For some NYSID students, the transition to online learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has had some silver linings. AAS Student Stephanie Lofgren, BFA student Ryan Biggs, and MFA1 students Joanne Park and Violette Chartock share their takeaways from doing all their courses from a distance these past months.

Stephanie Lofgren, who is pursuing her Associate in Applied Science (AAS) in Interior Design, shared her home office with her college-aged son these past few lock-down months, as her two younger teenagers did schoolwork in the dining room of their Upper West Side apartment. She worked for a nonprofit foundation, and took two NYSID courses, all from her NYC home office. It might sound like a nightmare, yet it went more smoothly than Lofgren expected. She found both of her courses at NYSID this semester “excellent,” and calls her Residential Design II studio with instructor Lawrence Levy her “favorite NYSID course ever,” even though it was never supposed to be an online course. Lofgren has a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University, and spent her first career as a college professor at both West Point and Barnard. Her expectations were very high, and she has been impressed by NYSID's online experience.

There’s a reason NYSID was able to take its courses 100% online so efficiently as the pandemic shut down NYC: The college was well-prepared. NYSID’s vice president for academic affairs and dean Ellen Fisher, Ph.D, earned an M.A. from Columbia’s Teachers’ College in the Scientific Foundations of Computing in Education. “Blended learning,” in which digital and in-person learning are combined to enhance student learning, has been a priority at NYSID for a decade. The College currently uses Canvas, an interactive teaching platform that offers discussion boards as well as the ability to share and discuss assignments in a communal interface. Five years ago, the academic leadership of the College made the decision to require every instructor to engage with Canvas by posting their syllabi and other handouts in Canvas every term. When news of the virus began escalating in February, Dr. Fisher, as well as assistant dean Todd Class and Freya van Saun, coordinator of online and blended learning, focused on further educating the educators. During the week of March 16, instructors took a customized teacher training course in Canvas, as well as training in the intricacies of using Zoom for design learning. Perhaps that’s why many of our students have felt that taking all of their courses online, though far from perfect, has had some surprising silver linings. The College went live with its 100% online model on March 23. Dr. Ellen Fisher says, “Students and faculty knew it had to work, wanted it to work, and made it work. They committed themselves to the project, totally. The best outcome is the fantastic quality of our students’ work: it’s been incredible.”

Takeway #1: Personal Attention Is Possible Within a Zoom Studio

Lofgren says of her Residential Design II Studio, “We met every Tuesday synchronously, that is live, as a class, from 9am to 1:30pm, on Zoom. I did not expect so much personal attention from my instructor in a digital classroom. Lawrence went into virtual ‘break rooms’ within Zoom, so that he could teach us one-on-one or in smaller groups. You made an appointment in advance, and that helped me because I was sharing an office with my son. The rest of the class worked on our projects on the main screen, and Lawrence popped back into the main classroom from time to time to share important points he had taken from his conversations with students. The studio was five hours of focused designing.”

Takeaway #2: In a Zoom Presentation, You Own the Floor

Lofgren says doing her studio online was not without drawbacks, especially concerning the presentations. She clarifies, “We needed to adapt to Powerpoint instead of InDesign for the presentations, and we could not convey the textures of fabrics, but we were able to get really great feedback from the two design professionals Lawrence brought in as the jury for each project. It’s amazing to get feedback from professionals on your work via Zoom. And it was nice, during the presentations, to be uninterrupted because of the muting. You get to own the floor; you can get all the way through and answer questions at the end. It’s a more focused way to get through a presentation.”

