Look on the News page for teaching and learning news from the UK art, design and media higher education sector, including events, calls for papers, funding opportunities and more. See the About us page for information on how to share your news on this blog.

Friday 10 February 2012

Reminder - contribute to Networks 17: deadline 2 March







Deadline for contributions: Friday, 2 March 2012

Networks 17, to be published in April 2012, will focus on teaching and learning practices in which students take centre stage.  We invite feature articles exploring student involvement in art, design and media curriculum design, ‘delivery’ and assessment, as well as engagement with departmental and institutional structures and processes. We welcome content written by both students and staff or collaboratively. 

GENERAL NEWS - from HE

CALL – for papers to Surveys for Enhancement Conference
Using student surveys to enhance the student learning experience
National College for School Leadership, Nottingham
17 May 2012

Deadline for contributions: 12 March 2012

This conference, hosted by the Higher Education Academy, will present research and practice on the use of student surveys for quality enhancement. Sessions will include invited speakers, parallel presentations and a panel discussion. The event will bring together a broad range of people interested in using student experience data to enhance policy, practice and institutional strategies, including senior management with strategic learning & teaching roles, educational developers and lecturers at the chalk face.

Contributions are sought for presentations and workshop sessions on any issue relating to the use of student survey data for quality enhancement.
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EVENT – webinair from 'Disciplinary Thinking' OER Project
The webinar will be accessible from: http://go.bath.ac.uk/brnl
24 February 2012 at 12:30 - 13:30

The HEA/JISC-funded project 'Disciplinary Thinking' (aka Academic Practice in Context: OERs  for Exploring Discipline-based Learning & Teaching) will be hosting this webinar. It will provide a broad overview of recent projects on Open Educational Resources (OERs) within educational development in UK HE and will outline the materials being created by 'Disciplinary Thinking'.

They are keen to encourage participation in the development of these materials through piloting or review by colleagues. Draft materials will be made available on their blogsite which will also be used as the key link to the final resources (available through a Creative Commons licence).
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EVENTS - 3 x Scholarly Activity Workshops
City & Islington College, London
2 March 2012

Bradford College
30 March 2012

Warwickshire College
30 May 2012  

Research and scholarly activity play an integral role in the emerging HE ethos in FE colleges.  IQER, HE strategies and FDAP has led to a greater emphasis been placed upon the opportunities for staff to engage with scholarly activity.  

Through a series of practical activities, guest speakers and case studies, these workshops will collectively consider the contribution research can make to the college environment, particularly in terms of enhancing practice and policy. For more information about each workshop use the links above.
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EVENT - Sustaining OER Activity
The Open University, Milton Keynes
8 March 2012

This interactive workshop forms part of the activities around Open Education Week.  Presenters will offer perspectives on how the Open Educational Resource (OER) projects they’ve been involved in have sustained their activities, and the internal and external influences have played a part in this.  The presentations will be followed by an opportunity for delegates to participate in the ongoing discussions around how to sustain OER by working in groups to discuss key questions on OER and sustainability.
For more information
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EVENT - 9th ALDinHE Conference: 
"Learning Development in a digital age: emerging literacies and learning spaces"
University of Leeds
2 - 4 April 2012

Across the Learning Development community there is significant interest in the implications of an increasingly digital learning environment and its impact on the learning experience. The 9th Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) conference is an exciting opportunity to consider how we operate in a digital age.
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EVENT - SEDA Workshop - Orientation for new academic and learning support staff
Beyond Health and Safety and Fire Awareness Training!   
Sheffield Hallam University
12 April 2012
 
This workshop will explore the needs of academics and learning support staff when joining a new higher education institution. The workshop will consider strategies for providing timely information and support building on best practice and using lessons learnt from student orientation.
For more information
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EVENT - Higher Education, Further Education & Skills Conference
Central London
17 May 2012

This conference will provide attendees with a forum for discussion on the key issues surrounding these vital sectors. Some of the issues to be discussed include; FE, HE & Skills reform, investment in apprenticeships, the importance of community skills, widening participation, tackling NEET issues, student funding and loans and the opportunity for higher and further education institutions to increase social mobility.
For more information
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EVENT - SEDA Spring Teaching Learning and Assessment Conference 2012
‘The Student Journey’
Queen Hotel, Chester
17 - 18 May 2012

This year’s SEDA Conference themes include: 
Student transition; Engaging students in their learning design and / or assessment; Students as researchers; The student voice in staff professional development; Preparing students for work.

The conference will be of particular interest to all those involved in promoting effective change in HE and FE learning, teaching and development.
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EVENT - New Perspectives on Feedback
ASKe Feedback Event 2012
Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley Campus
28 June 2012

Feedback continues to disappoint students in higher education and this seems likely to intensify with the new fees regime. However, improvement in feedback practices remains largely elusive especially in an environment with finite resources. Institutions and their staff are being challenged to find the solution to a complex problem.

This one day Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe) event aims to support those grappling with this problem by bringing together expertise in research, innovative approaches and the student voice in order to generate debate, analysis and ideas to take away. There will be contributions from researchers, the HEA and the NUS.

It will appeal to leaders with responsibility for driving feedback improvement in institutions, departments and programmes as well as practitioners and student representatives seeking to improve feedback practices.  

