14.3: The InCurriculum Project: using technology for assessment and feedback
Art & Design
Katherine Hewlett & Neil Powell Norwich University of the Arts
This paper highlights professional practice developed from the National Teaching Fellowship project InCurriculum. Evidence drawn from Higher Education Statistical Agency data continues to show that students with a learning difference tend to go into Creative Arts or vocational course of undergraduate study. This tendency means that students with particular learning styles or recognised specific learning differences effectively collect in HEI’s that are perceived to provide a sympathetic student-centred teaching experience that is conducive or empathetic to an individualistic/dialogical approach to learning. Visual approaches to learning in art and design have been recognised as having transferable value for students across disciplines (Steffert.B 1999 pp.43). The InCurriculum project investigated such learning and assessment encounters with a view to testing and developing transferable practice to other subject areas within UK higher education.
14.4: Learning environments in design studio culture: Exploring the student experience
Art & Design
Julian Williams University of Westminster
The session will involve the presentation and discussion of a study into design studio culture in a school of architecture. The aim will be to focus on the research methodologies and the key findings. The research involved semi-structured interviews and visual elicitation techniques with final year undergraduate students to explore their learning experiences beyond formal teaching event such as crits and tutorials. The study showed that design studio culture involved a network of elements that supported learning much of it situated outside formal structured teaching. The research indicated opportunities to advance design studio culture by broadening community participation; critically engaging with rationale of problem-based learning and portfolio-based assessment; ease the practical obstacles to studio based participation and support diversity in working habits; and critically embrace studio events like crits.
14.5: How can media education and digital participation support professional development for higher education professionals - or - “How do you solve a problem like Mahara?”
Media & Communications
Jennifer Jones University of the West of Scotland
Using my research-practice experience of a digital media practitioner which focused on developing critical media skills and increased digital participation in schools and community development settings I discuss how my media education background will now translate into my new role as a lecturer in higher education. As my first task I was asked to respond to course feedback by exploring the ongoing challenges with the e-portfolio management tool Mahara and propose a solution or an alternative to the platform for future course delivery.
Drawing on this scenario I will discuss how the ubiquity and opportunity to produce and consume content through digital mobile media in our daily lives (Gauntlett 2011; Jenkins Ford & Green 2013; McGillivray 2013) can conflict with the universities’ need to manage expectations in administering utilising delivering and teaching education technology in a centralised propriety manner.
14.6: Canons by Inversion: An experiment in flipped learning in a Music History course
Dance Drama & Music
Claire Taylor-Jay Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Many music undergraduates take a survey course in music history which aims to give them an overview of the main developments during three or four hundred years of music and music’s relationship to its social and political context within just two or three terms. The necessity to ‘dash through’ historical facts and composers at the same time as introducing repertoire and discussing developments in musical style means that such courses seem to naturally lend themselves to a lecture-based format despite the problematically passive position of the learners in such classes. This paper will give an account of my experiment with a ‘flipped learning’ approach to an undergraduate music history course where students were required to watch a screencast in advance; classes then looked at repertoire and sources in more detail. I will appraise the effectiveness of this learning experience and give an evaluation of its potential and its limitations.
14.7: ‘Access through tools’: a student-staff enterprise and employability co-production
Art & Design
Catherine Smith University of the Arts London
This case study presents a phenomenographic study of a funded student-staff co-production project: the ‘Access Through Tools’ design festival held at LCC the University of the Arts London in April 2015. The presentation draws out the perspectives of those working on the festival (Kushner 2000) and aims to share a nuanced understanding of how it is to experience co-production work.
Findings reveal that the project exhibits some common characteristics of collaborative work: ambiguity time pressures a perceived lack of managerial support and unclear role allocation (Huxham and Vangen 2005). Despite the project having a low institutional profile the emergent ways of working together ‘between the institutional cracks’ (tutor comment) appear to engender resilience in project participants with developing professionalism autonomy and leadership attributes evidenced.
This study contributes to the growing body of literature on co-production. The conclusion invites contemplation of a framework that might support future co-production within art and design higher education.
