity unfolds, including the resources that are given to children, is a fundamental part of successfully facilitating
collaborative creativity (Cremin, Burnard & Craft, 2006; Kucirkova & Sakr, 2015).
She continues in her support of the media and it’s semiotic resource and affordances. This idea of what a material is used for, who, or by and how the individual interacts with that material is important. She suggests that, according to Gibson (1961) we perceive the world in terms of how we will potentially interact with it (Sakr, 2019). She gives the example:
For example, block crayons are typically associated with children’s drawings,
while pencils are seen as tools used by both adults and children; these associations will shape
how the drawing unfolds (Sakr, 2019).
Overall findings suggest that the children in the iPad study felt a looser creative experience with the iPad as compared to the paper and pencil comparison.
Hoffmann, J., Ivcevic, Z., & Brackett, M. (2016). Creativity in the Age of Technology: Measuring the Digital Creativity of Millennials. Creativity Research Journal, 28(2), 149–153. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1080/10400419.2016.1162515
The researchers in this study created a measure for self reporting creativity in the digital domain, the Creative Behavior Questionnaire: Digital (CBQD). The study was compared to other creative self-reporting measures and results were aligned. 230 students participated in the study and self reported and nominated peers to give a measure of digital creative expierences.
Descriptive statistics for the CBQD items showed that many students participated in a range of digital creativity activities: 91% of students reported having made a video for class, 75% created a multimedia project for a class, and 70.6% of students have made a podcast. Other creative behaviors were less frequent. For example, 14% said they created new content for a video game, 14% indicating they had won a digital art contest, and 10% of students reported
writing an app for a mobile device (Hoffman, Ivcevic, Brackett 2016)
This study is less helpful but does report data that supports that students in everyday school activity are engaging in technical and digital creative realms.
Fahey, P., & Cronen, L. (2016). Digital Portfolios in Action: Acknowledging Student Voice and Metacognitive Understanding in Art. Clearing House, 89(4/5), 135–143. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1080/00098655.2016.1170450
This article explores the benefits of a digital portfolio and how it can add to the traditional portfolio building experience. With the addition of digital referencing and archiving, students can better understand the process of how they arrived at a current state of artistic ability and production. This arose from the value placed on assessment by Senate Bill 191, requiring states to regulate a system of quantifying performance.
By requiring students to document and reflect on their art making process, the instructor is able to better understand the students’ creative process and how to provide the best feedback for each individual student (Fahey, Cronen, 2016).
From their research, students using a digital portfolio were better able to provide an organized way to document their processes of creation, rather than simply providing a final product.
Themes: Traditional vs Digital
Stuyck, T., Da, F., Hadap, S., & Dutré, P. (2017). Real-Time Oil Painting on Mobile Hardware. Computer Graphics Forum, 36(8), 69–79. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1111/cgf.12995
The authors of this paper in the computer graphics forum, put forward a study on the effectiveness of the oil painting simulation software they had developed. Allowing for the peculiar traits and bold colors of oil painting in a tablet environment.
We propose our system as a reliable tool to quickly try out ideas and perform preliminary paint studies and to aid artists complimentary to their traditional workflow to obtain faster convergence towards the desired outcome (Stuyck, Da, Hadap, & Dutré 2017)
The proposed system offers natural physical paint behaviour to improve the virtual painting experience and has proven to be successful in aiding artists to create new work whether it be digital or traditional (Stuyck, Da, Hadap, & Dutré 2017)
Written in 2012, it shows a legacy of digital softwares designed to support, not sublant artists in their endeavors. Integrating grit, gravity, flow, viscosity, texture, and lighting into the equation of software development creates a robust and realistic experience on a digital platform.
Wang, T. W. (2018). Empowering Art Teaching and Learning With iPads. Art Education, 71(3), 51–55. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1080/00043125.2018.1436353
Since the launch of the iPad in 2010, the author of the study cites multiple studies toting the benefits of the device as a multimedia learning tool. Coupled with multiple available art programs, it can be a powerful digital art tool. She explores strengths and weaknesses of the tool in art education through interviews with 15 art educators in k-8 schools.
The versatility of apps and medias that react to pressure and sensitivity help to mimic the fluidity and reactions of media. Use of layers and transparency in multiple uses helps to problem solve and increase trial and error learning. The interface is so user friendly, it expedites the experience of art making while keeping art educators current and proactive to recent technologies.
