Kelly I. Aliano’s research while affiliated with LaGuardia Community College and other places

In this chapter, we first introduce the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks that inform our work and the concept of togetherness we develop and apply to our online teaching. To further explore the impact of liveness, we compare the phenomenon as it has manifested in the classroom with the debates over what constitutes “live theatre” occurring right now in the field of theatre and performance studies. We then describe our actual practices in terms of the technology and technological tools we use, the preparation for the work that we do, and the ways in which we create and maintain our class structure in order to build a learning community and togetherness for each class. We then reflect on what we have learned through our experiences in relation to our dedication to student-centered pedagogy. We observe that technology and online teaching have now become part of the educational experience of higher education and we advocate for the use of technological tools to enhance and expand upon the building of a learning community and its togetherness.

In this chapter, we discuss how the classroom environment can and should be considered figuratively but also literally. We begin by examining the literature on environmental factors and how classroom arrangement impacts the student experience of the class as well as the teacher-student relationship. In addition, we think through more abstract conceptualizations of “space” to frame the interactions that happen in the classroom, regardless of its physical arrangement, as a kind of structured environment. We then lay out some theories of scenic arrangement from theatre studies to contextualize how we approach classroom design. Reflecting on our experiences working on a wide variety of campuses, we discuss when and how to make physical adjustments, while also emphasizing how little control we likely have over the physical resources and arrangement of the classroom itself in most situations. Finally, we contextualize the concept of environment more abstractly, thinking about the practices that frame the metaphorical environment of the work that we do. We conclude with some brief final reflections on the intersection between environment and classroom experience, especially in our increasingly mediated and mediatized world.

In this chapter, we explore how peer interactions in the classroom have been theorized in educational scholarship until now. We put this into dialogue with discussions of collaborative practices in the theatre to highlight significant corollaries between both the activities and the objectives of having participants interact in this way. To showcase the impact of peer learning, we discuss a few successful instances of collaborative learning in our classrooms. The best learning experiences, we argue, are those which are active and put students at the center of the learning process. Thus, it is vital to provide students with opportunities to work together to discover course content and develop course skills in support of one another.

In this chapter, we look at our own experiences teaching within both Theatre and English departments, considering how the courses we taught at each level were designed and implemented to create a linear development of student skills and knowledge within the field. This bears comparison with how theatrical training is a lifelong process, not something that can truly be mastered in just a few short weeks, like a semester. We frame this analysis of our actual practices with some consideration of the unique challenges of teaching Theatre, which can be, at the same time, an abstract Liberal Arts field and a vocational training program. We reflect on how teaching individual courses in this way can inform how students think about their years in college as a journey, not a series of individualized course experiences, even when we are not afforded the chance to teach the same students more than once. We close by considering some of the realities that exist when trying to create this scaffolded approach to program design.

In this chapter, we explore the teacher-student relationship. We consider the wide body of literature on the subject and then contextualize it with discussions of the director-actor relationship. We follow this with analysis of our own classroom experiences before closing with our own assessments of the teacher-student relationships we have tried to foster in our own classrooms.

In this chapter, we explore exactly what is meant by the concept of assessment and how we can harness this to better serve student learning. We consider a number of different strategies, laid out by scholars in the field, of how best to take a student-centered approach to assessing student work. This is put in dialogue with key concepts of the teacher-as-director-as-guide and the role of the theatre critic before we explore our own experiences with assessing student work. Finally, we consider what is ahead for practices of assessment in our classes to consider how we can continue to use this necessary aspect of classroom instruction to best attend to our students’ learning needs.

In this chapter, we consider how the universals of the theatre—live, ephemeral, collaborative, and synthesis of the arts—are a useful lens for the teaching of writing. We reflect on central concepts from theatrical theory before engaging writing pedagogy from the perspective of educational theory. We emphasize the importance of Writing Across the Curriculum practices, alongside the concepts of key theorists, such as John Dewey and Paolo Freire. The chapter closes with an overview of the chapters that follow in the book.

In the Epilogue, we offer some final reflections on teaching and learning and how this has been informed by our understanding of and experience with theatre.