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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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Volume XI, No. 3 |
March 2006 |
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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Volume XI, No. 3 |
March 2006 |
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Collaboration Fosters Learning Skills and Independent Thought
By Melanie Dreyer-Lude, Theater Arts The collaborative environment that I nurture throughout the semester is an important component of the teaching dynamic in my classes. For example, in my directing courses, teamwork and resource sharing become a habitual part of the students’ process, and this behavior often continues once the semester is over and they work on outside projects together. As directors, I hope they’ve learned that they can be open to the acquisition of new information and ideas without sacrificing an independent point of view. One of my greatest obstacles in teaching directing to undergraduates is helping them to assimilate a practical skill set (learning to follow some rules about directing) while maintaining an independent point of view (having an artistic opinion). There are theatrical customs and audience expectations that create a set of standards by which we view theatrical production. But art fails to hold interest if it lacks a passionate point of view. I regularly wrestle with the tension between imparting a set of guidelines for execution while encouraging as much free thinking as possible. One of my strategies for dealing with this tension is to reverse the introduction of ideas in activities based on collaborative teamwork. Rather than beginning the semester with a series of skill building exercises, I begin by having my students direct without telling them how to do it. During the first three days of class, they are asked to work as a team to stage a children’s story. Together we consider what the director’s job might be, but they must decide which steps to take. While they work together, they have the opportunity to recognize the value of various artistic opinions; they see multiple ways to solve a problem; they learn how to work in a team—how to support their colleagues and how to find compromise in moments of disagreement. Once the directors have begun to establish their own methods of problem solving, I begin to introduce skill sets. As we examine the individual components in the craft of directing, I encourage students to share their expertise with one another. Some are gifted at text analysis, while others easily work with abstraction and image association. Some understand how to think spatially and how to compose stage pictures. Each new skill we encounter offers an opportunity for the students to demonstrate existing expertise as well as to work together to learn something new. Student collaboration is also a core component of feedback and evaluation. When grading my directing students, I use the articulation of their ideas as the benchmark for their work. Do we see what she described? Has he been clear about telling his story? Are there moments where she is actually contradicting what she intended to say? This negotiation gives the students ownership over the grades they receive at the end of the semester. Few quibble with the marks I give them, having already recognized where they’ve succeeded and failed. All of the students in class must track one another’s goals and accept the various interpretations presented in order to offer useful feedback for final presentations. The task is not to contradict what they see but to identify each director’s successes and failures in communicating their ideas.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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