Art educators can have a powerful impact on a student’s life. They can engage their critical thinking, encourage their creativity, and shape their technical development. They also can help them discover their unique talents, gain confidence, and prepare for real-world art applications.
The online Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) curriculum builds on your expertise to help you excel in today’s evolving arts education landscape. The program aims to develop leaders in the field who engage in reflective, critical thought, and scholarship and are committed to ongoing professional development. We also endeavor to heighten awareness among educators of the benefits and challenges of promoting democratic values in our culturally diverse society.
Ongoing research increasingly demonstrates that arts and arts integrated instruction engages students in school, increases learning, and helps students develop collaboration, communication and other valuable skills that lead to success in work and life.
The Arts Education Partnership
The two-year, 36-credit program can be completed fully online. Many students, however, complete the program on a hybrid basis, combining online coursework during the academic year with intensive, one-week Residential Summer Studio courses on campus.
Additionally, we structured the online curriculum to help you balance all your obligations. Instead of juggling two courses, you focus on just one course at a time. Courses offered in the spring and fall span eight weeks, and students typically take two courses consecutively each 16-week semester.
Flexibility and Convenience – You decide when and where you want to study.
Theory into Practice – Students not only can immediately apply what they learn in their courses to their own learning environment, but also immediately engage in lively discussions about their real-world experiences with peers and professors in the virtual classroom.
Digital Age Proficiency – Students develop their technological literacy and virtual collaboration skills through the use of our advanced online learning platform and associated software. You also learn strategies for teaching with technology and can take multiple studio courses in new media.
Studio Emphasis – We stress immersive, hands-on graduate-level art making experiences — whether online or on campus — involving new and/or traditional media. UF artist educators developed these innovative courses specifically for our students and our unique studio environments. Learn more in the Course Descriptions section below or visit our Residential Summer Studio page.
Global Perspectives – Globalization is a crucial phenomenon in today’s world and an important concept across academic disciplines. Though many of your courses touch on this topic, our increasingly interconnected world is the focus of ARH6930 Art and Global Diversity, the program’s core art history course. Additionally, the program now offers an annual study abroad opportunity, led by Program Director Heidi Powell, Ed.D.
Though students may never interact in person, they commonly develop relationships online that extend beyond graduation. For online coursework, we use the Canvas platform, a technologically advanced, but easy to use 21st century learning management system. It serves as a hub for coursework and communication. Among its features are a repository for sharing all kinds of content and an integrated media recorder that can be used for messaging, assignments and discussions.
I wasn’t expecting the outreach that I received upon taking my very first class. I had people emailing me immediately after I submitted my first project, wanting to know how I did something. We’re all in it together.
Drew Mulligan ‘18
online M.A. in Art Education, University of Florida
Online courses are mostly asynchronous (self-study with interactive elements including email and discussion boards) with some components that are synchronous (learning with others in real-time using videoconferencing and other technologies). Instructors schedule live sessions at mutually convenient times and record these sessions for those who are unable to attend.
The Canvas online learning platform provides an online orientation module to familiarize you with the online MAAE program, university policies and procedures, and the learning management system itself. We enroll all students into the module. It is recommended but not required.
All online MAAE courses emphasize active learning and are project based; there are no tests. Though courses are academically rigorous, they also are fun. Most courses combine individual study with group collaboration. And since our faculty are actively engaged leaders in the field, they are well positioned to bring in distinguished colleagues as guest lecturers to share their expertise on specific topics related to your coursework.
Online MAAE students can expect to engage in activities that include reading articles and texts; completing written assignments; viewing recorded lectures and presentations; and participating in discussion boards and live discussions.
Online studio courses focus heavily on making art and may incorporate some of the activities described above. See the Course Descriptions section below for more information about individual courses.
You also can check out examples of online MAAE course assignments here.
The online M.A. in Art Education comprises:
Students typically take one course at a time and two courses per semester. You may choose to take just one course, but this will lengthen the time it takes to complete your degree and may make you ineligible for financial aid. You also may be permitted to take more than two courses per semester to expedite degree completion, but we discourage this path as it can be challenging for busy professionals.
Though online classes enable you to complete coursework largely on your own schedule, assignment deadlines must be met. We suggest that students devote 10 to 12 hours per week of study for each course. There are no login requirements, but we recommend that students log in daily to check email and review announcements. Students are expected to maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA throughout the program.
Faculty members typically reply to your questions within 24 hours during a regular school week. Additionally, students can schedule one-on-one virtual meetings with their instructor throughout the semester.
This course assists graduate art education students in developing an understanding of various theories and approaches to structuring art curricula. Emphasis is on identifying the basic elements of curriculum construction as well as linking contemporary theories and curricular practices in art education with their historical antecedents. Upon successful course completion, students are able to demonstrate understanding of:
This is an art theory/museology course that engages students with issues in contemporary art in relation to physical context, meaning, and audience participation. Students analyze, critique, and apply current concepts in art, methodology, and criticism within the context of global diversity. These student outcomes are assessed by weekly written reviews of scholarly literature, weekly video conference seminar discussions, and one final project.
