The goals of a quality education are varied, with our greatest aspirations for students including everything from political and social understanding to confidence in applying the scientific method and complex problem-solving skills. We want students to be both better people, and more integrated learners, connecting subjects to create an enlightened worldview greater than they thought possible.
But really, how often do students transfer learning from one subject area to another domain?
Inspiring cross-disciplinary efforts are happening in education – just look at the ambitious high school students in Canby, Oregon who embraced the challenge to build a tiny house on wheels; one that can withstand strong winds and earthquake-level shaking while traveling up to 60 mph.
Photo from KATU 2 of the Canby HS Students Building a Tiny House
This type of challenge (and the student-centered learning it requires) epitomizes the best of the vision for STEM, not only showing the clear connections between subjects like engineering and math, but showing how much more powerful and authentic these subjects become when used in tandem. In addition to connecting complex and important subjects, STEM programs are also created in reaction to changing work tasks and demands, which ask for not only an integrated knowledge base, but, again, an integrated worldview that places significant emphasis on the kind of person a STEM education produces; ideally valuing collaboration, interpersonal communication and the groundwork necessary for customer empathy in future careers.
These goals are more than a little ambitious; challenging students to connect seemingly disparate subjects and hone and recruit unexpected soft skills is definitely asking a lot. But what if, perhaps, a potential solution could be treating them as an integrated goal where a step in the right direction of one was a success for the other?
Embracing Unexpected Connections
“You think you are going to learn how to make video games, and you will learn that. But one of the most important things you will learn here is how to work in teams,” explains Ralph Vituccio, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), when he welcomes students to a new semester of his Visual Storytelling class. Much like the Oregon tiny house builders, students in Vituccio’s classes hear the message of integration from the start, and one that’s long been a staple of ETC; it was first delivered by the Center’s cofounder and author of “The Last Lecture,” Randy Pausch.
Image: Visual Story course, Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
The importance of embracing the unexpected is vital to student success at ETC because the Center’s vision is so expansive. Not only does the program unite students from an impressive number of different majors and career aspirations – sound engineers, architecture students, digital media developers, artists, and of course, programmers – it showcases how learning happens by recruiting knowledge across domains as well.
ETC does not just rely upon the words of its professors to communicate the importance of working in teams; one of the core classes that all first year students take is improvisational acting.
“The improvisational acting class helps to break down cultural barriers as well as interdisciplinary biases. The whole idea is to get people to work with each other,” Vituccio says. “The key to this program is working in teams.”
Image: Improvisational Acting course, ETC at CMU
Professor Vituccio raises a fascinating point. At ETC specifically, the emphasis is not only on integrating disciplines, but also heavily stresses integrating people. And through such collaboration, benefiting from a whole host of unique skills. ETC’s course structure requires that students work collaboratively because the end-product has to fit many demands – it has to not just “work,” it also has to be aesthetically pleasing. ETC leaders recognize – and impart to students – that consumer demand for products that look as good as they work creates the need for tightly integrated development teams. According to Professor Vituccio, learning and training with this in mind gives newly hired ETC graduates a great advantage, and the ability “to hit the ground running” when they enter the workforce.
Krishna Pandravada, who received his Master’s from The Entertainment Technology Center in 2009 says he couldn’t agree more. He has been an Art Director/Game Designer at Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy since 2010.
“I worked on several projects while at the ETC. There were numerous instances of how art and technology were integrated, the prime example being the Building Virtual Worlds course. Groups of 4 or 5 students would have to craft video game prototypes in two-week cycles. The prototypes not only needed to function and engage but also look appealing and interesting. While the programmers on the teams were great at their abilities they always needed an artist to create environments, characters, and other story elements. Vice-versa the assets created by an artist are of no use unless the programmers added some logic to them.”
Image from CMU’s ETC from their Building Virtual Worlds course
Pandravada ’s quote echoes a sentiment that I wrote about in a previous article. Students are intrinsically motivated to write code without ever wanting to work for Google or Facebook, but rather, to improve their own user experience in a digital world they already inhabit. With such an emphasis on user experience, it’s apparent that art is not just embedded into technology, but it also influences how technology is made and consumed.
“The arts in its raw sense allows for creative expression through painting, music and performing arts, but, 21st-century digital artists use technology in things we see on a daily basis,” Pandravada reminds us. “The phones in our pocket, the automobiles we drive and the websites we frequent.”
In this sense, art does not just influence technology, but technology also influences what art is created. When seen this way, the subjects themselves become so integrated it’s difficult to tell what is influencing what, and how much is just growing and changing together. On an economic level, this change in thinking has not only expanded how art is made and applied, it has also changed how consumers define a quality product. It could be argued that consumer demand places a higher demand on aesthetics than ever, forcing companies to change how they create products. Schools like ETC are responding by not only acknowledging these subject overlaps, but by utilizing art-based modalities like improvisational acting as a core class to address the team-building skills these new product standards require. As for STEM or STEAM? The demanding expectations of quality, experience and design from a new kind of consumer present a challenge for K-12 educators that entails much more than identifying the perfect acronym.