High-Impact Practices (HIPs) engage students in a transformative undergraduate experience within and beyond the classroom. Our goal is to ensure that all Otis College students have access to and engage in multiple high-impact practices in their academic career and gain the relevant academic knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to be career-ready and engaged citizens upon graduation.
The following teaching and learning practices have been widely tested and have been shown to be beneficial for college students from many backgrounds. These practices take many forms, depending on learner characteristics and on institutional priorities and contexts.
As a first-year student, you will experience an immersive program that promotes your success in college.
Your yearlong Foundation Studio section will establish an immediate sense of community with your faculty and fellow classmates. The first-year Common Core Curriculum includes studio courses that teach the universal vocabulary, skills and concepts of all art and design disciplines. Working with your hands, on the computer, drawing from observation and building form prepares you for any major and because we teach across disciplines, Foundation helps equip you for the future, wherever your careers take you.
The Core Curriculum in your Liberal Arts and Sciences courses places a strong emphasis on common intellectual experiences, art history, critical inquiry, diversity, writing, information literacy and collaborative learning. You will always be in close dialogue with faculty members who will help you to discover working methods that will carry you into a major, serve you through college, and last a lifetime.
All Foundation students select an Affinity Section with 18 students who share all of their studio courses for the entire year. The students above are finishing their Foundation year with the body project in the Form and Space course. They have shared challenges, deadlines, and learning experiences together.
Drawing Techniques
Life Drawing instructor Beverly Bledsoe demonstrating drawing techniques to Foundation students. Small classes mean ample opportunity for faculty/student interaction.
Building Form
Building Form students work in teams to build room-size cantilevers, learning basic principles of physics. Students collaborate on fast and dirty solutions to join disparate materials together, distributing and projecting weight from the fulcrum.
Ballona Wetlands
Second semester Foundation students on a field trip to the Ballona Wetlands for their Connections Through Color and Design course, a first year Creative Action Course. Students use their color and design skills to solve problems in the larger community that require transdisciplinary practice, research, and collaboration.
Creative Practices and Responses
Creative Practices and Responses, a second-semester class, gives you the opportunity to research and develop your own interests and work in any medium you desire. Past projects range from book-making to performance and video.
Drawing Studio
Drawing Studio helps students to develop their capacity for creative inquiry. Students learn to ask the questions that lead them to create innovative work.
Foundation Forward
Foundation Forward, part of year-long co-curricular programming, offers students an opportunity to gather more information about each of the majors, meet faculty, students and hear alumni talk about their professional lives and reflections on Foundation and their Otis College experience.
Getty Museum Field Trip
Liberal Arts and Sciences Ways of Knowing field trip to the Getty with faculty Adam Berg.
O-Week
O-Week is a series of programs and events welcoming new students to Otis. Students here are enjoying conversation with new friends and classmates.
Otis College students follow several tracks that guarantee common intellectual experiences.
Additionally, all Liberal Arts and Sciences courses address one or more common department themes (Creativity, Identity, Diversity, Sustainability and Social Responsibility) that encourage the application of course material beyond the classroom and connects to real world experience.
Foundation, sophomores, and juniors also take Creative Action courses that focus on pressing environmental and social issues.
Finally, all seniors take a Capstone course and participate in the annual Senior Show.
Honors Foundation students are a year-long learning community. In the photo above, some 2017 students are conferring with Jinger Heffner, the Assistant Director of Galleries and Exhibitions, in preparation for mounting their campus exhibition "Beyond Boundaries," which they produced and curated as part of their Birth of the Modern/Ways of Knowing Class.
Foundation sections are year-long learning communities where students work closely as a group with their studio faculty in courses created around broadly transferable making and thinking skills. Students select their sections based on themes or skill sets that they have a particular affinity for. These Affinity sections inform select learning experiences throughout the year and enable students to ask "big questions." Foundation Affinity sections include Art, Design and Change; Made by Hand; Thinking and Making Through Technology; and the Writing Section.
Foundation Affinity Sections
Art, Design and Change: We live in a time of unprecedented change. The Art, Design and Change sections will view and discuss contemporary art and design practices and investigate work that focuses on contemporary issues, including social, political, and cultural change and how these issues can manifest through art/design practices.
Made by Hand: Students enrolled in these sections approach each class project with an emphasis on broad, transferable traditional, and progressive art and design skill-building as well as enhancing their personal creative practice. Inventiveness is emphasized by discussion, demonstration, and the introduction of exemplars.
Thinking and Making Through Technology: The Thinking and Making Through Technology sections include additional instruction in photography, Photoshop, and Illustrator in the courses Principles of Design and Connections Through Color and Design. This affinity section investigates technology from a practical and philosophical point of view. Students work back and forth between hands-on-skills and the computer within specific projects and learn to apply art and design compositional principles in both areas.
