Abstract:

This report aims to shed the light on recent changes in Arts Education Ecosystem. Traditionally Russian educators hold the top positions in the field of the fundamental and professionally oriented, so-called «Academic» Arts. The teaching methods of Russian and Russian-educated art practitioners were assimilated worldwide, treated as the benchmark for the vast amount of the American and Japanese (Music, Ballet), Chinese (Music, Ballet, Visual Arts), Middle East (Music, Ballet, Visual Arts) educational institutions.

At the beginning of the XXI, Russian HEI faced the explosive growth of the innovative Degree and Undergraduate Educational Programmes, which opened the diverse educational perspectives for the professionals in Performing and Visual Arts. Nowadays the continuing internationalization of Arts Education urges us to search the new methodological approaches for teaching Arts to multilingual and multicultural audiences from all over the world.

Our goal is to share the up-to-date educational experience, gained by the St. Petersburg University (Faculty of Arts) together with its key partner institutions in the field of Arts and Humanities. Based on the platform of common fundamental values, the principles we support are as follows: the balance between competency and knowledge; the importance of non-verbal knowledge (Music, Drama, Dance, etc.) into the educational universe; smart implementation of cutting-edge technologies with the clear methodological reasoning; person-to-person skills transfer.

The widening spectrum of the so-called «pandemic» distance learning solutions urges us to analyze the boundaries of Digital and Distance learning, which causes some disruptive changes in Instructional Design. The concept «Phygital» could be defined as the usage of technology to bridge the digital world with the physical world with the purpose of providing unique interactive experiences for the user. This concept is examined for the implementation in current curricular and extracurricular activities. We explore already existed phygital-based contents and methods, which are important for the Arts Education Ecosystem.

The Results of our research are to select the most effective learning design improvements, including both digital and phygital learning spaces, and to present them for implementation. In the conclusion, the effective model of international partnership among the Universities and Arts Institutions is presented, and its crucial role in nurturing the Arts Education Ecosystem is outlined.

Keywords:

Arts, Arts Education, Learning Design, Educational Ecosystem, Competency, Knowledge.