LSU art classes have taken a creative approach to offering art students a fulfilling semester while minimizing health risks.
To provide students with a well-rounded class, professors adapted an at-home friendly curriculum. Director of the School of Art Rod Parker was pleasantly surprised with the semester’s positive start. 
“Art classes are the most different from most everybody else’s classes,” Parker said. “[Students and teachers] need to work together.”
While larger classes remain entirely online, multiple format options are available for classes with less than 50 students. 
Professors can hold two smaller groups in person once a week, allowing students to attend via Zoom while others attend simultaneously on campus or transfer classes entirely online.
But Parker said there are some classes students can’t complete online, like figure drawing. 
“You can look at your own hand and draw it, but it’s not the same thing as looking at a model and moving around the room,” Parker said. 
Associate professor Scott Andresen offers a hybrid modeled class with the option of attending via Zoom or in person.
Andresen said art classes previously involved free-flowing creative conversations based on topics generated from students’ input.
“There’s a lot of natural engagement that goes on as people work in the shared space together,” Andresen said. “Those types of conversations you start losing in an online format.”
Director of Digital Media Arts and Engineering Marc Aubanel said his classes shifted smoothly to a fully online format. 
“I am lucky in the standpoint that the work that we do is on computers. What we do is virtual to begin with, so I think our type of course transition better,” Aubanel said. 
Digital art senior Paige Ellis studied abroad in Anchorage, Alaska this spring and felt apprehensive about online classes after struggling to engage last semester.
“I was worried coming into the online format this semester, but I’ve been really on top of my work so far,” Ellis said. 
Ellis said her digital art classes transitioned well to online format through the use of tutorials posted to Moodle and additional one-on-one Zoom meetings while her abstract painting class has followed proper protocol to keep students safe in the studio.
“I hope that professors would be open to more office hours or meetings on Zoom after this is all over,” Ellis said. 
 While digital art forms transition well to an online format, traditional studio classes face their own set of difficulties.
Ceramics transitioned from wheel-based projects to hand-built assignments in order to allow students to work from home.
Graphic design senior Megan Montecino  enrolled in a ceramics class this semester and purchased 25 pounds of clay for at-home mini projects like forming pancake-shaped disks and documenting the drying process with a PowerPoint presentation.
While Montecino misses the classroom environment, she said she manages to stay connected with her peers outside of the class.
“It’s rough to be away from all of my classmates,” Montecino said. “I miss the dynamic of being in a room with creative people working on the same [project].”