“Also because of iPads’ mobility, easy access to the
system, touch screen, variety of resources and Applications, and
the feature of forgiveness that allows trial and error, they offered
ideal platforms to learn digital art (Wang, 2015)
Not only did this allow versatility, but students also created co-learning and co-teaching environments along with the teachers. This allows struggling students to utilize the entire class to catch up and carry out tasks.
rather than solely depending on the teacher’s
help, students themselves would support each other with trouble
shooting, thus creating collaborative teamwork (Wang 2018).
Some downfalls to the device as a learning tool included the overwhelming amount of programs currently available to the iPad platform. Teaching with a software requires teachers to be familiar with the product. Classroom management, especially for younger students is also a huge hurdle as they try to keep students on task.
There is also the idea that digital art somehow devalues traditional methods. This pertains to my research directly.
An integrated and balanced art curriculum that includes
iPad art as a complement to traditional media is the most effective
way for introducing iPad art, they said. iPad art can be the final
product, or it can be just part of meaningful artmaking processes (Wang 2018).
Souleles, N. (2017). iPad versus traditional tools in art and design: A complementary association. British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(2), 586–597. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1111/bjet.12446
This study investigates the claim that the iPad as a superior learning tool and that there is a distinct dichotomy between digital and traditional art making.
Souleles concludes that the main inference is that the relationship between digital and traditional tools can be better understood as complementary rather than as a dichotomy (Souleles, 2017).
He goes on to provide implications for practice and/or policy
• The paper emphasizes the need for faculty to understand what each set of tools
can and cannot bring to teaching and learning.
• The perceived affordances of the iPad are mediated by the individual and varied
preferences, knowledge, and attitudes of individual students.
• For the foreseeable future, there is a role for both sets of media in art and design
instructional practice (Souleles, 2017).
This is a valuable study to my research comparing traditional methods and digital methods in art and design. Souleles discusses the research put forth supporting a superior learning tool and challenges the idea of a one or the other approach to traditional/digital. Disadvantages of digital tools are in line with early educational studies showing potential for distraction. However, traditional design skills are still required to implement the software and input, thus, the two sides are needed to work in compliment to each other.
Appiah, E., & Cronjé, J. C. (2012). Thumbnail sketches on idea development: The drawing board vs computer generation. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 11(1), 49–61. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1386/adch.11.1.49_1
This study, in Ghana, looked at the comparison of idea creation done traditionally (thumbnail sketches) vs digitally (computer generated images) in the graphic design education environment. Following the ideas of traditional design creation presented by Wallas (1926) in the analysis of design, the process goes as follows:
Problem Identification, Brainstorming/Thumbnail sketching, Preparation of Rough Thought, Execution of Finished Roughs, Final Design (Appiah, Cronjé 2012).
This study proposes educators adopting a blended approach
for idea development but that will also demand a clear pedagogy that will
align with the principles of students developing ideas, be it from scratch or
from influences of other sources (Appiah, Cronjé 2012).
This study suggests that students will benefit from both traditional and contemporary methods and both should be embraced in a successful design program.
Curtis, G., & McLeod, H. (2019). Tradition and the Contemporary Collide: Newfoundland and Labrador Art Education History. Canadian Review of Art Education: Research & Issues, 46(1), 37–43.
The authors of this critical study in the Canadian Art Education journal tell a cautionary tale of the tightrope of balancing the traditional with contemporary views on art and how it reflects upon a community and society. The study reflects a view that, although small, the art educator plays a role in the self-promoted myopic view of the region
allowing the art educator to play a somewhat subversive
role to the larger historical, political, and social agenda (Curtis, McLeod, 2019).
The art gallery also challenged the visual arts program to which it was attached, whose curricular design was more conservative. While no allowances had been made for schooling in video art, installation, or performance art classes in the design of the art program itself, over time exhibitions at the gallery exposed the students to these media (Curtis, McLeod, 2019).
Again, supporting an ideal that contemporary systems of art creation and development should work alongside traditional studies and use a critical eye to create a visual art education system that allows exposure to a multiple range of artistic careers and outlets.
Tan, L., Peek, P. F., & Chattaraman, V. (2015). HEI-LO Model: A Grounded Theory Approach to Assess Digital Drawing Tools. Journal of Interior Design, 40(1), 41–55. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1111/joid.12036
Themes: Permissions in Art-Making
Sakr, M., Connelly, V., & Wild, M. (2018). Imitative or Iconoclastic? How Young Children use Ready‐Made Images in Digital Art. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 37(1), 41–52. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1111/jade.12104
This study explores how creativity is affected in the use of ready-made images (such as graphics students can “stamp” on or repeat multiple times easily) in digital creative software environments. The researchers note that multiple studies have been conducted on both sides of the argument. From their analysis, some state that it inhibits creativity (McLennan 2010; Szyba 1999), while others conclude that it enables remix capability in the child (Lankshear & Knobel 2006) (Sakr, Connelly, Wild 2018). This study looked to examine how the child incorporates these graphics into their creations using a semiotic lense.
