In an evolving arts industry, professional business skills are critical for higher education arts graduates. Through blended learning practices and curricular integration with career services, an arts conservatory is tackling this challenge to ensure students have equitable access to entrepreneurial resources to build and sustain creative careers in the arts.
Across many fields, general industry trends are moving toward an increasing percentage of creative workers pursuing diverse portfolio careers with freelance elements. This diversity makes the task of creative educators more challenging. To meet these evolving employment needs, higher education institutions need to provide appropriate training and resources to prepare students for diverse career paths. This session will discuss the use of blended learning and curricular integration in the context of a higher education arts. We demonstrate how an institution can increase scalability of general resources while also offering flexibility, mentoring opportunities, and personalized learning pathways for students.
The arts conservatory’s Professional Studies curriculum compliments students’ high-level artistic education with leadership, collaboration, and entrepreneurial skills that prepare them for the unique and changing needs of today’s cultural environment. Three core courses complement each other and scaffold the student learning experience, creating a strong and scalable entry point to career development support and resources for undergraduate and graduate students. Arts graduates across the country report substantial gaps in financial, business management skills, and entrepreneurship. This curriculum is designed to fill these gaps and better prepare graduates with essential skills that will enable them to create satisfying and sustainable creative careers in the arts. The courses address key career skills such as preparing professional marketing materials, website building, networking, basic finance, and grant writing.
The professional services team collaborated with the instructional design team to redesign two of the required courses for a blended learning delivery. The courses offer rich technological integration, both real-time synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities, spatial choices for faculty and students, and high-tech pedagogical strategies. The courses also feature interactive e-learning modules, authentic assessments, peer learning workshops, and robust practice and feedback opportunities. By utilizing a combination of blended approaches, students can interact with the content on their own terms and engage in flexible ways that are most effective for them.
The online course content allows the professional services department to scale career resources such that they are accessible to all students. The scaled resources increase staff and faculty bandwidth to offer personalized attention that meets each student where they are, leveraging both in-person and online interactions. Individual meetings with faculty and professional services staff occur either on campus or remotely, complement asynchronous instruction, and provide students with personalized feedback. The professional services department also manages a large adjunct faculty base to provide students with access to numerous arts industry experts.
The blended construction of the courses allows for a diverse range of faculty voices and student choices of remote or in-person instruction. The faculty are working professionals spanning a variety of arts careers including performers, executive directors, ethnomusicologists, orchestra leaders, music producers, among others. Each semester, adjunct faculty are onboarded by the professional services team and receive a detailed course guide including syllabus, schedule of events, grading rubrics, and weekly announcement templates. In addition, a teaching assistant managed by the professional services team supports each faculty member. This practice provides a consistent learning experience and appropriate administrative support to ensure both faculty and student needs are met.
Students can complete the fully accessible digital content asynchronously, attend synchronous panel discussions, guest speakers, or guided workshop sessions with their class, then connect individually with faculty on campus or remotely for personalized feedback. They receive detailed feedback on authentic assessments like building a website and submitting a grant application for an original project. Students also meet with instructors and can access additional support from professional services staff to develop their resumes, articulate an artistic mission, and curate multimedia work samples.
We’ll discuss the student experience and learning outcomes. Data from course evaluations, student and instructor surveys, and student artifacts will be shared. We will also share organizational data related to scale of student impact, coaching support and engagement with professional services, and outcomes related to applications and awards.