Hi Barbara,
How does a student experience a class? The footprint seems like good way to record a student response--better than surveys. Learning that is expressive needs a place to live in the students' experience. And be recorded somehow.
Just reading a bit on Rudolf Arnheim at:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/06/15/simplicity-clarity-balance-a-tribute-to-rudolf-arnheim/
"This discovery of the gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art, too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium (Film as Art, 3).
The Gestalters thought that these principles–figure/ground, completeness, good continuation, and the like–were fundamental to all human perception, across times and cultures. Art and Visual Perception makes a powerful case for this view. Today this position is so unfashionable that Arnheim’s calm confidence in it is quite stunning. For many scholars today, all that matters is what divides and differentiates us. But for eighty-plus years Arnheim emphasized ways in which we share a common experience of the world and of art"