Seemingly, it has just happened last week, but it unbelievably was 26 years ago on my job interview for a digital art instructor at Robert Morris College, Chicago, Illinois, USA.  Among my pressure, nervousness, and anxiety, a question popped up by the Rector “Can you tell me… What should be the qualifications for a good teacher?” Then she sympathetically continued, “Sorry this question must be difficult for you as a non-native speaker.” In the blink of an eye, I confidently replied “I really appreciate your concerns, but I think I got the answer. I think there are at least four attributes that a good teacher should understand: pedagogy, knowledge, open-mindedness and constructive criticism.”

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Pedagogy: The pedagogical skill might go beyond your knowledge as it is the art of how-to-teach. It is the basic approach I have in the classroom to convey media theory with my media production skill sets within a friendly and creative learning environment.  

 

Beyond knowing how to manage the technology and activities in the classroom are class planning, learning strategies, assessment techniques, and psychology of child development. I lean towards student-center learning approach in order to prepare them well for the competitive career adventure. Besides, attention from a teacher will dramatically reduce the gap and generate a friendly learning atmosphere, especially in media art education. Once I teased my students in Intro to Media Production class that “I came here to facilitate, not to intimidate you. So, if you guys still have any question on how to use Adobe Photoshop, please ask…no matter how stupid the question is.”

 

Knowledge: Teaching media art production is not just about producing the artifact, but it is the fusion of theory with hands-on practice to create meaningful (content or story) as well as effective (clear message to the right target audiences) visual communication across media platforms. Besides, the trends of media art education have been extended from fusion of theory with hands-on practice to collaboration with local community, such as class projects via students’ community engagement – overarching the high potentials of media art to make a difference.

 

Just knowing how to use a specific creative software is not enough, but a good teacher with strong media production skill should be able to previsualize how to use the software as a toll to execute the project step by step – toward weekly assignments building up from one to another within the production timeline – from concept to completion. Technique could be definite, while content will be endless. Once I dramatically stated to my students in Intro to Video Production class that “I can train you how to use Adobe Premiere in just a day, but it might take a couple months to teach you to understand the art of storytelling.”

 

Open-mindedness:  Broad-mindedness, especially in digital media art education, is a key factor to foster creative learning module efficiently. Mind opening allows acceptance, appreciation, and knowledge exchange so that even the teachers can actually learn from their students. 

 

Seemingly, some idea, theory, or tradition that seemed absolutely right or practical in the analog era could become something that is no longer quite true or practicable during the disruptive/ transformative digital age. Once the current idea has no longer worked, open-mindedness, creativity, and interactivity could trigger some solutions in order to think outside the box. In terms of acquiring new knowledge, the nexus of mind-opening, creative mindset along with interactive knowledge exchange allows the role between teachers and students to be feasibly interchangeable any time – both inside or outside class as well as online and offline – especially through the transformative learning within our global communities. Ironically, I know how to use Apple Final Cut Pro to edit video content with optimizing resolution output for the web, but did not know how to post it on YouTube until one of my students showed me how.  

 

Constructive Criticism: Critique, especially in media art education, is aimed to inspire and motivate students to the next level of creation in terms of aesthetic value as well as effective communication. 

 

Constructive criticism encourages creative solutions, proper technical adaptation, suitable technological application, and eventually ethical, cultural, legal or socio-economic considerations aligned with the current job industry. Amongst controversial topics of criticism are technique, style, and narcissism as self-expression which would be absolutely perfect for the fine art domain (for self), but becomes questionable for the commercial art world (for mass audiences). Nevertheless, this distinctive technique or unique style as the artist’s signature could be marketable for the niche market, such as the Labubu art toys, or in synch with the brand identity of the corporate big brands, like Luxury Brand Partnerships between Dior and Thai craftsman Korakot Aromdee.

 

Consequently, PKOC is my teaching philosophy which I strongly believe that it could be applied across art(s) and science education, from K12 to higher education.
 

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