Children and students will bring their own experiences to an artwork. Through episodes of children’s digital artmaking showed a range of ‘child agendas’ at work including making aesthetic choices, experimentation, initiating conversation, storytelling and as part of coherent representation (Sakr, Connelly, Wild 2018).
The study showed that educators should be aware of and respond to the different ways in which students are working and creating. In the viewpoint of permissions, these artworks would look completely different if the child was in the belief that, either by direct information or inference, that use of certain items was not allowed. Thus, permissions and allowances are necessary for students to feel comfortably creative.
Note: lego blocks are predetermined shapes
Black, J. (2009). Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Changing Power Dynamics Between Teachers and Students in Wired Art Classrooms. Canadian Review of Art Education: Research & Issues, 36(1), 99–117.
This article talks about the changing balance involved in adopting digital technologies into the classroom. Black concludes that teachers and students need to work and focus on an embracement of a learner centered approach, developing student problem solving, creative and critical thinking skills, and the employment of co-learning, collaboration, and teacher-student partnerships. Furthermore, these partnerships are strengthened by the acceptance of a new power sharing between students and teachers (Black, 2009).
This is important research in relation to digital creativity and empowering student artists in the digital classroom. Striking a balance of power and giving students the permissions to utilize digital tools in creative activity and benefit from of them is necessary to allow creative freedom. Given the 2020 Pandemic and drastic shift to remote learning, a new set of studies will undoubtedly be unleashed to explore this extreme shift to the student in a vastly unbalanced form.
Whalen, M. (2009). What’s Wrong With This Picture? An Examination of Art Historians’ Attitudes About Electronic Publishing Opportunities and the Consequences of Their Continuing Love Affair with Print. Art Documentation: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 28(2), 13–22. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1086/adx.28.2.27949518
This Mellon-funded study explores the long-standing relationship between art, art historians and a reluctance towards digital media. It argues that these holdouts jeopardize the long-term efficacy of the field. In essence arguing legal rights and practices with image production and reproduction in regards to galleries and museums, this article highlights the opposition to progress in the digital field. Securities must be established and upheld, but they may look different.
Digital technologies raise questions and concerns among art historians about whether electronic publishing is good for art history and whether it is good for them professionally (Whalen, 2009).
Sweeny, R. (2020). “Investigate the misusage of technology as a gesture of freedom”: Glitch Dysfunction in New Media Art and Art Education. Visual Arts Research, 46(2), N.PAG.
In this article, Sweeny seeks to reveal artistic tactics: the provocative, playful, and probing ways that new media art deals with various forms of dysfunction. Art educators at many levels can learn much about how digital technologies can be used to make art by studying how digital technologies fail (Sweeny, 2020). In a way that digital media is extremely capable of providing failure and frustration, that can be utilized for art creation.
As a digital arts teacher, I have experienced firsthand, as Sweeny describes the ability of networks, digital media and computers to come together to create (what he calls new media art) but they also amplify the frustration and devastation that can occur when such networks fail (Sweeny, 2020). He goes on to suggest that even that failure can be harnessed and manipulated in new ways to discuss power, control and efficiency (Sweeny, 2020).
To quote his conclusion:
To embrace failure, to acknowledge moments of overload, or to listen for noise in contemporary communication networks might result in a new media art education—one that acknowledges the poor image, the in-between, and the glitch as it also reflects the unique qualities of our digital, dysfunctional times. (Sweeny, 2020).
Marner, A., & Örtegren, H. (2014). Education through digital art about art. International Journal of Education through Art, 10(1), 41–54. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1386/eta.10.1.41_1
This article explores the “mash-up” versatility of digital media, although the term is not used in the article...opting instead for “digital paraphrases and blended production.” Providing a useful way to move students into familiarity with software and indulge creative expression.
Different ways of working with pictures digitally exposes multimodal ways
for pupils to appropriating picture-making for their own purposes (Marner, 2014).
The teachers mentioned the special circumstances that give room for pupils
to explore new possibilities to make pictures without needing to have manual
technical skills. They also noted that pupils who do have these skills often
also use the traditional methods to a large degree (Marner, 2014).