9.1: Creative futures: Embedding employability in Music
Music
Jane Nolan, Newcastle University
Music Enterprise is an innovative undergraduate module which embeds employability in the curriculum to help prepare students for their futures after graduation. It has been featured as a case study in a Higher Education Academy guide (Enhancing Employability through Enterprise Education: examples of good practice in Higher Education 2014).
During this interactive session participants will experience at first-hand pedagogical approaches and learning and teaching strategies designed to provide knowledge and develop key transferable skills to enhance employability and also prepare students for freelance portfolio and self-employed careers in the creative sector. The session will invite discussion and provide links to a range of pedagogical resources which can help embed employability in curricula. It will reflect on student feedback and the application of similar approaches in other Arts and Humanities disciplines drawing on the presenter’s research and practice working with both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
9.2: ‘Give us a job’: An account of and reflection on pilots conducted with creative writing BA and MA students to develop a method of measuring how the study of creative writing aids employability
Creative Writing
Josie Barnard, Middlesex University
Demonstrating that the study of creative writing helps graduates in a broad employment context can be difficult. This session intends to show how it can be done and provide participants with a toolkit. Grounded in current teaching and research ‘Give us a job’ presents emergent findings from interdisciplinary pilots conducted with BA and MA creative writing students at a UK University between 2013 and 2016 that have been devised with the aim of developing a method of identifying and measuring specific ways in which creative writing courses help build widely applicable employability competencies. The session also presents tried and tested exercises that embed employability in the curriculum.
The word ‘employability’ can feel dull even punitive. In presenting emergent findings from class pilots and providing a set of illustrative exercises it is hoped that this evidence-based session will both equip and inspire.
Demonstrating that the study of creative writing helps graduates in a broad employment context can be difficult. This session intends to show how it can be done and provide participants with a toolkit.
Grounded in current teaching and research ‘Give us a job’ presents emergent findings from interdisciplinary pilots conducted with BA and MA creative writing students at a UK University between 2013 and 2016 that have been devised with the aim of developing a method of identifying and measuring specific ways in which creative writing courses help build widely applicable employability competencies. The session also presents tried and tested exercises that embed employability in the curriculum.
The word ‘employability’ can feel dull even punitive. In presenting emergent findings from class pilots and providing a set of illustrative exercises it is hoped that this evidence-based session will both equip and inspire.
9.3 The fear of never being good enough: students' images of assessment
Art & Design
Peter Day and Harvey Woolf, University of Wolverhampton
Although asking students to create or respond to images has been quite widely used in pedagogic research in schools there is only limited application of the approach in higher education. The University of Wolverhampton portraying assessment project: The Fear of Never Being Good Enough: students' images of assessment is a contribution to using images in research in higher education. This project uses photo-elicitation and auto drive to measure how assessment and being assessed impacts on the student experience and the value and quality of learning.
9.4: Expectations - Inspirations - Experiences
Interdisciplinary
Viv Lever, Independent Consultant
This iterative workshop gives participants an experience of original activities designed to foster authentic dialogues between staff and students. This will model longer sessions which examine individual staff and student motivation expectations and experiences. Through creative activity these sessions have successfully improved communication between staff and students renewed motivation and passion and supported student achievements and retention at a range of universities during the last eight years. All curious protagonists will be welcomed!
9.5a: Conversations in cross sector communities of practice. Interdisciplinary visual art facilitation for learners with sensory impairment
Art & Design
Alexandra McEwan, Kara Jarrold, Sense UK
Immersive workshops aimed at opening up disucssion around the possibilities for collaboration between academic and community art projects:
- open up a conversation between practitioners across a breadth of disciplines;
- widen understanding of the complexities of single or dual sensory impairment;
- challenge stereotypes by rebooting ‘disability’ as a ‘creative opportunity’;
- create an immersive sensory impairment environment in which practitioners can discuss challenges whilst carrying out practical making tasks;
- share and tap into new and innovative ways of engaging learners from experienced practitioners;
- open up discussion for cross-disciplinary practice between university based teaching and community based arts to make in roads into best inclusive practice;
- idea and insight exchange of cross-disciplinary workshops made during Sense UK’s diverse Arts & Wellbeing program drawing from a wealth of projects already undertaken;
- forge links with national organisations and colleagues in the arts;
- discuss the importance of volunteer work as ‘Professional Practice’ experience and course research.
9.6a: Teaching trans students: adopting and implementing inclusive practice
Dance Drama & Music
Catherine Mcnamara Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
I suggest there are significant shifts we can make in our practices to better understand gender and the ways that it interrelates with embodied training learning and teaching in the creative arts.
The inclusive pedagogic practice put forward in the session draws on the findings of TransActing a Practice-as-Research project that took place at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London) during July – October 2015.
I was the project investigator for the TransActing project and conceived of the investigation into the specific challenges and opportunities that exist when working with trans people in a performer training context. I led the project and worked with twenty two trans actors over a series of workshops including movement voice text emotion recall and acting for camera. I am offering a set of guiding principles developed through the project that can inform the work of other teachers trainers coaches and directors.
9.7: Using an Open Badges design framework in a programme of activities at Coventry University
Art & Design
Jacqui Speculand & Koula Charitonos Coventry University
The main goal of this presentation is to explore the Open Badges concept in Arts and Humanities teaching and learning and particularly its potential to become an alternative credentialing system in educational settings especially in areas of HE which traditionally lack credit systems e.g. extracurricular learning activities.
During this presentation we will present the Open Badges project that has been launched by the Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL) at Coventry University in 2015. The presentation will focus on the Open Badge Design Framework that DMLL has created to capture and represent the purpose of different badges awarded to learners. Particular attention will be given to how this design framework reflects the skills for which an open badge could be awarded in light of data collected from the implementation of the framework in two learning projects within the university. The findings are important for designers and practitioners that aim to provide students with visible recognition of development of specific skills professional academic or personal.
