Portrait Photograph of Erica Halverson

Erica Halverson

Associate Professor

School of Education

Erica Halverson is an Associate Professor of Digital Media & Literacy in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at UW–Madison. Dr. Halverson’s research focuses on how people learn to make art and the function that art-making serves in identity development and literacy learning. Dr. Halverson studies art-making across a variety of media including theatre, film, radio, and digital and physical making. In 2010, Dr. Halverson received the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and and Scholarship in Learning Technologies. Dr. Halverson is also the co-founder of Barrel of Monkeys, a Chicago-based non-profit educational theatre program for elementary school students.

Talks:

Learning in the Making: What and how people learn in makerspaces

This talk describes makerspaces as a new, emerging form of learning environment and discusses how people learn to make and what kinds of learning outcomes are associated with “making”.

Approximate Length of Talk: 30 minutes to 1.5 hour

How Art-Making Supports Identity Development in Adolescence

In this talk, Professor Halverson describes her extensive case study work with youth arts organizations and connect the art-making process to identity development processes.

Approximate Length of Talk: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours

Participatory Media Spaces: Learning environments in the 21st Century

This talk focuses on principles for design, gleaned from extensive research on digital art-making, that can be applied to learning environments that focus on new media literacy environments from elementary school through college.

Approximate Length of Talk: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours

“Backward design” as a framework for rethinking teaching from the perspective of learners

This talk is useful for educators across a variety of environments to think about their teaching practice in terms of the learning goals they have for students and how they might measure whether students have achieved these learning goals.

Approximate Length of Talk: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours

Videos: