In the midst of San Jose State’s shift to online classes, faculty members teaching the arts have faced difficulties replicating the interactive elements of their classes.
“We’re finding creative ways to help [students] still create on a smaller scale,” Heather Cooper, associate director of the school of music and dance, said to the Spartan Daily over the phone. “They’re making things that they can fit inside their apartment like a hand gesture dance study, where they have to choreograph just using their hands. They’re doing things like a study where they use props, and they choreograph with props.”
However, Cooper said that technique and performance-based classes require hours of hands-on training that cannot be replicated online.
“[Dance majors] have to take some of the choreography and modify it so that they’re doing it just on themselves in a small space,” Cooper said. “Then we will put together a short dance film and edit it and release it as a virtual performance.”
During a preparational meeting between dance faculty members, Cooper said her colleague argued that it can be empowering for dancers to perform with limitations.
Spatial art professor, Shannon Wright, said in a phone interview she has safety concerns for students using sharp tools on their own.
“I don’t even want my students using X-Acto knives right now,” Wright said. “I don’t want them to use anything that they could possibly hurt themselves with because you can’t just go to [the hospital] and get a stitch if you cut yourself right now.”
Instead, Wright assigned her woodworking students to sketch a hypothetical wooden bench to submit online.
“They’re going to make a measured drawing of a bench that’s a little more adventurous than what they would have been making as a first project,” Wright said. “They’re going to use all the joints that I’ve taught them to come up with something a little more ambitious, imaginative and possibly difficult.”
The pieces could be far more artistic than practical, the professor said.
“They can veer into sculptural territory if they want. They don’t have to stay strictly furniture,” Wright said.
Lecturer Galen Lemmon teaches applied percussion lessons at SJSU and said he is uncertain of how to resume his curriculum online.
“[Percussion musicians] deal with a lot of different percussion instruments,” said Lemmon over the phone. “Some of those instruments are housed there at San Jose State in the music department, which the students don’t have access to.”
Lemmon is reverting to written assignments and YouTube videos.
“I think musicians are really being hurt just in general and of course that includes students too,” Lemmon said. “Because a lot of the students at San Jose State play in community orchestras or they get hired to play a gig at a church and none of those things are happening. They’ve lost all that work as well.”
Lance Fung, a studio art professor, said he was concerned whether Zoom meetings would affect creating an introspective environment for his students in his Medium and Message class.
“One of the most difficult things for young artists and art students is to make an artwork that reflects themselves and shares their thoughts, their emotions, things they don’t even know about themselves,” Fung said over the phone. “So what I’m teaching is introducing that notion of content, a narrative to their work.”
However, she said that some students who would not regularly speak up in class, now from the comfort of their own homes, have decided to enter class discussions.
In light of Santa Clara County’s shelter-in-place order, Fung said he is making the best out of the current circumstances.
“These kids are paying a ton of money. They’re borrowing money, They’re working for this. I’m going to give it my all and if they can learn the same amount or more, that’s even better,” Fung said. “It’s real life right now. It’s no longer university stuff. This is real life stuff.”
