Author: Fred

#rhizo15? Really? Another MOOC?

According to Wikipedia, “If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant.” Which really means that a rhzome is one of those plants you just can’t get rid of.

You see it growing in your yard, and really, that’s ok. For a while. And then one day you want to get rid of it. The reason doesn’t matter, but as you pull and weed and dig, it slowly dawns on you – you can’t get rid of the damn thing unless you bring in the backhoe and remove all the dirt.

And even then, if a small piece of root gets missed, the bloody thing will come back!

…

And that’s just the point, isn’t it. The power of the rhizome as idea – it just won’t go away.

So – I’ll give it a try and see what happens. (Although sometimes I think the rhizome really flourishes best when treated with benign neglect…)

Returning from Göteborg

On January 28th and 29th, NORDICIL organised the annual gathering of Film School teachers in conjunction with the Göteborg International Film Festival. This forum has slowly grown over the years, and this year it expanded to two days with a focus on film school pedagogy.

Naturally, I could not resist presenting what has become a bit of a pet project lately: an organised course for film school teaching. The title of the presentation was «From Artist to Teacher: Developing a Peer-based Training Programme for Film School Teachers».

The background for the proposal is this: there is suprisingly little in the way of organised training for professional filmmakers who are getting into teaching. This means that filmmakers have to, in large part, find their own way when they enter the teaching profession – with varying degrees of success. In addition to this, film schools (and, in fact, arts schools in general) are facing increasing pressure to formalise their programmes and accreditation of teachers under the unrelenting pressure of the Bologna agreements.

Given this situation, it makes sense both from a teaching perspective and from a «keep the education bureaurats at bay» perspective, for film schools to design and run a formal teacher training programme themselves. And, given the lack of (formal) expertise in this area, it makes sense to adopt the principles of peeragogy.

In the coming weeks and months I will be elaborating on this, as I – along with (I hope) several Nordic colleagues – further develop this idea and plan and launch a blended, distributed, film school teacher training programme.

On Creativity

This was originally published on my personal blog on August 4th, 2014.

I read Stephen Downes’ blog regularly; I always find it thought-provoking and interesting. Today was no exception.

Today’s entry, entitled No Paradox Here (go read it at the source) inspired me to think about my own work at The Norwegian Film School, where creativity is our bread and butter…

Specifically, Downes quotes Spencer, who writes:

Creativity: It happens when students have freedom and limitations

His response is:

Creativity is possible even if there are limitations, but only if there is freedom.

Well…not exactly. And it depends on how you apply limitations and freedom.

We are a school for creative artists (filmmakers), and the entire programme is built around the conscious application of limitations in order to stimulate creativty. It’s not our own invention by any stretch, but we have over the years refined teaching methods that enable the students to both explore their own creativity and push the limits their own abilities through the imposition of limitations.

In our experience, too much freedom stifles creativity rather than encouraging it. (And yes, we do realise misguided use of limitations can also stifle creativity.) By specifiying a series of condititions for each film exercise the students are given we give them a well-defined area to explore, encouraging them to make mistakes and take chances within those limits.

There is theory for this, and we lean on Vygotski with his development of the concepts scaffolding and zone of proximal development, and also conscious of the importance of letting the students reach a state of flow. Being an arts school where all the teaching staff are practicing filmmakers, not trained educators has led us to set up weekly staff meetings where we discuss the students development, future teaching plans and the practical and theoretical aspects of this pedagogy.

So, in this case, Spencer is correct: creativity will only happen where there are both limitations and freedom — the limitations designed to encourage creativity and the freedom to explore within these limitations.

But Downes is also correct: this is no paradox. Rather, it is a necessary condition for creativity.

The connective triangle

At the 2002 CILECT congress in Melbourne there was a panel discussion called «Triangle: Six Years Later». The preamble to the papers presented states:

In 1996, CILECT began to address the issue of communication and collaboration among the creative triangle of writers, directors, and producers. Some viewed the Triangle project as a necessary corrective to the 1960’s auteur ideology that dominated many film schools. Others saw it as diminishing the role of the individual film artist in an increasingly market-oriented system. How has Triangle affected the film and television school curriculum, and what lessons can be learned from the process as well as the outcomes?

Shortly after the original introduction of the Triangle method at CILECT (at a conference in Rome), The Norwegian Film School (NFS) was founded as a film school firmly entrenched in the triangle tradition. This entry will build on a previous article and analyse the way in which the triangle is implimented at NFS, and look at the emerging educational theory of connectivism as a tool for understanding how the learning film school students achieve happens in the connections established within the triangle structure.

The Triangle basics

As can be seen in the transcript of «Triangle: Six Years Later» from the 2002 Melbourne Congress, one of the primary goals of the introduction of the Triangle was to strengthen the role of the producer as a creative partner for the director. The collaboration between these two, in cooperation with the screenwriter, became the focus of this method.

