Reimagining Education: Embracing the Power of Media Arts

As explained in my book and podcasts on Media Arts Education, the current educational paradigm, what I would call traditional education (TE), is based on the flawed assumption that learning is primarily about content retention, as measured through tests. This antiquated, pseudo-factory approach prioritizes passive presentation and consumption, which results in shallow understanding, and is intrinsically biased against students with socioeconomic disadvantages.

Media Arts Education (MAE) reorganizes education as an experiential, student-centered process that mirrors the natural ways our minds learn, with the school system flexibly supporting and accommodating their personal capacities and preferences.

Engagement Through Creation:

• MAE is embodied cognition in action, utilizing multimodal synthesis and aesthetic empathy to engage students in deep, meaningful learning.

• Imagine a media arts laboratory buzzing with creativity. Students are not passively absorbing information but actively constructing knowledge through hands-on projects.

• Exemplary MAE projects highlight this dynamic learning approach:

• Students design their ideal future city using 3D modeling and printing, applying math, engineering, and sustainability principles.

• An augmented reality project brings history to life, with students creating interactive exhibits exploring ancient civilizations.

• A video game based on a sci-fi novel integrates physics simulations, storytelling, and advanced mathematics.

• A transmedia mental health campaign empowers students to address real-world issues through creative media production.

• These projects are not mere add-ons to the curriculum. They are the curriculum, seamlessly weaving together various disciplines and igniting students' intrinsic motivation.

Contrasting Traditional and Media Arts Education:

Feature	Traditional Education (TE)	Media Arts Education (MAE)
Learning Model	Content-centered, passive retention	Experiential, student-driven construction
Instructional Approach	Teacher-directed, textbook-based	Collaborative, project-based
Cognitive Focus	Narrow, linear, abstract	Holistic, multimodal, embodied, environmentally interactive
Assessment	Declarative, competitive, standardized tests	Holistic, informative, process-oriented
Student Engagement	Often low, driven by external rewards	High, fueled by intrinsic motivation
Societal Relevance	Struggles to keep pace with the digital world	Directly reflects and engages with our digital society

MAE combines but flips the balance of MAE 60% & TE 40%, with core content interwoven into experiential, projects. 

Less content, with deeper and adaptive understanding, which catalyzes more learning, by motivating the student’s intrinsic drives for personal, culturally contextual success. The student is engaged directly with the world and accruing relevant skills, knowledge and achievements, rather than focused on performing for an artificial, tangential educational curricula, teacher, and system. TE is peculiar to itself, and does not mirror any other real world system or situation. Students master the TE system, not the content or the learning process itself in their actual, real world application.

Benefits and Potentials of MAE:

• Fosters deeper understanding: MAE supports students in translating abstract concepts into tangible, multimodal forms: videos, podcasts, websites, 3D models

• Enhances critical thinking and problem-solving: MAE projects demand creative solutions, adaptability, and collaboration.

• Cultivates digital and media literacy: Students learn to analyze, evaluate, and responsibly produce media in our digitally saturated world.

• Promotes equity and inclusion: MAE's flexible tools and diverse approaches support learners of all abilities and backgrounds.

• Prepares students for the future workforce: MAE equips students with essential skills for success in the 21st-century economy.

Integrating and Expanding MAE:

• Interdisciplinary projects are the ideal starting point, showcasing the power of MAE to enhance learning across various subjects.

• Success with these projects can pave the way for the development of a dedicated MAE subject area with its own studio/laboratory.

• This dedicated space becomes a hub for multimodal learning and creation, equipped with cutting-edge technology, fostering a vibrant culture of learning.

The Future of Learning:

MAE is not merely an educational reform; it is a profound shift in our understanding of learning and intelligence, recognizing the power of embodied, multimodal cognition.

In a world increasingly shaped by technology, including the rise of AI, MAE offers a vital, embodied counterbalance, ensuring that human creativity, empathy, and ethical judgment remain at the forefront of education and society.