Takeaway #3: Learning from Other Students’ Mistakes & Successes in Canvas

Joanne Park, an MFA1 student in her final year who is currently studying from her home in Queens, was worried about her thesis project when she found out all of her courses were going online. Her thesis advisor is Barbara Lowenthal, associate dean for graduate studies. Park says, “The thesis is the point in your academic career when you must rely on an advisor to guide you. . .There are aspects that have been lost, such as hand drawing at your desk and having your advisor trace right over it to make a correction, but online the experience has been pretty much the same thing. We used to knock on Barbara’s door when we had a question. Now we virtually knock on her door by sending an email, and she responds within a day. Professors are still really accessible.” She adds that there have been collaborative aspects of her thesis learning that have been enhanced by working in Canvas. Park says, “I really like Canvas. We do a Friday discussion board (on which) you can post work. I’m really thankful to interact weekly. Showing your work on a discussion board makes you defend your decisions. You also see your peers’ thinking and learn from it. Looking over someone’s shoulder in a real classroom seems invasive, but it’s so natural online. Seeing other people’s mistakes, and being able to comment on them, is a huge help. Also, it helped me when peers pointed out my mistakes.” We spoke to Park the day before the final presentation of her thesis project, and she was feeling calm and prepared to defend “The Purrfect Hostel and Cat Cafe,” a cat adoption center that allows animals free range of motion and socialization as they are being adopted.

Takeaway #4: Deep Emotional Connection with Peers & Instructors

Violette Chartock, an MFA1 student in her second year, travelled home to South Carolina for spring break and remained there. Her mom and dogs have been a great source of comfort in this disconcerting time, and she feels, “It’s been a gift to be able to continue the momentum of ongoing studies online rather than having to pause my education.” Chartock is taking seven classes this semester, including Kitchen and Bath Design and Interior Design Studio IV, which focuses on healthcare environments. She realizes she is working on her courses in a comfortable environment—some of her friends are in studio apartments alone, and are having a much harder time. She says, “The regularity of meeting in Zoom classrooms is good for all of us amidst all this uncertainty. . . .I have a cohort of students I regularly have classes with. The pandemic intensified relationships with these peers. . . In Zoom, you can see everyone’s faces at once, catch every expression and joke. Peoples’ personalities come through as we work. We’re connecting around the work but also on an emotional level as people talk about what they’re going through.” She adds, “I’ve been really surprised by the amount of emotional connection with the instructors as well. Perhaps it’s the ability to have so much one-on-one time with them in Zoom break rooms. A teacher I had last semester for SketchUp, Leyla Aghayeva, met with me one-on-one via Zoom just to answer a single question I had emailed her about.”

Takeaway #5: The Facility of Handing the Controls to Your Instructor

Chartock feels she has benefited from what’s called the “Remote Desktop Control” in Zoom. In her Photoshop II course, she was able to hand over control of her screen to her instructor, Christine Kim, so Kim could show her a technique to replace the design of a chair's fabric with another in an image. She adds, “I’ve also enjoyed the “Annotation” feature of Zoom, that allows teachers to draw with a color marker, so I could see their drawings on top of my design.”

Takeaway #6: Breaking Down Into Small Groups Makes Classes More Productive

Ryan Biggs, a former military cryptographer who is currently a third year BFA student, went home to visit family for spring break, and stayed once the pandemic overtook NYC. He has just completed his six-class course-load while studying in a shared living room space near Boston. It wasn’t easy, but he managed to get good grades. The two design history classes he took online went very smoothly, but he felt that for technical courses, “taking the classes online is definitely not my preferred way of doing it.” He says, “I think I miss my classmates the most. In person, someone can pull you aside and get help rendering a staircase, something that happened just this semester, but that’s harder to do in Zoom. Three hours of listening to critiques of other people’s work on a communal Zoom screen means I can’t work on my stuff in class, but my instructor Brian Lee, who taught Presentation Skills II, came up with a successful way to do it. He shortened the communal portion of the class to 45 minutes and gave us our objectives for the week, and then he identified what problems people were having, and pulled those students who were having problems into a different class completely. His adaptability made his class successful.” Biggs is looking forward to the time when he can go back to in-person studios, but he feels the digitization of courses has opened up an exciting possibility. He says, “Doing presentations online means our instructors can shoot for jurors who are outside of the norm, designers who are in LA or other countries. That could be really incredible.”

Designers Adapt

NYSID is preparing for every eventuality for the fall semester. Its academic leaders are constantly refining the blended curriculum and methodology. Dean Ellen Fisher has a theory about why NYSID instructors are adapting so well to the ever-changing reality: “Every instructor at this college is a designer, an architect; an artist of some kind. They are entrepreneurial, smart, and up for a challenge. It’s the designer ethos to be given a hard problem, and to elegantly solve it. Our instructors are doing a great job because they care about the students and they want them to succeed.”