At the Norwegian Film School (and presumeably others as well), this collaboration was taken further, to include all the different departments taught at the school. This has become formalised as the «first» triangle (screenwriter, director and producer), the «second» triangle (cinematographer, production designer, and director and producer; and soon: the digital visual designer), and the «third» triangle (editor, sound designer, and director and producer). All three triangles are used in production exercises as a method for helping the student filmmakers communicate and collaborate.

There are both formal and informal elements in the Triangle; the formal are planned meetings where the members of a given triangle meet with the teachers in the relevant disciplines and discuss their projects. These meetings begin with the students presenting the status of their work at that stage. Depending on the project, this may be very rudimentary or quite advanced. The instuctors then provide feedback and guidance.

The sophistication of the students’ collaboration also increases as they go through the course of studies. In the first semester or two they don’t quite understand how to collaborate, let alone how to maximize each others skills and talents on a common project. It is not uncommon for one or more members of a triangle to complain that they are being ignored and simply used for their labour.

The second year of their studies most often sees a marked increase in the quality of their collaboration, as the students become more confident about their own place and skills, and gain a better understanding of the roles and talents of their teammembers. By the third year the students seek out each other, and and most collaborations work quite well. An observation at the Norwegian Film School has been that at this stage the learn more from each other than from their instructors.

Learning in the the Triangle

The informal aspects of the triangles are more intangible and, in a way, more interesting from a pedagogic point of view. As mentioned above, as the students move through the three years of their programme, they start to learn more and more from each other. And what I observe is that this learning falls in the pattern of

the central claim of connectivism, that the knowledge is found in the connections between people with each other and that learning is the development and traversal of those connections (Downes, Stephen. “E-Learning Generations” in Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. self-published epub, 2012)

The students make many connections as they go through their study. Each discipline (screenwriting, directing, etc.) consists of 6 students, and these students develop close collegial relationships where they support and critique each other. In addition, the students will through the production exercises work in at least 8 different constelleations where each discipline is represented; in these constellations they learn to collaborate and utlise their differing expertises.

Eventally we see that as teams are set and given a creative task, the very act of collaboration gives them the capacity to solve the task the school has given them. They seem to quite naturally find ways of utilising each others skills and expanding their own knowledge. Where the instructors have to cajole and instruct them early on in their studies, now they find their role becomes more traditinal mentoring with an emphasis on encouragement and support where necessary.

None of this is surprising. After all, we expect the students to improve and gain confidence and become more skillful. If they did not, they should not be pursuing this course of study. But what is interesting is examining how it happens, how our pedagogical approach can help (or, in some cases, perhaps hinder?) the students develop faster and emerge from their studies as more confident and interesting artists.

Film school pedagogics

Some initial thoughts about developing a training programme for instructors in film training at the BFA and MFA level

(originally published Nov. 19, 2012)

In Norway today all universities and høgskoler (University Colleges) provide pedagogic instruction for newly-hired teaching and research staff. Typically these courses will run part-time over the course of a year and yield 15 ECTS points. An example is the course in høgskolepedagogikk provided in collaboration between the Lillehammer, Gjøvik and Hedmark University Colleges which can be found here (Norwegian only).
These types of courses are designed to introduce the newly-hired (and anyone who wants a refreshment) staff to some of the issues and challenges facing teaching staff in modern higher education. They cover topics like «dannelse» (derived loosely from European classical education in the Humboldtian tradition), digital tools in education, ethics and so on.

Central to this type of course is a solid foundation in academia and the academic relationship to knowledge.

A question that has arisen for the Norwegian Film School recently is whether this kind of pedagogic training is appropriate for higher arts education in general – and film school education in particular. The reason the question comes up is that the kind of fine arts training offered by the Norwegian Film School does not have a relationship to knowledge in the academic sense. This form of fine arts training is wholly concerned with developing an artistic talent, and while the emerging artists need to develop certain skills within their chosen discipline, their academic knowledge about that discipline is irrelevant in the context of the training they receive.

What does this fine arts training look like?

The current programme at the Norwegian Film School is an intensive three-year training for artists within seven disciplines in filmmaking: screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, production design, editing, and sound. Six students are accepted into each discipline every second year, following a rigorous admissions process. the students are selected based on only two criteria:

  1. Does the applicant have talent in the chosen discipline? and
  2. Can that talent benefit from the education offered at the Norwegian Film School?

Once accepted, the students enter an intensive programme where they receive training within their chosen discipline – where there is, among other things, an emphasis on teaching them to become storytellers and artists within their discipline. They also work on production exercises with members of all the other disciplines (in teams chosen by the school), and attend classes in subjects common to all the disciplines, including dramaturgy & storytelling, artistic awareness, and visual storytelling (called «cinematurgy»). There are no elective courses; all workshops, projects, lectures, etc., are obligatory.