This course assists graduate art education students in developing an understanding of the philosophical foundations of art education. The emphasis is on linking personal and cultural belief systems about the nature of art education to their historical antecedents and roots. Upon successful course completion, students are able to explain:
In this course, students explore ways in which contemporary issues in art, education, and society influence theories and practices in art education. Through weekly reading assignments, discussions, and individual research projects, students examine scholarly writings, creative practices, and contemporary issues as they shape art education. Topics covered in the course include (but are not limited to) contemporary issues in art education, postmodern and critical social theory, multicultural/intercultural education, visual culture theory, new media/technology, and creativity. As an issues-oriented course, topics for consideration in ARE6641 are grounded in practices that foster the personal creative potential for every human being and that envision art and education as a form of critical public engagement based on democratic values.
Students are required to take two electives. These courses are offered on a rotating basis, and students typically take one elective course in each of their fourth and fifth semesters.
This course is intended for graduate students who are interested in teaching art outside of traditional K-12 school settings. It is also useful for art educators interested in connecting their classrooms with their communities. Through study and observation, you explore the role art educators play serving various interest groups including but not limited to people with disabilities, the elderly, LGBTQ youth, hospital patients, prisoners, homeschoolers as well as those with general interest in the arts at museums, libraries, summer camps, community centers, artists’ studios, and online. The field is truly limitless with new doors, literally, opening every day. Field observations at sites in your own communities complements course readings and online research to inform critically reflective discussion and writing.
This course focuses on exploring the psychology of creativity and how to foster critical, creative, and practical thinking skills and dispositions in the art education practice when engaging with learners of all ages. Emphasis is on understanding how learning in and through art and design supports new paradigms of intelligence and creativity theory.
This course examines current research about artistic learning and development, identifying connections between artistic/aesthetic behaviors and other domains of human development. We consider perspectives derived from varied disciplinary lenses as they inform our own understandings about ways in which artistic learning takes place in the 21st century. Disciplinary perspectives include sociocultural learning theory, complemented by studies from psychology, anthropology, art education, and art criticism. Art, in this context, is an expansive term that refers to a diverse array of creative visual, aesthetic, and symbolic expressions and cultural productions. Course activities and assignments are set forth in a fast-paced but thoughtful examination of the nature and relevance of artistic learning today.
Students explore connections between globalization, art, and education in this course. Themes and questions examined include ideas about the nature of creative cultural expressions (aka “art”) in diverse global contexts; the dramatic impact of transcultural and transglobal interaction on local peoples and communities; and how all of this impacts personal, cultural, professional, and public policies, practices, and institutions. We read scholarly texts, examine contemporary art, discuss texts and art, conduct independent research, create original art, share our research and art, play with digital media, explore and utilize online social networking sites, establish our own online presence, and self-assess our work.
All of these courses are required. Students typically take ARE6746 in either the fourth or fifth semester (depending on course sequencing) and take ARE6905 and ARE6910 in the final semester.
This course facilitates the development and writing of the Capstone Research Proposal. In conversation and consultation with peers and the instructor, students select and focus their capstone research topics, goals, and questions; identify and read scholarly texts that inform their topics of inquiry; learn and apply appropriate research methodologies; and write their Capstone Research Proposal. Students complete a significant amount of the required work independently. This includes making decisions, identifying, retrieving, and examining texts that inform their research projects, and writing in a scholarly and professional way. Through a series of graded and ungraded weekly assignments, students shape their capstone research projects and, at the end of this course, turn in their written Capstone Research Proposal for evaluation. Student enrollment in this course is based on the assumptions that: (a) students are ready to select and focus their capstone research projects; (b) students have adequate writing skills to complete the Capstone Research Proposal in accordance with University of Florida Graduate College Standards; and (c) students have adequate time to complete the work required in this course.
This course enables students to study and gain knowledge of a topic that is not part of a regularly-offered course — for the purpose of preparing for the Capstone Project. Students identify and refine a proposal topic related to art education and provide a written/oral proposal to the supervisory committee for approval. Following approval, the student conducts a review of research/proposal goals and consults with the committee chair on a regular basis to discuss the status of the research project.
The Capstone Project is the culminating experience of the MAAE degree. Students integrate the knowledge acquired from the program and their Independent Study course, in a curricular document that shows the findings, methodology, research, and implications of their project.
Students may choose to prepare a Thesis instead of a Capstone Project. We recommend the Thesis option for those who are considering or actively pursuing Ph.D. studies.
The difference between a Capstone project and Thesis can be summarized as follows:
Students are required to take three studio courses. They typically take two studio courses during their first summer and take the third studio in either the fourth or fifth semester (depending on course sequencing).
To learn more about University of Florida’s online Master of Arts in Art Education download a brochure, fill out the fields below or call us at (877) 360-1859 to talk with one of our enrollment advisors.
Benefit from the UF’s heritage of academic excellence and complete an NASAD-accredited master’s program entirely online.
