What is Aalto Drawing?
Aalto Drawing is an online course, focusing around a gamified online learning application of the same name. This app teaches you the basics of drawing and visual communication skills in a gameful, easy to approach manner. Once you gain 1000 stars in the Aalto Drawing game and answer the accompanying surveys, you are awarded 1 credit.

No need to have any experience on visual arts beforehand - the app starts from the very basics. All you need to provide is a touchscreen android device, preferably a tablet to make your learning experience better.  

Goals

The student gains and strengthens their visual communication and representation skills by completing the Aalto Drawing application independently. The student understands the importance of visual communication in their own field, being able to use the skills for their benefit.

The student learns the basics of visual communication on multiple topics, like perceptive drawing and graphic design. They gain an understanding of the importance of visual communication and expression in general. They will recognise and learn to use core theories of visual arts, e.g. graphical perspective and color theory.

The course aims to strengthen the student’s self-confidence and allow them to use visual aides in representations and studies more freely, for example draw on a whiteboard during a representation or group exercise.

The participating student is a self-imposed learner, reflecting on their own learning processes and recognising what is beneficial and motivational to themselves.

Course Content

The course is completed by independently playing through Aalto Drawing, a gamified online learning application. The students require their own android device (preferably a tablet computer).  

Aalto Drawing contains ten lessons (and two bonus content lessons), each themed differently. Each lesson consists of theory portions and exercises. Exercises include drawing, placing elements into a correct order and quizzes, for example.

The content of Aalto Drawing is based on an earlier online inquiry on students’ wishes and needs, focusing on the basics like drawing a human, perspective drawing and graphic design skills.  

The course also includes surveys conducted for research purposes. The first is a starting questionnaire. Second set of short questionnaires is included in the application. Third, a small set of participants will be invited to in-depth interviews. All participants will get further information by MyCourses and/or email. 

Time and place

This course is 100% online, there are no scheduled meetings. 

In addition to playing the game you only need to follow MyCourses for news and information. The course runs from 5.12.2018 to 22.2.2019. Further information on specific dates will be updated later. 
 
Completion
During the course you will go through the different lessons of Aalto Drawing independently. The work equals 1 credit, which you will be awarded once you gather 1000 stars in-game and provide the proof to the instructors. 

Before and during the course you will be asked to answer short, self-reflective questionnaires. After the course a small sample of participants will be invited for interviews to collect feedback and reflection on your experience. The game gathers and saves your progress & data on your device. The data will be gathered for research purposes of the Gamifying Learning in Visual Communication team.

Development/instructors
The app and course Aalto Drawing are developed in the project Gamifying Learning in Visual Communication, funded by Aalto Online Learning.The team consists of students and research personnel from the Department of Art, Department of Computer Science and Department of Media at Aalto University. This course is intended for research and development purposes.
 
The main instructor on this course is Iina Nokelainen (BA, Art Education) and the course is part of her master's thesis on Art Education and gamified online learning. The supervising teacher is Martti Raevaara. Please contact Iina and Martti on all academic inquiries and other questions regarding this course, the Aalto Drawing application and the GLinVC project.

Last modified: Thursday, 6 December 2018, 8:07 PM