All of the education the students receive has one purpose and one purpose only: to guide them towards realising their talent as filmmakers. Any knowledge they might gain from, for example, film history is only interesting if it makes them more aware of the context in which their own artistic production occurs. As a result, there are no tests along the way, only evaluations, and – at the end of the third year – a final examination based on the presentation of both group and individual work.

The school is built around some basic pedagogical principles, including «the right to make mistakes» and «restrictions (or constraints) breed creativity» and filmmaking is a collaborative art. The application of these principles is most visible in the frequent production exercises.

Another tool used in these production exercises is the declaration of intent; a document each student in a film team must write before beginning their main contribution to the film. At the final screenings, the finished productions are measured, not against any subjective standard of quality, but purely as to what extent each individual member of the team was able to carry out his or her intentions.

What effect does this have on teaching?

All the teaching staff at the Norwegian Film School are filmmaking professionals, and none come from an exclusively academic background. Most have never taught before coming to teach at the Film School, but are highly regarded artists within their fields. Some have a background from academia but more do not.

Teaching staff in this form of intensive arts training must ensure that the students are closely followed up constantly; the role is much more like mentoring than traditional teaching. Often specific skills will be taught by external specialists, while the teaching staff guide the students to help them apply these skills in the production of their art.

Another challenge comes from the fact that as many of the teachers are working professionals, and continue to work while teaching, they share the responsibility for the students in their discipline with other part-time teachers. This makes it necessary for them to communicate closely with each other in order to ensure each individual student’s progress is monitored and appropriate feedback is given.

The primary duties of the Norwegian Film School teachers can then be summed up as follows:

  • Identify the emerging talents in the admissions process
  • Map out the existing skill level among the students, and use this to construct a training path appropriate for their skills and artistic development
  • Ensure the students take responsibility for their own development and challenge themselves outside their comfort zone
  • Give feedback which helps the students identify areas needing further development, and design and organise activities that will help the students develop these areas
  • Coordinate with colleagues in other disciplines both to identify and organise collaborative workshops and to ensure the common production exercises present the optimal challenge for all the students
  • Give feedback in the group evaluation sessions of the production exercises
  • Throughout all of the above, be responsible for helping the students realise their own potential as creative artists and storytellers

Things like lecturing, assigning readings, setting and marking written assignments, and the like are conspicuously and deliberately absent. However, the teachers are expected to have a solid grasp on their discipline in the Nordic film industry and be able to bring in guest lecturers and workshop instructors as needed.[1]

What training do these teachers need?

Teaching at an arts education is not a matter of ensuring the students achieve learning outcomes at certain levels of skills, knowledge and understanding, as outlined in the international guidelines relating to the European Qualifications Framework. The learning outcomes are much more intangible, given the primary goal is to develop each given student’s creative abilities. As a result, while there must be standards in use to measure the progress and development of each student, these standards are highly flexible as they are based on the starting point of each individual student rather than a more objective standard laid out in a permanent lesson plan.

At the same time, there must be some permanent standards by which the students are judged to have passed their studies and qualified are qualified to receive their BFA degree. This is done, not by judging the quality of the final films they make in their third year, but by measuring their own intentions for the films up against the final result and also by examine the process that led to the final film.

In order to achieve this, there are four areas in which teachers at the Norwegian Film School must be proficient.

  1. How to use their own experience
  2. Scaffolding the creative artist: theoretical frameworks
  3. The triangle method and connectivism
  4. The role of the mentor: tools, challenges and ethics

All four are naturally closely related, but could still be considered distinct topics of study for the new or potential film school teacher.

1. How to use their own experience

In all arts eduction, teachers are expected to be practitioners of the art they are training emerging talents for. They may or may not have attended some form of formal training at the start of their own careers, but the most important thing they bring with them to the institution is their own practice and experience.

In 2005, the Norwegian Film School published a series of booklets and DVDs by Professor Richard Ross called Training the Trainers (there’s a review of the booklets on p. 11 here). The main thrust of this publication is to assist members of all the key creative disciplines of filmmaking become more effective teachers and communicators of their accumulated experience and knowledge.

This publication is aimed at one of the main challenges facing instructors at film schools: how to take the knowledge and experience gained through a career in the film industry and use it to assist emerging talents start building their own experience and confidence. This is not easy, especially for those who may not have attended film school themselves. There is a world of difference between telling «war stories» and being able to use hard-won experience to guide students through their own process of making mistakes and developing their talent.