Thursday 9 February 2012

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Wednesday 8 February 2012

NEWS – it's Go Green Week!

This week, over 100 schools, colleges and universities will take part in Go Green Week, People & Planet’s annual national week of action on climate change.

For more information: http://peopleandplanet.org/

Students at the University of Brighton have been designing posters for their own Green Week. Students across the university were asked to design a poster and logo to promote a week of activities aimed at learning, thinking about and taking action on sustainability issues. The winning poster, featured here, was designed by Jordan Chan, a student on BA (Hons) Product Design.

EVENT & CALL - for papers: Exploring collaborative learning in undergraduate media studies programmes

School of Media and Film, University of Winchester
3 May 2012

This one day seminar, one of the Higher Education Academy Workshop and Seminar Series, will allow for academic staff from different higher education institutions across the UK to convene and to discuss the benefits and problems in collaborative learning, how social media – and other technologies and practices – can be used and to share good practice in facilitating collaborative teaching and learning in undergraduate media studies programmes.

Key-note Address: Professor David Gauntlett (University of Westminster) Social media – making, connecting and learning”.

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/seminars/disciplines/DW140

Call for papers to this seminar

Deadline for abstracts: 2 March 2012

Papers are sought that examine:
  •  The theoretical underpinning of using collaborative work in teaching; 
  • The advantages and disadvantages of using collaborative work;
  •  Old and new technologies for facilitating collaborative work; 
  • Social media and collaborative work;
  •  Planning, trouble shooting and pre-empting problems in collaborative teaching; 
  • The impact of collaborative learning on other aspects of learning and teaching;
  •  Case studies of the successful (and unsuccessful) use of collaborative activities.
Selected papers will appear in an edited collection published by the Higher Education Academy.

Please send a 250 word abstract to marcus.leaning@winchester.ac.uk

CALL – for poster presentations at HEA Arts and Humanities 1st Annual Conference

Pedagogies of Hope and Opportunity: The Arts and Humanities Annual Conference, 2012
Radisson Blu Hotel, Glasgow, Scotland
29 - 30 May 2012

Deadline for proposals: 16 March 2012  

The Higher Education Academy’s first annual learning and teaching conference for the Arts and Humanities, will provide a platform for the expertise and knowledge found in teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities, which pushes boundaries and fosters a culture of innovation transforming student learning.

The conference will focus on Higher Education Academy themes: assessment and feedback; internationalisation; employability; retention and success; and also on innovative practice in teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities.

Abstract submissions for poster presentations are invited for a pre-dinner poster session on day one of the conference.

For more information download the Call for Posters and Proposal Form at:

EVENT - Learning and teaching in the Art & Design Studio – new challenges, new possibilities?

Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
28 June 2012

This seminar is one of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series. It will examine critically the benefits and restrictions of traditional approaches to established methods of studio instruction, such as the ‘crit’ and will seek to formulate proposals for new approaches to studio teaching, to not only maximise the benefits for staff and students, but also to develop ways to demonstrably use the facilities to their fullest extent.

Like many other institutions of Art & Design education, the Cambridge School of Art (CSA) has traditionally prized its studio culture and the unique learning and teaching possibilities, and the sense of an academic community, that education within a studio makes possible. Current pressures on universities to increase fiscal efficiency (ie teach more students, in less space, with less teaching and technical staff) combined with currently fashionable notions of a more commercial – ie customer/seller – relationship between students and teachers, place the studio system under threat.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

EVENT - Inter and Cross Disciplinary Teaching, Learning and Assessment Methods in Art, Design and Media

University of Bedfordshire
16 March 2012

The University of Bedfordshire’s Division of Art and Design has considerable expertise in running collaborative and cross disciplinary projects. They work across multiple sites, involving undergraduates and staff from Spatial Design, Performing Arts, Animation, Fashion Design, Media and Illustration.

The seminar, one of the HEA’s Higher Education Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series, has been designed as a forum in which to share expertise and evaluate best practice. Project briefs will be tabled and deconstructed including a showcase of student work. Problems encountered will be examined, and strategies for overcoming them explored.

There will be abundant opportunities for the delegates to ask questions and to discuss how to develop this kind of work in their own institutions.

To register please contact Shena Begum: shena.begum@beds.ac.uk

CALL – for submissions to multidisciplinary postgraduate conference

Spaces of (Dis)location
The College of Arts, University of Glasgow
24 -  25 May 2012

Deadline for submissions: 9 March 2012

This conference, being run by students from the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow, aims is to provide a space for current postgraduate students as well as early career researchers to share their research and to network.

They welcome submissions of abstracts for papers in the classic 20-minute format, but are also keen to accept different presentation formats. There will be a poster session and a Pecha Kucha session on each day of the conference and they welcome your submissions in these formats too.

Monday 6 February 2012

Write a review - Dictionary of Visual Discourse


We currently have the Dictionary of Visual Discourse by Barry Sandywell and published by Ashgate available for review.  If you work in UK-based art, design or media higher education and are interested in reviewing it, please get in touch: d.flint@brighton.ac.uk.  Selected reviews are published in Networks.  Reviewers can claim £50 worth of book tokens and can keep the review copy.  For submission details see: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/submissions