{"id":9360,"date":"2021-03-07T19:10:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T00:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/?p=9360"},"modified":"2022-03-15T12:47:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T16:47:56","slug":"immediate-adaptive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/immediate-adaptive\/","title":{"rendered":"Immediate & Adaptive\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are Zoom and hybrid classes the wave of the future?\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Jeff Dingler<\/em><\/p>\n

While the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly been a game-changer for pretty much every level of society in 2020, one group that had to adapt the fastest were educators and institutions of learning. Last March, when the country entered its first lockdown phase due to the spread of COVID-19, teachers all across the country moved entirely to remote learning or online classes. Most made the switch in a matter of weeks or, in some cases, just days. Since then\u2014almost a year later\u2014educators at Hollins and around the globe have been continuing to adapt to the ever-changing reality wrought by COVID-19. But when it comes to the performing arts in academia, the question remains: How exactly does one teach dance through hybrid classes or present a theatrical reading via Zoom? <\/span>Hollins <\/i><\/span>magazine asked the directors of three different performing arts programs to find out how they got creative with remote learning. Surprisingly, the results of educating in the era of COVID-19 aren\u2019t all doom and gloom.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Playwriting M.F.A.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
\"Todd

Ristau<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to its respected undergrad theatre program, Hollins has a renowned, highly intensive playwriting M.F.A. that meets for six weeks every summer. Unlike a lot of other low-residency master\u2019s degrees, which focus more on distance learning, Hollins\u2019 playwriting programming offers a truly immersive workshop experience where student playwrights cover a full semester\u2019s worth of work in just six weeks. Now imagine trying to do all that online. \u201cThere were a tremendous number of challenges to transitioning to full online learning,\u201d said Todd Ristau, director of the M.F.A. in playwriting. \u201cBut one of the things that we stressed over the summer is that theatre, by its very nature, is immediate and adaptive.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To Ristau\u2019s point, the playwriting program last June and July had its own digital liaison to offer technical assistance and ensure that the program provided an experience for audiences and student playwrights that maintained some of the in-person feel. \u201cWe welcomed people into the Zoom waiting room as though it were the actual lobby,\u201d said Ristau. \u201cWe continued to make references to the experiences as though we were in the theatre building. And it really did help. We even had people remark after our festival of student readings that they didn\u2019t remember it as though they were on Zoom, but rather they remembered it as if they were in the theatre.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"StudentMoreover, in addition to being able to \u201cdigitize\u201d the summer courses and schedule of events, Hollins\u2019 playwriting program was actually able to expand upon some of its offerings. For instance, the M.F.A. turned its unified local auditions\u2014usually restricted to regional Virginia actors\u2014into Zoom auditions, opening up the auditions to a national pool of actors and allowing student playwrights to work with performers from all over the country. \u201cWe were also able to get guest speakers that we probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to afford before, given the distance [to bring them to Hollins],\u201d added Ristau. That included a Zoom talk by esteemed English musical director Neal MacArthur about his life in the arts, as well as a live Zoom conference on applied theatre, which drew between 50 and 75 people per day. \u201cWe\u2019re really happy about the way this summer came out,\u201d said Ristau, adding that he and the faculty are currently thinking about what online components could still be useful when they return to in-person classes, such as the use of Moodle or Zoom. \u201cBecause of COVID-19, we\u2019re trying a lot of things that we normally wouldn\u2019t have,\u201d said Ristau. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a been a productive and useful learning <\/span>experience for the faculty as well as for the students.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dance Department and Dance M.F.A.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
\"Jeffery

