Virtual Speaks Volumes (Rebecca Hutchinson, UMass Dartmouth)

Wired Ivy

Artists are trained to look, to examine the world from different perspectives, to notice the smallest detail and appreciate the big picture. Maybe that’s why sculptor, installation artist, and Professor of Art and Design, Rebecca Hutchinson, saw that it was entirely possible to teach studio arts, including ceramics, in a virtual classroom… and to recognize this opportunity for expanding her learner audience a decade before a global pandemic demanded higher ed faculty see online instruction through a different lens.

Rebecca teaches using a collage of instructional formats and technologies that allow her to connect with learners, and facilitates their connection to each other. By combining asynchronous communication and sharing, real-time activities to build observation and resourcefulness skills, virtual co-working periods for project development, and one-on-one weekly mentoring sessions, students in Rebecca’s class may be geographically distributed but they’re not creating in isolation.