Problem-based learning and studio instruction in theatre technology: A case study

Abstract

Many courses in theatre technology address knowledge domains that exist at the intersection of art and technology. Any theatre technician, for example, must be versed in the technical details of their discipline. They must also be comfortable improvising, developing creative solutions to unexpected challenges, and working with shifting goals and expectations as productions evolve. Learners typically acquire the skills, practices, and assumptions in each of these different domains through very different signature pedagogies. This intersectionality of art and technology can make developing effective teaching approaches challenging, as learners and instructors find themselves coming to different chunks of domain material with different assumptions about how to teach it or how to learn it. This essay presents the instructional design of a course in show control system design for live entertainment. The course discussed is dual-level (graduate and undergraduate), focusing on understanding, designing and installing systems that connect and automate typical live entertainment control systems, like those for lighting, sound, and video. The instructional design of the course attempted to integrate two signature pedagogies: the studio model and the lecture-drill-test model. This essay describes some of the instructional design research that informed the design of the course, the design itself, some results of student work, and reflections on the success and challenges of merging the two signature pedagogies.