This must form the foundation of any pedagogical instruction aimed at helping film artists becoming proficient at teaching emerging talent. At this level, arts teachers must be able to know when to show something, and when to stand back and let the student try (and possibly fail) on their own. In the film world in particular there is an ethic of «getting the film made», where the temptation is to do whatever it takes to get the shots needed for the film. This ethic can lead instructors – particularly when mentoring in production situations, but also in discipline-specific workshops and instruction – to step in and assist the students. Sometimes, however, the students will learn more from not being successful, and the instructors’ challenge is to stand back, allow the mistake to be made, and help the student see what led to the mistake and how to avoid it in the future.

2. Scaffolding the creative artist

In her 2009 article Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination, Danish researcher Heidi Philipsen[2] writes,

I would like filmmakers interested in thinking «outside the box» to recognize that they can benefit from being placed «inside a box.» In others words, to work with the help of the didactic tool «scaffolding,» which in short is defined as support through constraints applied at different levels (Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976). The scaffolding employed at The National Film School of Denmark helps the students to cope with the pressure of creating film, find inspiration, and attain a flow experience (Csikszentmihaly 1996).

Like many other film schools, the Norwegian Film School operates with constraints (or restrictions) as a method for promoting creativity. The students are never given an production assignment where there are no constraints, although as they progress through the course of their studies the constraints become fewer and looser. At the most basic level, the constraints are designed to remove the panic of «What shall I do?» from the students, and instead get them thinking about «How do I do this?».

Philipsen has clearly explained how the deliberate use of constraints in a film school can be understood through Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and the further refinements of this through the discussion of scaffolding. Very simplified, the students are given a defined space in which to test their own boundaries, and the teachers act as mentors who assist the students in acquiring abilities and skills they did not have before.

Because these constraints are given to the students in their production exercises, they are tool both for developing the individual and the group; at its very core, filmmaking is a collective activity and all members of the collective must operate under the same restrictions and understanding. This places a special onus on the teaching staff, as they must be unified in their understanding of the constraints placed on any given exercises and able to apply these constraints in a consistent manner.

At the Norwegian Film School, the teaching staff discuss the parameters and constraints of each given exercise before it is given to the students. While there are pre-determined guidelines and themes that are followed from year to year, the exact assignment is determined based on the perceived need of the particular group of students at their particular level of skill. The key is to design a set of constraints and challenges that will fall within the zone of proximal development; that challenge the students to attempt things outside their own comfort zone, but are still achievable.

In order to encourage the students to focus on their own learning, and to test and expand their own boundaries, the Norwegian Film School uses «declarations of intent». For each and every production exercises, each member of the filmmaking team must write her own declaration of intent: «What do I intend to learn / improve / discover / etc. on this particular exercise?» The content of this declaration is worked out by the student in consultation with the head teacher / mentor for her discipline, and is completed and handed in before the primary creative work begins. All teammembers are expected to be familiar with the declaration of intent of all other teammembers.

At the evaluation of the final film projects, when the whole school is assembled, each individual teammember reads his declaration aloud, and feedback and questions must relate only to the declaration of intent. Judgements of taste about the quality of the film are not permitted. This truly places each student’s learning and development in focus.

This unit focussing on the theory behind scaffolding and the zone of proximal development will give the teachers the tools to be effective at this pedagogical approach, and be able to arrive at a common understanding and approach with their colleagues.

3. The triangle method, nodes and connectivism

Many film schools work according to the «Triangle method», a method of working in film that emphasises the collective nature of the filmmaking process.[3] Sometimes misunderstood as a belitteling of the importance of the director, the triangle method focusses on the filmmaking team as a team of creative artists working collaboratively to achieve the creative vision of the director.

Each student, then, is at any given time in the production process (which occupies a great deal of their time at film school), a member of (at least) three different constellations – they are a member of their own discipline along with the other students of the same discipline; they are a member of a film team along with one member of each of the other disciplines; and they are a member of a triangle focussing on one particular aspect of the film. On top of this may come any other cooperative workshops between disciplines that may place the students in other constellations.

In order to understand and guide the learning process the students are in when in these constellations, it is useful to turn to connectivism.[4] While this theory is designed to explain distributed learning through digital networks, there are some useful elements that can help understand how learning is spread among nodes in a network, where the «nodes» can replace the «constellations» referred to above.

A broader discussion of how connectivism relates to film school pedagogics is a subject for another time, but it is clear that much of the learning achieved by film school students is in the nodes and networks in which they are placed throught their time at the Film School. Not only do they learn directly from each other independent of their instructors, they also learn simply from the fact of being in their different node and networks. They are constantly having to adjust to new situations and relationships and find ways of expressing their creative talents within these situations.

The challenge for film school teachers is understanding this type of learning, and being able to identify when and how it is happening; and using the results of this learning to help the students be aware of their own progress.

4. The role of the mentor: tools, challenges and ethics

At the Norwegian Film School, an instructor works closesly with the same group of 6 students over the course of 3 years. This is a completely different scenario than at almost any other regular academic programme, where the instructors have more students and see them less frequently. Combined with the fact that filmmaking, like any creative process, can be very instensive, the personal bonds that develop between teacher and student is much stronger at film school than at most other programmes.