Bullock<\/p><\/div>\n

While Hollins\u2019 playwriting program may have found a good fully digital approach to remote learning, not all performing arts, or the way they\u2019re taught, are created equal. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s been a major adjustment for dance,\u201d said Jeffery N. Bullock, director of the dance M.F.A. \u201cIt\u2019s a communal practice. It\u2019s about people being together, and moving together, and I would even say thinking together. That\u2019s just how our form operates.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When the shutdowns hit last March, what complicated Bullock\u2019s job even further was that Hollins\u2019 dance M.F.A. offers multiple tracks of study: two low-residency degrees and one year-round program with classes over the summer. In addition to this, as chair of Hollins\u2019 dance department, he was responsible for the educational experience of the undergraduates as well. \u201cI had some resistance to this notion that we could just keep doing what we were doing but in our houses,\u201d recalled Bullock. \u201cSo I tried to have critical discussions with my faculty about how we could adjust to everybody\u2019s different needs.\u201d Bullock mentioned one student who told him that he likely couldn\u2019t take a dance class online because he lived in a one-room cabin in the hills in California. \u201cSo I was thinking about all those social and cultural kinds of questions about what does it mean to ask people to dance at home in their living spaces,\u201d explained Bullock. \u201cAnd I think we came up with some really good solutions and tried to work through that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dancer\"Bullock took two different approaches. With the undergrad students, the dance program created a hybrid approach to its movement classes, in which students still met in person but were instructed by a teacher or faculty member via Zoom. As for the summer graduate students, Bullock allowed them to determine their own movement routines and then had the student dancers meet weekly online to share experiences and critical thoughts. \u201cOverall, we tried to accommodate different populations and different needs,\u201d said Bullock. \u201cCertainly, all the students would prefer that we were together, but under the circumstances, I think we dancers have adapted quite well. It\u2019s pushing us as practitioners and as critical thinkers to extend and reimagine what we\u2019re already doing\u2014to add to the possibility or potential of what dance can be.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of that potentiality, the department still held its annual Fall Dance performance on November 13, only this year streamed on Zoom. Both undergrad and graduate students made digital performances, or dance films, that were edited together for a private online screening. \u201cThis was the first go-around where we asked undergrad and grad students to make work via a digital platform, and we weren\u2019t sure how it would go,\u201d said Bullock. \u201cBut it turned out great!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Screenwriting and Film Studies M.A. and M.F.A.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
\"Amy

Gerber-Stroh<\/p><\/div>\n

As for Amy Gerber-Stroh and Brian David Price, who both codirect the low-residency screenwriting and film studies graduate programs at Hollins, online learning wasn\u2019t much of a change for them. \u201cTo be honest, when we got the word that we were going to be moving online, it didn\u2019t really affect us too greatly,\u201d laughed Price. \u201cThe writing classes all lend themselves really easily to being on Zoom. Because [regularly] on campus, it\u2019s just eight or 10 people sitting around a table and workshopping those pages, and it wasn\u2019t all that different when we were on Zoom.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last summer\u2019s screenwriting program did have to cut one production class\u00a0 that required utilizing equipment on campus, but the rest of the program\u2019s curriculum migrated easily over to the web. Price and Gerber-Stroh were actually able to take advantage of a number of online opportunities that likely wouldn\u2019t have been available to the program or its students had they been meeting on campus. For example, every summer the screenwriting program invites a guest speaker to lecture and spend time with the students. This year, because the university didn\u2019t have to pay to fly anybody in, the program was able to afford <\/span>eight<\/i><\/span> guest speakers, including professionals from all facets of the entertainment industry, writers, producers, and agents, speaking to the group via Zoom. Hollins alumnae\/i and some undergrads also got to join the talks, another option that wouldn\u2019t have been available without the new online component. \u201cAnd we still had a fantastic wrap party,\u201d added Gerber-Stroh. \u201cWe sent everybody packages filled with popcorn and other goodies, and instructed everyone to open them at the same time, experiencing the party together even though we couldn\u2019t be physically together.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gerber-Stroh went on to say that e-learning was already a feature of Hollins\u2019 film department that she chairs. \u201cTo teach screenwriting, we\u2019ve had to go online to get working Hollywood writers and other professionals to teach the courses,\u201d she said. \u201cSo COVID-19 happened, but we were already sort of doing this for a while.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Brian

Price<\/p><\/div>\n

In fact, going forward, both Gerber-Stroh and Price predicted that online learning would become a regular component of the program\u2019s educational offerings. \u201cI think our program, just like many of the others, learned so much through the experience of being online,\u201d said Price. \u201cWhen we go back to campus, we\u2019ll continue to utilize all the lessons we\u2019ve learned and kind of have a hybrid experience going forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHybrid\u2019s the way to go,\u201d agreed Gerber-Stroh. \u201cI think that even if it hadn\u2019t been for COVID-19, that\u2019s the future of the program and, probably, the future of education in general.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeff Dingler is a current creative writing M.F.A. student and marketing intern.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are Zoom and hybrid classes the wave of the future?\u00a0 By Jeff Dingler While the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly been a game-changer for pretty much every level of society in 2020, one group that had to adapt the fastest were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-9360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-winter-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9360"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10784,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360\/revisions\/10784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}