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Cleveland Institute of Art launches its Digital Canvas Initiative this fall semester to support a progressive curriculum redesign of its foundation program with enhanced technology that includes using iPads to support student learning and engagement.

CIA’s first-year curriculum has been redesigned to encourage students to engage in greater group- and problem-based learning opportunities and work with the digital tools that support fine and applied-arts techniques.

“A robust art and design education requires that we incorporate technology in the classroom that supports the way we work today – group-based problem solving driven by real-time solutions. At CIA we teach future artists and designers the essential creative problem-solving skills to pursue their art, and the iPad will become for us an ideal tool in furthering that education,” explains Grafton J. Nunes, president and CEO of CIA.

In redesigning CIA’s first-year foundation curriculum, faculty are looking outside traditional methods of instruction and adding opportunities for problem-based learning through collaboration.

Tablet computers like the iPad support what has been considered a primarily hands-on education by eliminating barriers to group work and serving as a portable source of creative apps, tools for research, organization, communication, and collaboration.

“As visual learners, art and design students respond to interactive classroom tools and, unlike laptops, tablet computers function through intuitive gestures allowing students to grab, move, and create content through direct manipulation. It encourages collaboration which is an important learning outcome during their first year here,” explains says CIA’s Assistant Professor Scott Ligon, coordinator for the college’s Foundation Digital Curriculum.

In addition, Ligon sites the importance of experimentation in an art and design education, one that allows for creative risk taking and problem-based learning in ways that incoming freshmen are most familiar. “As digital natives, students are used to gathering information quickly from many different sources to further their creative process outside the classroom. They naturally create a hub of research and digital tools, which this technology supports,” says Ligon.