In addition, there are the same issues of confidentiality faced by all educators and the question how to handle critical feedback of (potentially) sensitive artistic students. Both the close relationships that develop and the fact that the work being evaluated can be of an intensly personal nature places makes a focus on professional ethics and an understanding of the role and tools available to a mentor of prime importance.

This final topic area of instruction for film school teachers must give them the tools to handle these situations, and, more importantly, the tools to handle situations for which there can be no set protocoll but that must be handled on a case-by-case basis.

  1. Launching a proposal to train film school teachers is not a new initiative from the Norwegian Film School. In the booklet «Back to the Future: Where to We Go From Here?» in the Training the Trainers package, Professor Richard Ross makes an argument for a European teachers training institute, which would be responsible for training filmmakers who are entering the teaching profession. The challenge is most acutely felt at the film schools where the teachers are recruited from active careers in the film industry, and expect to return to these careers; in other words – teaching, for them, is temporary activity and the training they receive must reflect this fact.  ↩
  2. In 2004 Philipsen published her seminal study of the Danish Film School called Dansk films nye bølge, afsæt og aftryk fra den Danske Filmskole (The New Wave of Danish Film – Influences and Imprints from The National Film School of Denmark), which examined the effect of the pedagogic philosophy of the Danish Film School on the so-called «new wave» of Danish filmmakers. She places this teaching philosophy squarely within the constructivist tradition of Vygotsky, and the definition of scaffolding that has arisen out of that tradition. This study has had great influence on film schools, among them the Norwegian Film School whose current Dean, Danish film producer Thomas Stenderup, also attended the Danish Film School concurrently with some of the leading filmmakers of the new wave.  ↩
  3. The Norwegian Film School works with three «triangles»: what is called the first, or «story» triangle, consisting of the Director, Producer and Screenwriter; the second or «visual» triangle, consisting of the Director, Cinematographer and Production Designer (and Producer); and the third, or «post» triangle, which brings together the Director, Editor and Sound Designer (and Producer). At the Norwegian Film School, each one of these disciplines is trained as a creative artist and storyteller in their own right but they are also taught to collaborate in order to achieve the director’s vision. The challenge of the director, in this situation, is to communicate her vision clearly and to lead the team in such a way that each member is able to make the best possible creative contribution to the film.  ↩
  4. Connectivism as a learning theory was launched in 2005 by Canadians George Siemens and Stephen Downes as a way of understanding how learning is distributed through digital networks. With the subsequent rise of MOOCs in recent years the theory has found increased purchase, although it is not without critics.  ↩

«Surviving Bologna» – a presentation, summary

I attended the Swedish Research Council’s annual symposium on artistic research on November 27th and 28th, and while there gave a presentation I had called «surviving Bologna». The talk – and the slides – were in Norwegian, but I have translated the slides, and post them here with some comment (since they are a little cryptic on their own).

I will emphasize: this is not a transcript, and I was a little more detailed and a little less flippant when actually presenting. But the content is more or less the same.

Not much to say about this one; I introduced myself and The Norwegian Film School.

Wasn’t the European education landscape lovely before Bologna? Wild, varied…and somewhat unpredictable.

This got a laugh. And, I’ll admit, I hoped it would.

It’s a fair depiction of how I view the aims of the Bologna agreements: create a uniform landscape where the «product» – the students – are ready for commercial exploitation. (i.e. the labour market).

I started working at the Norwegian Film School in 2009, and around the same time we received word that all arts educations in Norway were going to have to adhere to the new national regulations derived from the European Qualifications Frameworks – the product of the Bologna agreements.

We determined, rather quickly, that we needed to define this turf for ourselves, rather than sitting back and waiting for someone else to do it for us. Most likely in a way we would not appreciate… We did, however, have to teach ourselves some new terminology like «learning outcomes» and «Blooms taxonomy» as we felt we needed to master this language ourselves if we were going to make good use of it.

This also meant delving in to the relationship between conventional academic education and fine arts education.

The more we looked at it, the more apparent it became that our approach to education is fundamentally different from what one finds in (most) academic programmes.

I probably should have put quotes around the word «common» here, but regardless:

As far as I know, the classification of higher education done by the OECD in 1973 was the first attempt to compare higher education systems around the world. One unfortunate byproduct of this work was to place fine arts as a subset of humanities, effectively reducing the importance and autonomy of art schools connected to universities. While there has been much work done the past 15 years to change that classification, it represents a mindset we still encounter every day.

As a result we needed to spend a lot of time and effort creating a new landscape.

In this view, fine arts education is completely autonomous from and parallel to academic programmes – although we are naturally still part of the education landscape. The important point is to make it clear that much of what is applicable to one is not applicable to the other (although there is naturally some overlap as well)

Just claiming a difference is not enough, of course. It has to be clarified.

