Education-Portal.com interview

Education-Portal.com recently attended the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC), a gathering of educators and professionals interested in the availability and application of free online college course materials known as OpenCourseWare (OCW). We had a chance to speak with several industry leaders, including Chris Follows and John Casey, the innovators behind ALTO (Arts, Learning and Teaching Online) and Process Arts, which aim to provide OCW for teaching art and design via the Internet.

Education-Portal.com: Can you talk a little bit about how you got the idea of teaching arts online?

Chris Follows: For myself that goes back to when I was a student. You documented your practice. That was for part of your portfolio, and eventually formed part of your assessment. So I was interested in the documentation side of practice from that stage.

When I eventually worked in a university, I started documenting students as well. I tried to encourage them to talk on camera, which is quite difficult for anyone, especially for a student who's still trying to work things out and explore ideas. I was surprised by how well students could articulate their practice. I thought it could potentially be useful for other students. The environment of an art school is one where ideas are shared and people feed off each other. I started doing small videos. The university began using them for promotion purposes, and I thought there must be more use for that information. It developed into the Process Arts website.......... PLEASE SEE FULL INTERVIEW HERE