By embracing MAE, we empower students to become active, engaged learners, capable of navigating the complexities of the digital age and shaping a future that reflects our highest aspirations.

AI + MEDIA ARTS = HOLISTIC EDUCATION

By Dain Olsen 

Media arts is the perfect complement to AI because it is holistic, embodied, social and project-based. It is becoming clear that AI can support basic academic instruction and personalized learning. AI can function as a tutor to scaffold the student’s understanding, and correct any misunderstandings through friendly and nonjudgmental responses and exercises. It could eventually supplement that with a range of interactive multimedia, such as graphics, animations and videos.

This ultimately means that classroom instruction can move to higher orders, beyond basic skills, where students are more active in actually applying their learning in real world contexts. As per cognitive and learning science, these are enriched contexts that can deepen the learning so it is more resilient and transferrable.

Media arts provides these types of active learning situations, where students themselves produce multimedia illustrations, stories and models of the content. Essentially, media arts communications, design, interactivity and virtuality are at the center of our society because they serve this function. Schools and teachers are in the business of explaining content to students so that they understand it. In media arts, students take on this role of explaining or demonstrating the content.

Media arts puts students in the position of teaching a topic to the student audience. They go through a series of multimodal processes in order to do this, which deepens their own understanding. They research the topic and begin to understand it in their own terms. They brainstorm what ways to explain and illustrate that topic. They organize it by writing scripts and developing storyboards. They act it out or represent it in their narrations, dialogues, stories, scenes and soundtracks. They produce it in their animations, 3D models or video games. They analyze their production and evaluate its effectiveness. Such project management requires a wide range of abilities and competencies, such as communication, coordination, management, logistics, negotiation, scheduling, etc.

This is an aesthetically and multimodally holistic process, which develops students' rounded skills, competencies and cognitive development. Media arts versatile and adaptable studios and laboratories can support these sorts of collaborative, active, community connected processes, where the standard classroom cannot.  AI needs media arts in order to advance education to a new, student-centered and 21st C. model. 

Unfortunately, the emphases in AI is on its narrow support for traditional approaches to instruction. This often leads to the use of AI to bypass difficult academic tasks and critical thinking. In the case of media arts productions, some edtech companies are even suggesting that students use AI tools to produce any multimedia. They would not have to go through the rigorous, holistic processes described above to do this. They can just state a prompt and AI produces the multimedia. Consider what students are missing when they overuse AI.

This is the ultimate dilemma for AI in education. What cognitive processes should it replace in instruction? Media arts production presents a comprehensive multimodal and holistic range of cognitive processes. In this regard, Einstein said,  “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

AI and Media Arts Education: Holistic Educational Transformation

By Dain Olsen

Media arts is defined as the "creative, machine-based manipulation of aesthetic phenomena for meaning; an aesthetic synthesizer for forming, capturing, processing, simulating, and distributing products and experiences" (Olsen, 2024). AI falls within this category, making it a major, emergent media arts form. AI's exponential development will have manifold impacts on our society, arts, and education, both positive and negative. Efforts are underway to manage and regulate the negative outcomes, but success is not guaranteed. We should aim to be proactive, holistic, and wise in our responses to AI. I will present media arts education’s (MAE) critical role, in conjunction with AI, in forming an educational system that can address these problems.

Understanding AI's Impact

AI's ‘explosive’ development is a radial, 360-degree expansion across all domains and dimensions of society. It's not just a tool we can choose to use or put away, but a systemic, technological force with unpredictable organic characteristics. Like social media, and any other technological leap, AI will likely have both positive and negative effects on society, as well as unintended consequences. Nevertheless, AI is here to stay, so we will need to learn to work with and manage it as it progresses and proliferates.

AI has shown impressive and breakthrough results in various applications across societal sectors, such as accelerating scientific discoveries, advancing industrial efficiencies, and supporting greatly increased individual productivity and capabilities. Yet, it will also eliminate major sectors of employment, can exacerbate criminal activity, and is demonstrated to be unreliable and prone to errors. Artistically, AI can support more students to produce more sophisticated products, for example in verbal prompts to create entire video games. It also can enhance creativity and invention by generating compelling variations that humans might not have considered. On the other hand, its autonomous creative expression tends to be conventional, slick and fairly ‘soulless’. 