The $64,000 question.

We can begin to answer it by looking at the way learning outcomes are structured.

Knowledge is key to all education, on some level. We take «knowledge» very seriously indeed. Not only are many disciplines in filmmaking extremely technical, working on a film set can potentially be fatal if people don’t know what they’re doing. Both Norway and Sweden have seen deaths occur on film sets in recent years.

Add to that people are working with electricity, power tools and construction, traffic…there is a lot of stuff filmmakers have to know.


But – we never formally test the students in what they know. The have to demonstrate knowledge constantly, but they will never be tested in it.

Skills are another important learning outcome under the EQF, and given that filmmaking can be viewed as a skilled profession, acquisition of skills can also be seen as important. And indeed, operating sound equipment, setting proper lighting, creating an appropriately distressed look on the walls of a set; these are a small handful of the many skills Film School students are expected to learn and, in some cases, master over the course of their three years.

Again, as with knowledge, however – their skills will never be formally tested. There is no lighting exam.

How can this be? Well, quite simply, we are not a professional school; our mandate does not end with the skills our students acquire – it begins there.

And that is what «general competence» is about, isn’t? What can the student do with their knowledge and skills.

Although…we never really liked that word «general».

«Artistic competence» is much more telling, and gives us a chance to define what it actually is the students will be tested in (more on that later).

Once we had set the ground rules on how we approach learning outcomes, we need to define the learning outcomes themselves. This was a time-consuming process, and involved going though lesson plans, placing them in some kind of order, identifying holes, rewriting, hounding teachers for revised plans, rewriting those…

In March of 2011 we had a revised and updated description of the Film School’s study programmes.

That left a small problem we had created for ourselves.

Just how does one test and evaluate artistic competence?

Luckily, we have the appropriate tool. Years ago, the Norwegian Film School did what artists around the world have been doing since the origin of art: we stole a good idea from someone else and made it our own.

This is the «hensiktserklæring», which can be translated as either «declaration of intent» (more literal) or «statement of intent». I prefer the latter, primarily since the «declaration» seems unnecessarily bombastic.

For every production exercise the students make throughout their studies at the Film School, the students must write a statement of intent. Early in the studies these are quite simple, but as they progress through the programme they become more and more elaborate and detailed.

We (the teaching staff) put together the teams (one member from each of the disciplines we teach). Each team has to come up with a collective statement of intent and each individual team member must then write his or her own. These are written with guidance from each students’ teacher, and must be completed before the main creative work begins. For example, a director will hand in the statement of intent before principal photography begins, while the sound person (who will do both production sound and post sound) will hand hers in once she has seen the locked picture edit.

So – what goes into this thing?

First of all, the student needs to describe what she wants to achieve with this exercise – artistically / creatively. We give the students fairly specific tasks for the production exercises, and so they are already set on a fairly narrow path, but there is still a fair bit of leeway to be creative and express oneself artistically.

The key is that they are specific; the example I used in the presentation is «I want the audience to feel sad, even cry, at the end of the sequence.»

Ok. How?

This is the key to an effective statement of intent: the how.

«I am going to work with my actors to help them find a way of conveying the pain the character is feeling without slipping into cliched gestures.»

«I will find use a still camera with only subtle movement that finds a framing that leads the viewer closer to the character and their emotional state.»

«I will create a soundscape that gently brings the audience into the characters head at the same time as the camera brings us physically closer to him. I will highlight this with instrumental music that is melancholy without being sentimental.» 

All made-up examples, but they give an idea of what the statement of intent could contain.

We are extremely rigid about never commenting on the «quality» of a finished production exercise in an evaluation situation. To put it bluntly: we leave it to the film critics to opine about whether a film is good or not.

What we do it read through the statements of intent and discuss and analyse whether the intent has been achieved. Why and why not are key questions. A good quality evaluation situation can only occur if the statement of intent has been specific – and ambitious enough to allow for the possibility of failure. If students never fail, they’re not trying hard enough…

Procedurally it’s simple: the whole class and all the teachers gather; we see the film and hear the statements of intent read out loud. We then discuss these statements with the members of the team. Often another film team will be assigned the task of leading the discussion, both to ensure that everyone participates in the end and also to ensure that the students get to speak first.

Invariably it takes a few months for the students to get the hang of this process, but generally they become quite adept at it during the second semester of their studies.

A long-term benefit of this practise is that it teaches the students to reflect over their own artistic practice constantly, leading them to become more confident and skilled artists.

The final stage was to define the structure of the educational programmes at the Film School.

The Norwegian word here is «emne», which, depending on the country you’re from, could be «subject» or «class».

You take a certain number of classes throughout your degree programme, with some electives along the way, and this way construct a programme that leads to a specific degree. Most of these classes, or subjects, are relatively self-contained, with their own set of requirements for successful completion.

