About e-Clay

Phase One

e-Clay Learning and Teaching Research was a Digital Strategy Fund project intended to develop a shared foundation for community ceramic studios to implement online dynamic and interactive learning and teaching experiences for clay.

The purpose of the project was to undertake research, define needs, and determine solutions and costs to implement the plan. Specifically, to determine if any existing solutions can be used or modified to provide for instructor and student interactivity, participant's ease of use, and quality video and sound; and to determine if new development is needed to meet requirements and if so, estimate the time and costs required to achieve desired outcomes.

For more information about the research and its outcomes, you are can read this short article or the summary report for a more detailed description of the project.

Phase Two

The E-Clay Project received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts for a second phase. The new phase was aimed at establishing a set of best practices for interactive online ceramic teaching, focused on not-for-profit Guilds and Studios.  

The E-Clay Project, phase 2 was a 9-month project aimed at developing and sharing a best practices guide for teaching and learning ceramic arts in real time online. 

This past fall, guilds and teachers were recruited from across Ontario. There were workshops with eight experienced teachers who worked collaboratively to identify, define and refine the tools needed to teach online e-Clay courses. This led to a draft Best Practices Guide that was used in the the pilot courses taught by the teachers and administered in the participating guilds/studios.

Building on the results from the phase 1 research, the workshops and the teachers’, students’ and guild/studio administrators’ feedback and evaluations from the pilot courses, the Best Practices Guild for Teachers and Guilds/Studios to Create an Interactive Classroom was refined and has been completed by the project team.

Phase 2 of this project is competed. The project team was led by an Oversight Committee with Salina Szechtman, Anne Pedersen, Delvalle Lewis, Amy Bell and Penny Parnes, and project manager Filipa Pimentel. This is an exciting initiative with more news to come in the future!