Theoretical improvements to AI in Generalized Intelligence and Superintelligence are arguably far off or even infeasible. There is also the possibility that AI will fail to fulfill the hype that usually accompanies new technological breakthroughs.

AI in Education

In education, AI could provide personalized tutoring along with illustrative multimedia graphics, support teachers in lesson preparation and assessment, and help manage bureaucratic processes. However, the overuse of AI might also lead to decreased student motivation and a tendency to skip difficult cognitive processes and critical thinking. In fact, some edtech companies are suggesting that it replace arts and media arts instruction. Furthermore, it raises the question of whether we will use it in innovative new ways to truly advance education, and limit it to improving traditional methods.

Major Concerns

Despite its profound benefits, AI also raises these serious reservations:

• It's an experimental technology with unpredictable consequences

• There's a risk of becoming completely dependent on AI, and even an imperative in every aspect of society, 

• AI may further amplify societal disparities and inequalities

• AI is limited by our own mindsets and habits

• It is an energy hog, which is already challenging our grids and our CO2 reduction goals

• It is unclear whether governmental regulations and educational policies will be fully effective and ahead of the curve in monitoring, preventing and solving AI’s problems

A Media Arts Education (MAE) Perspective

MAE presents a primary means to improve and transform education, particularly in combination with AI, which can ultimately address these larger negatives. Essentially, MAE supports the core content and STEM concepts to become multimodally plastic, flexible, and versatile, so that they come alive with artistic and design capacities. Thus students, through engaging collaborative projects, can apply, represent and simulate the abstract content through combinations of image, sound, story, graphics, interactive and virtual forms (e.g. 3D animated, playful models of physics, mathematics, cell division, weather, etc.; science or history videos; video games, immersive XR environments, etc). Students would manipulate, adjust, and play with these multimedia models until they fully and tangibly understand those concepts, and then transfer them to varied applications and situations. This results in deeper, more resilient learning, aligned with current learning science and cognitive research.

Thus, students gain flexible, diverse inquiry pathways for actively applying, demonstrating, and sharing their academic proficiency, beyond standardized tests. Also, students are in the position of directing their own learning, based on their own interests and needs. No other subject area has the capacity to form such holistic, transdisciplinary, culturally meaningful and community connected forms of creative inquiry and productive interaction. This is the perfect embodied, social, holistic complement to AI’s relatively narrow, intellectual capacities for instructional support.

Consider one example of this MAE-based approach: Students produce a transmedia mental health campaign,  which supports all students to produce, share and interact in socially beneficial and empowering ways. Students produce diverse events, broadcasts, and interactions for varied outputs and audiences. They apply statistical analysis to measure algorithmic processes and their impacts on the school and community. All students gain critical media literacies for verifying, analyzing and evaluating multimedia information and processes, and collaboratively nurturing a civil digital society. 

Media Arts + AI = Holistic Educational Transformation

We need to prepare youth for a rapidly changing world, supporting them to ensure that AI is designed and utilized effectively and strategically to address a convergence of global challenges, including AI itself. AI’s support for individualized skills mastery and teacher efficiency means that schools can begin to shift to higher-orders of instructional implementation, such as MAE can offer, which foster student-centered initiative, ownership and motivation. It is important to appreciate that the human, embodied mind, and our collective minds, are tremendously more powerful and potentiated than AI is, and perhaps ever will be. An advanced educational system can begin to fulfill that potential, ultimately benefiting society in extraordinary ways.

Factory Model: regimented, assembly-line, one-size-fits-all, top-down, cognitively narrow, no-context

MAE Model: flexible, adaptive, inclusive, student-centered, cognitively expansive, enriched contexts 

In conclusion, this results in a flexible and interconnective educational system which actuates students’ personal inquiry process into boundless possibilities, and infuses the system as a whole with a collective drive towards continual adaptive improvement and learning about learning.  It allows students to actually practice management of their digital society, including AI and other literacies (e.g. media, digital) towards ethical, equitable and holistically grounded objectives. This transformed model provides the means by which our society learns to manage AI and address our converging global challenges. 