At the end of each one you get a certain number of points or credits, and when you have enough – you graduate.

Not so at the Norwegian Film School. Although we on paper do have subjects, these subjects are fluid and blend in to each other. They are integrated, and none of them are completed before the entire programme is completed.

It is only at the end, after completing the 3-year, integrated whole, that you will have competed all the subjects.

Which, of course, means there is only one exam. At the end, and it’s for the whole pot of 180 ects credits.

The basis for the exam is the examination film, a 25-minute dramatic film the students have made in teams the final year. In addition, all disciplines other than director and producer have a personal project they have completed which gives them an opportunity to explore some aspect of their specific discipline in more depth.

As with production exercises, the statement of intent is key. The film will not be judged on some theoretical measure of quality, but the students contribution is judged on the basis of their specific and detailed intentions.

What the exam really tests in the end, is: has the student been able to use the knowledge and skills they gained to develop as an artist?

Each student should have a much greater understanding of what kind of artist they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, where their potential lies. Insight is key, both for developing as an artist and, more prosaically, for passing the exam.

What about the other way around? How does the Film School develop?

For every workshop, every lecture, every production exercise: students give us feedback, most often written feedback. The purpose is twofold: we believe that when students give feedback on a given workshop or other module, they raise their own awareness about what they’ve learned.

The other side of it is we can constantly monitor what’s working and what isn’t, and dynamically adjust the course of the education. We use this feedback both to adjust what’s coming for the current class, and of course to plan an altered course for the next class.

As a result, we never have successive groups of students who have identical experiences – although the broad strokes are certainly recognizable.

Ok, so this slide didn’t really work.

I tried to draw an analogy between being out on a dark night experiencing a meteor shower and both being awestruck by the beauty and gaining an awareness of your place in the cosmos, and the experience you get when faced with great art. I then went on to say we want to produce artists who can give an audience these experiences.

A little bit about what’s next for the Norwegian Film School.

And referring back to the flowers at the beginning: we want fine arts education to partake in designing the landscape. It has to be done by people who understand how this kind of education works and what it needs.

There wasn’t much time for questions, unfortunately.

“The future of education” in #edcmooc

Really, I should be finishing a grant proposal, due Monday. But…#edcmoocing is more fun.

Hardly a small thing we are to contemplate in the second week of #edcmooc. The very future of digital technology and education, no less… Is this a future to look forward to? To dread? Is it coming no matter what we do? Can we controll what’s coming? Will it be recognizable?

Questions humans have worried about since the beginning of time, I suspect.

This week’s films look at ubiquitous technology in a near future, with the most realistic being A Digital Tomorrow, the only one which looks a mundane «warts and all» future where technology is just as capricious and unreliable as we experience it to be today – and, just like today, even the unreliable technology is indispensible.

What makes this interesting to me is the fact that as we take technology into the classroom, and begin to develop didactic methods based on technology, the fact is: sometimes it just doesn’t work. The net goes down, the os crashes, an app update interrupts, or information is mysteriously not presented the way it ought to be because of some strange glitch.

The two ads for Corning and Intel present a «perfect» future, where technology is seamlessly integrated into every part of our lives and just works. This technology is «invisible» in the sense that one does not have to think about it, just use it. This is the way we want our technology, which is what makes the worlds being presented so appealing (at least, at first glance).

Problem is, the world jus’ don’ work like that.

Anyone who has struggled to connect a laptop to a projector has experienced this (usually subject to some version of Murphy’s Law).

This too, is the future of education. Things will not work as desired, usually at the worst possible time.

However, that is not what this week was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about metaphor, and the use of metaphor in the films and how that relates to education. An opportunity to delve deeper into the dangers of using digitial tools as mere versions of physical objects, allowing us to continue teaching the way we have for centuries insead of exploring new ways of constructing the teacher-student relationship that builds on the potential of the technology.

But Murphy’s Law was more appealing.

Back to that grant proposal.

Determining my attitude to determinism within #edcmooc

First, a dislosure: I have been stuggling with moocguilt this week. You know the one, the guilt that strikes when you come home from a draining day at work, and, after a family dinner, sit down with a computing device and say to yourself: «I will now reactivate my brain and go the #edcmooc resouces and get moocing! There are connecitons to be made, learning to encounter». And seconds later, comes the little follow-up «But first I need to relax a bit.» Some Twitter, catching up on some rss feeds, some mindless surfing…and before you know it the evening has passed you by.

I seem to remember that is what did me in last time as well.

And then I realise – this is what life is like now, isn’t it. Academics, teachers, students, goodness knows who (everyone) else. I have the world at my fingertips, through this science fiction-like technology I controll with my fingertips, and there I times when it is overwhelming. Quite beyond my capacity to controll at times.

