Amplifying the Transdisciplinary Nature of Arts Entrepreneurship Education Through Online Learning

Current moves toward online learning have promoted and continue to promote transdisciplinary education as an indispensable path forward. Time and technological advances have given us the perspective to see that many of our disciplines are more interconnected than scholars and pedagogues of the past may have thought. This interconnectedness allows us to develop individually-held senses of belonging within our students and a more solidified representation of arts entrepreneurship education. Online education provides inexhaustible resources and delivery methods for educators to provide multiple entry points for students. This piece makes a case for the notion that instruction via the internet enables students and educators to connect with people worldwide and provides additional ways to connect and engage with course material for individuals with varying learning styles. This piece also provides a model of a post-secondary course that can be used to explore arts entrepreneurship. _____________


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We have never been as connected with the world around us as we are today.The technologies emerging over the past decades bring us together as a global community and allow us to view events across the world in seconds with hand-held devices.Inside and outside of the classroom, technology has the power to connect the interests and experiences of students and facilitators in ways that promote connection, exploration, creativity and belonging. 1Recent moves toward online learning continue to promote transdisciplinary education as an important path forward. 2 Time, technological advances and the internet give us the perspective to see that our disciplines are more interconnected than scholars and pedagogues of the past may have thought.Interconnectedness allows us to further create individually-held senses of belonging within our students, in addition to a more solidified representation of arts entrepreneurship education that tends to the intersectionality of our students-and thus-our classrooms.

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Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Education 3(2), 2021 As human beings, we have a significant need to experience a sense of belonging and our current technologies allow us to instantly connect professionally, socially, even romantically. 3We can connect with colleagues across the globe using communities of practice such as Facebook groups, Reddit threads, professional organization discussion pages or email lists to place a call or question to further our understanding, research or need for connection.Numerous technologies that are current standards in our society were once innovative and perhaps even controversial in their initial acceptance.Pianos, pencil sharpeners and photography were all once "new to the market." A connection exists between sociocultural conditions and technological innovations that requires social need, social resources and a sympathetic social ethos in order for the realization of technology.Buchanan discussed how the ideas for airplanes, submarines and helicopters found in da Vinci's notebooks were not developed because the resources, capital, materials and skilled personnel were not available. 4Additionally, social acceptance of a technology is important in its longevity as the "social need must be strongly felt or people will not be prepared to devote resources to a technological innovation." 5 The time for a more widespread embrace of online learning environments and facilitation of them is upon us, as the reward for their facilitation is significant-especially in situations where the security of inperson class sessions is threatened.
The success of an online course depends on the instructor. 6Individuals with decision-making power (like educators and perhaps even entrepreneurs) may have an unconscious inclination or a psychological investment in upholding traditions or the status quo for reasons of convenience, habit, policy, customs, inertia, fear or rationalization. 7So, in arts entrepreneurship classrooms, even if we see the value in exploring transdisciplinary attitudes toward teaching and facilitation, it can still be difficult to open spaces in our syllabi for this exploration.Online education and the need to digitize materials, projects, deliverables and non-tangibles has put our field in a position to explore how the deliverables uniquely associated with sub-disciplines like music and design entrepreneurship bear considerable similarities.What follows is an example of a course plan for an online arts entrepreneurship course.It provides students an opportunity to interact online with the content, their peers and the instructor.Education 3(2), 2021 Participants are intended to be from various fields and the diversity of interdisciplinary attributes would be beneficial.The following course example is designed to work with any learning management system (LMS) for a course meeting synchronously once a week on Wednesdays.The online nature of the course enables accessible, engaging and equitable sharing of ideas and content.

Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship
The course centers on artifact and discussion forums in order to stimulate interaction and utilize the nature of the online environment.While the students engage with these forums in similar ways, what is expected of each student's initial submission to each forum is the distinguishing factor between the forum types.In artifact forums, the prompts are designed to illicit tangible deliverables from the students.Examples of these deliverables could be biographies, demo recordings, choreography plans and graphic designs.In discussion forums, participants will be asked to offer their perspectives on the intersection of the readings, in-class discussions and personal experience.The course culminates in a reflection paper and a comprehensive project that includes 10 deliverables of the students' choosing from the artifact forums, a video infomercial and an execution plan.

Activity/Topic
Assignments  Reflection is a critical element in learning and teaching, as it requires a consideration of choices and beliefs while encouraging an understanding of self and provides potential guidance for continued growth. 8Figure 2 depicts a rubric to evaluate the above course's final reflection and comprises three components: depth of reflection, structure and evidence and practice.
Digital environments require a different learning approach from traditional in-person contexts, providing an opportunity for divergent, critical and creative thinking that can lead to advancements and innovation that traditional approaches are unable to provide, as they are often too steeped in tradition for such opportunities. 9Online education enables us to accommodate more learning styles by instantly providing the same information in various ways such as video, audio, text and through interactive elements.It also allows us to clearly depict the overlap that has always existed between typically discrete artistic disciplines.The various learning styles and skill levels that interactive online learning engages make it an advantageous medium through which instructors can deliver content and connect.The internet enables students and educators to connect with people around the world, provides additional ways to connect and engage with course material for individuals with varying learning styles and facilitates new ways to interact with music besides performance.Online education provides limitless resources and modes for deliverables for us as educators to provide multiple entry points and expand insights, experiences and approaches.Although different from our traditional approaches, digital learning environments enable effective and engaging ways to connect.Societal issues and technological advancements will continue to emerge and challenge our field; while doing so, they also provide an opportunity to examine and expand on the systems in practice. 11The prevailing system in practice across most of the academy is one of discrete artistic entrepreneurial learning environments, whereas trends toward online learning encourage a transcendence above what Beckman and Essig have held as the subdisciplines of arts education. 12We have to embrace this new elevation with what Hanson refers to as "comfort with uncertainty," a quality emerging from his research on arts entrepreneurship education as a hybrid of opportunity recognition and ideation/creativity. 13 We owe it to our students to think more broadly and petition for this larger, more comprehensive look at arts entrepreneurship, which will likely create more spaces for belonging inside and outside of our classrooms.