Faculty Directions, Fall 2003 - ePortfolios and Laptop Technology Play a Role in Performing Arts Production Studies Curriculum
Linda Dzuris
Department of Performing Arts and University Carillonneur
Many departmental meetings and retreats were held to develop a degree program that would fuse multidisciplinary and collaborative performing arts, outreach, and service learning with traditional performance, history, and theory courses. The result is a distinct bachelor degree program that provides our students with practical hands-on experiences in the combined disciplines of music and theater. Each entering class progresses through a series of core curriculum performing arts (PA) courses that spans their four-year stay at Clemson. As the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities institutes a laptop requirement, we in the Department of Performing Arts are ready to take full advantage by making laptop use an integral part of our core PA courses. Specifically, our aim is to teach each student how to start an ePortfolio (also commonly called a digital portfolio) in the first semester of the freshman year. Then, work done in each successive PA course will be represented in this same portfolio. It will be a work-in-progress that carries over through six semesters and multiple professors. By graduation, each student will have in hand a rich source of material that will represent growth as an individual and a collaborator, on campus and off.
Why digital? We want to equip our majors with tools for success. Whether success means entrance into a graduate program or in traditional, commercial or community-based careers, a digital portfolio is portable, easily accessible, and a means by which prior success and future potential may be clearly documented.
The common curriculum description offers a glimpse of the variety of material that might be placed into a performing arts ePortfolio. PA 101 is an introductory course that overviews performance, careers, technology, production, management, community outreach, safety, sales, and marketing.
PA 201 is a performing arts seminar that focuses on selected topics of performing arts and includes masterclasses with various faculty and visiting artists. Concert and theatre attendance and evaluation are also incorporated. Emphasis is placed on written communication skills.
PA 279 is a lab in which students work behind the scenes on performing arts presentations. Their work includes backstage technical work, multimedia support, and arts management.
PA 301 is a continuation of 201, though the emphasis is moved from written to oral communication skills.
In PA 401, interdisciplinary groups of performing arts students research a substantial project for the community, ending with the generation of a realizable proposal.
PA 402 is the capstone course in which the students with faculty guidance manage the actual preparation, execution, and assessment of a substantial project for the community.
PA ePortfolios will include the standard documents, such as a current résumé and samples of written work, but will stretch much farther to encompass a wide representation of individual and collaborative student work: sample audio clips of monologues, performances, recording, and productions projects, as well as links to visual files that capture scene lighting, sketches and realization of costumes and set designs. There might be a section of peer and professional reviews or awards and adjudicator commentary.
In performing arts, a portfolio is not a new concept. Going digital makes a lot of sense. Students will be prepared to market themselves with the latest laptop technology, showing a solid foundation of experience from which to grow in any direction they choose.