Lesson title | Introduction to Afrofuturism |
Type (asynchronous, synchronous, or blended) | Blended |
Intended duration (in minutes) | 45min |
Lesson objectives (What will learners be expected to develop by the end of this lesson?) |
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Resources (What resources will be used?) |
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Key development areas (What key areas from the whole course does this lesson intend to work on?) |
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Assessments (What assessments will this lesson make use of?) | Evaluating and establishing pre-existing understanding of the place of African aesthetics within contemporary visual culture through the analysis and presentation of the learner’s own context and understanding. |
Teaching and learning activities |
Stage (Where are learners in their learning journey?) | Lesson activity or task (What will the learners and teachers do?) | Resources used (What resources will be used in this activity or task?) |
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Learners have been exposed to traditional historical art movements and are exercised in interpretating visual culture and they must draw on what they remember. | Pre-class forum discussion about the relevance of Euro- centric art history to the African context | Online discussion forums |
Through the engagement with the content and tasks the students will build an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Afrofuturism | content and tasks the students will build an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Afrofuturism Video about a discussion of Afrofuturism by Sunu Gonera on finding his voice, Afrofuturism and making heroes out of ordinary people at the 2018 Design Indab | Video |
Through the engagement with the content and tasks the students will build an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Afrofuturism | Interactive images highlighting some of the examples presented in the video providing more specific contextual and semiotic information. | Interactive images and video |
Students need to apply what they have learned, and they need to be able to evaluate example | Groupwork task. Identify an artifact from contemporary African visual culture to analyse and discuss and present the findings in terms of its embodiment of Afrofuturism ideals as they understand it at this point, and how it is situated within the greater Art Historical context. | Class Presentation and discussion |
Rational:
The learning knot I identified previously pertains to the lack of student engagement with the learning content, especially in the area of Art History. Two of the possible reasons for this could be that the relevancy of the learning content is questioned, as well as the traditional presentation of this type of module were very text-heavy with a lot of vocational jargon. In response to this, the learning activities I chose seek to alleviate these concerns by making the content specifically related to the students' context and presenting it in an interactive and engaging manner.
Firstly the Pre-class forum discussion about the relevance of Euro-centric art history to the African context is a means through which the students can bring their opinions to the table. In this way, the students are becoming active participants in the learning discussion and can learn from each other in a social context instead of only receiving information from the lecturer. Although this discussion does not specifically pertain to the topic of Afrofuturism, it does serve to set the backdrop to further learning and discussions. It also places the learning to come in a milieu that is relevant to the students' own context.
To foster more physical engagement with the learning content I included interactive images and videos highlighting some of the examples presented in the video which provide more specific contextual and semiotic information. By presenting information as clickable popups with relevant information at a specific point in the video or on specific areas of the image makes the engagements more active and engaging, pulling the student into the learning content. This also serves to chunk the information and break the traditional walls of texts associated with art history content.
With these two activities, I seek to unravel the knot of the lack of engagement on both a cognitive and physical level.
This particular lesson is envisioned as the introductory session in a series of sessions for unpacking the narrative of Afrofuturism. Drawing from the 5E model this lesson will serve as the Engage and Explore phases. Through the forum discussion, the students will draw on existing knowledge to inform their engagement with the concepts presented in the lesson. The video and examples provide a bit of guidance surrounding the topic leading up to the Explore phase where the students work socially in groups to analyse and hypothesise interpretations of examples they source from their own cultural-historical context. This links the learning content to real-world examples that carry relevance to the students. The rest of the phases of the 5E model will be engaged within subsequent lessons and eventually return to their sourced examples from this session. This also correlates with Merrill's first principles of existing knowledge forming the foundation of new knowledge and incorporating real-world problems and examples.
This particular lesson forms part of an ongoing module pertaining to a reimagining of the History of Art. As a module that forms part of most graphic design courses, it suffers from the perceptions of a lack of relevancy of a Euro-centric art-historical overview in the Post-Colonial African context. Through the focus in this session shifting to contemporary African visual culture, it situates the content within the Cultural-historical context of the students'. The activities are also geared towards a more socially orientated learning environment.
Opening up the analysis to student sourced examples allows for the multicultural makeup of the class to bring their own cultural-historic backgrounds to the discussion and to engage with the content from their perspective. They are also afforded to demonstrate and apply their new knowledge and prepare to expand on it in further lessons and integrate it into their world as a foundation for visual culture production.
By focussing on the students own pre-existing knowledge in this lesson and spreading the content over several lessons, the cognitive load is lessened and information is scaffolded more effectively. The learning content also engages the different senses we use for learning. By providing both video and textual content with elements of interactivity the learners are seeing, reading, hearing and doing.
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