Olsen, D. (2024). Media Arts Education: Transforming Education Through Multimodal Cognition, Holistic Learning, and Techno-Embodiment. Taylor & Francis.

CONVERSATIONS WITH AI: Media Arts (Education) and Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Symbiotic Relationship (AI Generated Notes)

CONVERSATIONS WITH AI

Media Arts (Education) and Artificial Intelligence (AI):

A Symbiotic Relationship

Dain Olsen:

Media Arts is the machine-based, multimodal, aesthetic synthesis of meaning. Media Arts Education is the embodied enactment and understanding of media arts production and design processes.

AI:

Media arts and artificial intelligence are inextricably linked, sharing a common ground in their manipulation of aesthetic meaning and experience through machine-based processes.

Here's a breakdown of their relationship:

1. Tool for Creation:

• Automation: AI can automate repetitive tasks, freeing artists to focus on creative concepts.

• Generative Art: AI can generate new artistic content, expanding the possibilities of expression.

2. New Mediums:

• Interactive Art: AI enables the creation of interactive experiences that respond to user input.

• Virtual and Augmented Reality: AI plays a crucial role in creating immersive virtual and augmented reality environments.

3. Challenging Definitions of Art:

• Computational Creativity: AI raises questions about what constitutes art and who can be considered an artist.

• Human-Machine Collaboration: The collaboration between humans and AI blurs the lines between creator and tool.

4. Ethical Considerations:

• Bias and Fairness: AI algorithms can perpetuate biases present in the data they are trained on.

• Ownership and Authenticity: Questions arise about who owns AI-generated art and whether it can be considered authentic.

In essence, media arts and artificial intelligence are mutually beneficial. AI provides new tools and possibilities for artistic expression, while media arts pushes the boundaries of AI and challenges our understanding of creativity and technology. As these fields continue to evolve, we can expect even more innovative and thought-provoking works to emerge.

Media Arts Can Transform Learning and Education

Media arts can advance the antiquated factory educational model (mechanistic, linear, regimented, top-down, content and testing-centered, and culturally biased), into a 21st century model (cognitive network and ecosystem, non-linear, adaptable, student centered and directed, flexible and equitable).

Media arts is an emergent K-12 arts content area, now initiated through standards in 39 states, consisting of the familiar communications forms of photo, film, video, animation, sound, graphics etc. Its less familiar forms extend into interactive and 3D design, as well as AI, virtual, augmented and mixed reality (XR). These forms are creatively unlimited in capacity, so that students are able to produce and simulate any product or experience imaginable. This affords students the capacity to learn anything possible and gain comprehensive competencies in enriched, real-world contexts.

Imagine a media arts laboratory where students are designing their ideal future city. Using 3D design software and 3D printing for actual scale models, they tackle urban renewal and design, sustainability principles, and the real-world application of mathematics, engineering and construction concepts.

In an augmented reality (AR) project, student groups design an interactive historical scavenger hunt for their neighborhood. Layered over their real-world environment, they mark significant points of interest and community resources, along with linked information, socially relevant murals and sculptures, and local stories and interviews.

In an international collaboration, two media arts classes collaborate on a live broadcast showcasing various arts and academic presentations and interactions. Each class displays their local culture and academic curriculum through their chosen media and arts forms, with accompanying social media feeds, and communications exchanges.

Media arts students design a video game based on a popular sci-fi novel, integrating complex physics simulations and lively, science-based narratives. The project also integrates advanced mathematics, English in project narratives, texts, and scripts, and engineering through game mechanics.

Students produce a transmedia mental health campaign. They support students to produce, share and interact in socially beneficial and empowering ways. Students produce diverse events, broadcasts, and interactions for varied outputs and audiences. They apply statistical analysis to measure their impacts on the school and community. All students gain critical media literacies for analyzing and verifying multimedia information, and collaboratively nurturing a civil digital society.