The Writing Section: Do you enjoy thinking, researching, and writing about ideas? In the first semester, the writing section is taught by a faculty member with degrees in both design and creative writing. Students will enjoy recognizing similar practices shared by both disciplines.
Successful artists and designers need well-developed writing skills to communicate in a global world and Otis College fosters this in a variety of ways. In Liberal Arts and Sciences courses, you will learn different kinds of writing, including writing in a digital environment. These courses scaffold writing instruction at all levels with a strong emphasis on practice, instructor feedback, and revision. Many studio courses also require students to write about their creative process, the value of their studio projects, and their developing positions on issues within their discipline. Finally, all students critically reflect and write about their coursework and their college experience, which increases metacognition and helps students connect the dots between what they are learning and how they will apply that learning in their professional and personal lives.
Students working in the first year Writing in the Digital Age class where they learn
how to convey ideas in a variety of genres and digital formats.
Small classes and a high faculty/student ratio mean that students get continual feedback
through the writing process, opportunities to revise, and reflect on what they are
thinking and writing.
Peer review is an important part of the writing and revision process where students
apply their critical thinking skills to helping each other improve writing.
Writing tutors at the Student Learning Center help students with critical thinking and writing mechanics.
Collaboration is a key factor in every professional area of art and design
At Otis College, collaborative learning assignments and projects are integrated into many studio and Liberal Arts and Sciences courses beginning with Foundation classes. Collaborative learning begins with group homework projects and assignments, in-class presentations, and simulations and leads up to Creative Action Integrated Learning courses that offer semester long projects with community partners.
There are also co-curricular opportunities for students to work in a variety of clubs and campus organizations.
The key is helping students from diverse backgrounds and experiences learn to listen to each other and to work and solve problems together.
Sophomore Creative Action students in Human Ecology working with community members at Venice High School to make a chalk mandala for the campus Learning Garden.
In Made for Kids, a Creative Action course, juniors work with students from Westside Global Awareness. They are making stencils for the school entry to serve as educational tools to help students learn about the environment and sustainability.
Students collaborate with Homeboy Industries in a Creative Action course to develop products.
Many courses require students to practice teamwork and collaboration for projects.
Successful, creative artists and designers engage in many kinds of research beyond a traditional bibliographic approach commonly associated with the arts and humanities. Because they frequently collaborate with professionals from different fields and disciplines, including science, business, and technology, they must be versed in empirical and market research, as well as quantitative and qualitative research approaches that often include product, economic and financial data, demographics, consumers, and statistics. These approaches are key to design research, which often means combining a variety of research and methodological approaches in innovative ways to identify and solve complex design problems.
Deeply committed to developing and sustaining a diverse campus community in the broadest sense, Otis College of Art and Design is the only art and design college in the nation to rank in the top 1% for diversity. The campus environment welcomes and supports active student discussion and engagement and encourages tolerance and respect within the Otis College community, preparing students to become leaders in a global world. There are classes that explore difficult subjects such as: racial, ethnic, and gender inequality; human rights struggles; and freedom and power. Students may participate in a strong Study Abroad program with established courses in France, Brazil, Ireland, Malawi, and Italy, as well as a variety of co-curricular organizations and events that augment experiential learning on campus.
Field-based "experiential learning" with community partners is an important way to directly connect and integrate coursework issues with real world settings. In Creative Action (Integrated Learning) courses, multidisciplinary student teams work on environmental and social issues. Collaborating in community partnerships with nonprofit organizations and public agencies, Otis College students focus their creativity and efforts on real-world problems and make a positive difference in their local community.
Internships are a key component of most departments at Otis College since they offer important experiential learning in fields that are closely related to students' career interests. Career Services works closely with students to help them locate, identify, and effectively prepare for internships. About 74% of these internships are paid positions, with many students finding that internships can lead to permanent positions after graduation. Otis College holds an annual Internship Fair in Spring semester that attracts companies from a variety of the creative professions to meet with the students and explore internship opportunities.
Students interviewing with industry professionals at the annual Otis Internship Fair.
The Career Services department helps prepare students for internships and future employment. Your Creative Future is a signature preparation initiative that teaches students practical, professional, and business related skills.
Seniors at Otis College participate in two major culminating experiences that demonstrate their ability to integrate and apply what they have learned during their college career. In Capstone, seniors produce a paper or project that shows their ability to identify, research, and argue a compelling position on an issue that dovetails with their art and design field. Senior Show is an annual public exhibition held on campus in conjunction with Commencement. This is where seniors curate and present original and innovative work that demonstrates their abilities as professional artists and designers.
Product Design Senior, Ghadeer Alburaiki, participating in a review of her work.
Fashion Senior with his work.
Digital Media Senior with his work.
National Survey of Student Engagement
We measure how students feel about student engagement, especially high-impact practices that through National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).