In many Universities, art departments get less fundings compared to other departments. Taking it further, in some cultures art is not commonly expressed or even appreciated. However, this is when MOOCs turn out to have a great value, as they can be used to promote education in the fields of arts.

Kadenze was created to fulfill the lack of artistic education online. According to its CEO and President, Ajay Kapur, the project was built under the idea that teaching computer science in a creative way makes people end up learning it much better:

“Many times, these classes are taught in such theoretical ways that can make students unmotivated. However, there are more excited ways to learn like by making a video game, a music song or any other visual experience”.

And he should know as, apart from being an educator, he is also a musician and digital artist who has made robotic sculptures and musical instruments.

MOOCs to promote artistic education

When we start discussing about why building MOOCs to provide art education he told us  they have found out that there is a considerable amount of people who always wanted to take art classes in College, but they claim they didn’t have the time to do so.

Right now, there is a much lower barrier to enter into these classes with MOOCs and without having to pay a huge tuition  to learn it

You’ve probably heard that you should take online courses to become an expert in Machine Learning, Data Science or Business, however just as Kapur states:

“Arts have a way of supplementing every subject. You can pick a certain major in a field to become an expert, but if you add some theoretical design, film-making or music knowledge, for instance, and learn in this creative way, you’ll start to apply that to your major, and that is when you will become an innovator”.

Challenges in the fields of arts

One of the main challenges for Kadenze was to create a whole new way for teachers to build the coursework and assignments for students.

For Kapur, “There is this feedback that happens from the application of these knowledge to actually creativity”.

Art schools are not often based on tests, but based on teaching some theory and history that then encourages students to make their own work. So, Kadenze wanted to build the technology and a community of teachers and students who really believe in that idea.

“We do believe everyone should be a coder, and we aim to teach that in a creative way. The thing about arts is that you can show what you’ve done not by showing a test but by showing a portfolio that includes things you’ve created. And because it is creative, no other person will have the same assignment. So there is something so special that is going on in the way we teach these subjects”.  

Kadenze aims to be a community where people can get creative knowledge, however, they also encourage their students to learn from different places, as it is all open.

They just wanted to make sure that the arts were represented in the MOOC movement as current generations will learn more and more online. “We believe that if people go online and they just see these very few classes that are making money, then we are going to have a big problem in the future”, Kapur concludes.