Media arts' versatile, multimodal (multi-sensory, multimedia) tools support students to interact creatively with the educational curriculum and to apply it to real world experiences. For example, they can create interactive, 3D animated models that demonstrate science concepts, such as cell division, the digestive system, or weather systems. Students are then able to manipulate, construct, and play with these multimedia models until they fully and tangibly understand those concepts, and then transfer them to varied applications and situations. This becomes a holistic process of learning that is deep and resilient, and more engaging, rewarding and relevant. MAE's capacity to multimodally ‘plasticize and animate’ the curriculum extends across all contents, concepts and applications.

Through media arts' diverse productions, the core curriculum comes alive for students, who can begin to have a leading, active role in the creative inquiry process. These adaptable projects can be scaled and tailored to students’ personal interests, learning levels and pathways. As a result, assessment becomes more diversified, flexible, and authentic, where more students can demonstrate and achieve academic success in many more ways. This advances equity and inclusion for all students, including those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, English learners, and those with special education challenges. This liberates all students to the boundless possibilities of their own learning capacities, with implications for systemic educational improvements and transformation. Ultimately, the system gains the attributes of a cognitive network and augmented learning ecosystem.

 

Emergent Media Arts - Transforming Learning, Creating and Education: Multimodal Learning Systems and Self-Directed Learners

 Emergent Media Arts - Transforming Learning, Creating and Education: 

Multimodal Learning Systems and Self-Directed Learners

• Media arts makes learning more engaging, effective, meaningful, and purposeful.

• Media arts can support education to become more student centered, interactive, flexible, equitable, and inclusive. 

Imagine a media arts laboratory where students are designing their ideal future city. Using 3D design software and 3D printing for actual scale models, they tackle urban renewal and design, sustainability principles, and the real-world application of mathematics, engineering and construction concepts.

In an augmented reality (AR) project, student groups design an interactive historical scavenger hunt for their neighborhood. Layered over their real-world environment, they mark significant points of interest and community resources, along with linked information, stories and interviews.

In an international collaboration, two media arts classes collaborate on a live broadcast showcasing various arts and academic presentations and interactions. Each class displays their local culture and academic curriculum through their chosen media and arts forms, with accompanying social media feeds, and communications exchanges. 

Media arts students design a video game based on a popular sci-fi novel, integrating complex physics simulations and lively, science-based narratives. The project also integrates advanced mathematics, English in project narratives, texts, and scripts, and engineering through game mechanics. 

Students produce a transmedia mental health campaign. They support students to produce, share and interact in socially beneficial and empowering ways. Students produce diverse events, broadcasts, and interactions for varied outputs and audiences. They apply statistical analysis to measure their impacts on the school and community. All students gain critical media literacies for analyzing and verifying multimedia information, and collaboratively nurturing a civil digital society.             

Media arts education (MAE) can transform learning and education through multimodal facility and plasticity

MAE is much more than making movies, graphics and animations. Its versatile, multimedia (multimodal, multisensory) tools support students to interact creatively with the educational curriculum and to apply it to real world experiences. For example, they can create interactive, 3D animated models that demonstrate science concepts, such as cell division, the digestive system, or weather systems. Students are then able to manipulate, construct, represent, and play with these multimedia models until they fully and tangibly understand those concepts, and then transfer them to varied applications and situations. This becomes a holistic process of learning that is deep and resilient, and more connective and relevant. MAE's capacity to multimodally ‘plasticize and animate’ the curriculum extends across all contents, concepts and contexts. 

Through media arts productions, the curriculum comes alive for students, who can begin to have a leading, active role in the creative inquiry process. These pliable projects can be scaled and tailored to students’ personal interests, learning levels and pathways. As a result, assessment becomes more diversified, flexible, and authentic, where more students can achieve and demonstrate academic success in many more ways. This advances equity and inclusion for all students, including those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, English learners, and those with special education challenges.