Some fields lend themselves to online learning more than others. It’s one thing to learn how to draft a business plan online, but learning the right brush stroke or mastering different drawing techniques can be a little more challenging.
“It’s a little more difficult to move fine arts to the online education arena, but it’s not impossible,” says Andy Fulp, vice president for educational technology at the Savannah College of Art and Design, which offers online degrees in various fine arts fields.
Distance learning is now starting to gain some momentum in the fine arts, experts say. In addition to SCAD, schools like the for-profit Academy of Art University and Sessions College for Professional Design have in the past few years begun offering online certificates and degrees. However, the accreditation of these programs varies, so students should do their research beforehand when making a decision about a certain program.
Many schools administer fine arts courses using learning management systems that enable students to post their work and critique that of others, communicate with the professor and engage in discussions. The fine arts online program offered through SCAD also uses a combination of video demonstrations and other forms of teaching, including screen sharing with an instructor.
[Explore online degrees that let students tap their intellectual and creative sides.]
At the same time, there are free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that focus on very basic drawing and painting skills, among other subjects. And companies like Kadenze offer free and for-credit fine arts classes online.
“Fine arts and creative education have been left out of online education,” says Ajay Kapur, president and CEO of Kadenze, an online platform that launched just last month and offers courses either for free or for college credit. “That was our motivation for building our technology.”
Here are some different types of fine arts classes and programs to choose from, depending on a student’s goals.
— Non-Credit Online Courses and MOOCs. A simple online search will yield plenty of results for free or relatively cheap online fine arts classes. TheVirtualInstructor.com provides students with several tutorial videos and written explanations, many at no cost, with membership and additional content made available for $19 a month. Another website, Universal Class, offers self-paced basic drawing, painting and design classes online for under $100. Students can also find aggregated lists of art-related MOOCs online.
— For-Credit Individual Courses. Companies like Kadenze and Sophia Learning give students a chance to earn college credit in fine arts.
Students can take Kadenze courses for free, but must pay a monthly membership fee to receive a certificate of completion, among other benefits, and for-credit classes cost $300 per credit hour. The college credit that students receive is recognized by the offering university, but the circumstances may vary when it comes to transferring credit to another institutions.
[Discover why an opportunity for credit gives new life to MOOCs.]
“Our goal is to have students become more prepared for that bachelor’s degree,” Kapur says. “This is a way to get started. You have access to these courses, and you can take them for credit for much less than it costs on campuses.”
At the same time, Sophia Learning offers a visual communications class online for $329, and students can earn three college credits, at least at the partnering universities that have agreed to accept it.
— Online Certificate Programs. A few colleges and universities offer fine arts certificates online as well.
At Sessions College, an undergraduate online certificate costs $375 per credit hour. The program’s students primarily consist of adult learners who have already earned a degree and want to simply improve in their abilities, and those who want preparation in the field before pursuing a master’s degree, says Gordon Drummond, president of Sessions College.
“The qualification is less interesting to them than developing their skills and helping their work progress,” Drummond says.
[Choose between an online graduate certificate, degree program.]
— Degree Programs. Some schools are now also offering completely online fine arts degree programs. These include Academy of Art University and the for-profit Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, as well as Liberty University, which offers a Master of Fine Arts in studio and digital arts at around $550 per credit hour.
SCAD also offers bachelor and master’s fine arts degrees with asynchronous courses that include video demonstrations, links to relevant articles and the ability to look back at previous lessons, Fulp says.
Experts say the decision to attain a degree as opposed to a certificate or taking an individual course depends on a student’s personal goals. A student who already has fine arts skills and is looking to work in academia at some point, for instance, would likely choose to pursue an online MFA, says Todd Smith, chair of the studio and digital arts department at Liberty.
Bri Bertoia is a student in SCAD’s online fine arts degree who started last year. Originally living in Georgia and studying on SCAD’s campus, she moved to Washington, D.C. for a full-time job in magazine photography editing. She says that video chatting and other modern technology makes maintaining a relationship with her professor simple.
“Sometimes it feels like I am getting that face-to-face time with my professor, which was something I wasn’t really expecting with e-learning, but I’m glad it was available,” she says.
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Fine Arts Programs Slowly Move Online originally appeared on usnews.com
