Student Exhibit to Highlight the “Art” in “Artifacts”

Student View exhibit on display at the Woodruff Arts Center in February 2012

by Jennifer Lux

Brittain Fellows! The time has come again to ask for your help in nominating student works for the annual exhibit of artifacts at the Ferst Center Galleries. The Brittain Fellows’ Arts Initiative Committee (formerly known as the Ferst Center Committee) will be selecting impressive multimodal artifacts for a professional gallery display. Nominate your students’ best work that incorporates written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal communication. We want their dazzling posters, Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, YouTube videos, photo essays, websites, written essays, podcasts, sculptures, paintings, or what have you. In order to get our hands on these amazing works, of course we need you!

Student View Exhibit at the Woodruff Arts Center

Brittain Fellows and LMC faculty may nominate up to three student works that would shine in a gallery installation or in a film screening to be held at the exhibit’s opening celebration. Works may be nominated from a current or recent class. Now is a good time to think about the outstanding student projects from semesters present and past. What are the artifacts you can’t stop talking about when your friends ask, “Digital pedagogy? Multimodal synergy? If your students don’t write traditional essays, what do they do? What do they learn about communication?”

This brings us to just one of many reasons having your students’ work in the exhibit is good for you as an instructor. First, the exhibit lets you show off the fruits of your labor in the classroom. Great artifacts stem from great assignments. Sharing student work with a wider audience helps you make a name for yourself as an innovative teacher, and it also helps you represent all the unique pedagogy and artifacts in the Writing and Communication Program. Second, having concrete examples of your students’ success can be highly valuable for your teaching portfolio when you go on the job market. The third and possibly most gratifying reason is that we get the chance to single out those artifacts that “stay with us” and to honor the creators who went the extra mile to achieve extraordinary results: meeting with us for individual conferences, visiting the Communication Center for feedback on multiple occasions, diligently revising, and going beyond the type of work and thinking that comes easily. We have served as cheerleaders and mentors for the best students and projects. When we nominate artifacts, we let our students know that their work matters both in and outside of the classroom.

PROCESS PIECE EXAMPLE

One change this year is that in addition to accepting nominations for final artifacts, the committee is also interested in receiving nominations for “process pieces,” which highlight the revision of artifacts. Drafts could be anything from an outline, a sketch, or an earlier version of the final draft. Here is an example  created by Ryan DeLouis, Sarah Hartwell, David Hendon, and Brennan Wall. These students in Dr. Jennifer Lux’s class created  a poster of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

Rough Draft