Is this deterministic? Have I fallen prey to the effects of a technology that har inevitably changed both my, and the society in which I live? A technology that has changed the way society works, the way education works, the very way our brains work?

Trouble is, there’s this little nagging voice that reminds me that I did not suddenly learn procrastination when I acquired my first modem in 1993. On the contrary, I was quite adept at it before. When I see my teenager procrastinating online, I am reminded that as a teenager I procrastinated with television, dungeons and dragons, mindless doodling, comics, and whatever else was more interesting than the task at hand (yes, also in class). Rather than adding to my consumption of mindless crap, access to the internet has replaced one source of mindless crap – television – with another – my iPad.
 
The difference being that I can – and do –  actually use the iPad for productive reading and writing as well.

Of couse technology has affected both myself and society, but when I look at education, for example, I am far more worried about the creeping (and not so creeping) commercialisation of education than about the use of computers and other ed-tech in the classroom. I believe the commercial forces are taking advantage of technology to extend their grip, rather than the spread of technology driving the increasing commericalisation of society. (That’s a whole other discussion I won’t get into here)

Have I changed in 20 years online?

I should bloody well hope so! I am 20 years older and wiser (or at least more experienced).

Has that change been determined by technological advances? No, I do not think so – although it has definitely been affected by them.

A take on dystopia. Or is it utopia? A stream of consciousness blog for #edcmooc

Ok, then. #edcmooc has begun, and the first unit is about utopias and dystopias. Naturally enough, given the focus on digital culture and education, we are to look at the first assignment while contemplating education…

At first we are asked to watch 4 short films. They are

All of them have a different take on technology.

Bendito Machine is a fairly standard parable about the dangers of technology, specifically televion, telling us how it corrupts a society. The more subtle background is a commentary on how perhaps humans are dependent on something to worship, and whether it is a gold calf or high-tech dancing television beast is not important to us. Indeed, the people in the film are quick to discard their idols for the next impressive thing, as their overflowing landfill will attest to.

Inbox is more sweet, a fable about connections, showing how if we allow ourselves to connect based on content rather than appearances, suprises and even love may ensue. The "inbox", in this case, is a magical paper bag – or rather, two, connected paper bags. In this case communications technology becomes a magical force bringing unlikely lovers together.

Thursday is the most complex of the selection. We are introduced to an urban nightmare, a sterile, mechanised, soul-sucking cityscape. And yet, within this seemingly sterile enviornment, life seems to thrive. A bird feeds and raises her three chicks. A man and a woman find each other and love. A clever twist on the dystopian tale, where the victor seems to be life and hope.

NewMedia is mostly a nightmarish meditation, where machines seem to float around feeding on the brains/thoughts/souls of the few humans around.

And so?

Science fiction is full of dystopias; words that tell us about the dangers of science, technology and messing with nature. It has been that way since the dawn of recorded history, starting with the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire from the gods. Progress is dangerous, and for all the benefits it also brings disaster for both the giver and receiver. Frankenstein is another example, where grave consequences are the result of meddling with nature. In real life, the introduction of cane toads into the Australian fauna can be seen as an example of a similar hubris.

Don’t mess with nature. Science will lead us to disaster; one of the more common themes of science fiction, especially now that we all see so clearly how human "progress" is poisoning our very planet and endangering our future.

The list of films that paint a rather bleak picture of the future is long. Metropolis. Westworld. Blade Runner.

Even films that at the outset seem to have a more positive view of technology end up with a rather bleak view, with a prime example being 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even a film like Source Code, where the technological progress saves a city has a downbeat ending.

One of the few examples of an unconditionally positive view of technologial progress is the Star Trek universe, and even here there are plenty of warnings and the two most recent films seem to have abandoned techno-optimism altogether.

Ok, then. What about education and digital cultures? That is what we are supposed to be reflecting on, isn’t it?

I don’t know yet.

I love gadgets and the connections the internet allows me to explore.

I think networked education has a huge potential, one I have experienced myself through experiments with things like #etmooc, #moocmooc, #ooe13, and, more recently, the Norwegian #smartlæring.

But, at the same time, the potential of networks to be misused is frightening – and Edward Snowden is not the first to point this out. We have been warned about it for a long time. This is a dystopian view of the world as it is today, and it is chillingly convincing.

What does it mean to educate within digital cultures in the modern surveillance state? What should I, as an educator, think about. What should I teach my students about this.

I am reminded about the slogan sometimes used by supporters of the national rifle associaton in the the USA:

Guns don’t kill people. People [with guns] kill people.

To which the obvious retort is:

So keep the damned guns away from the people!

But we can’t do that.

Can we?

And, even if we could – do we want to?

These thoughts are not yet digested, but I seem to have been chewing on them for some time now. This block in #edcmooc has just brought them to the surface again…

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