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 17 February 2012

Back issues of Networks available!

Up until issue 12, Networks was a predominantly hard-copy publication produced by the Art Design Media Higher Education Academy Subject Centre; it was distributed free of charge to those who signed up for it and who work in art, design and media higher education. Approximately 3,000 academic and support staff received hard-copy Networks and readers informed us that the news, features, projects and reviews impact on their teaching practice in positive ways.

Networks issues 1 - 12 (from Summer 2007 up to Spring 2011) are available as pdfs hereWe also have hard copies of these 12 issues so, if you are based in the UK and would like us to send you any of the magazines, please contact us at adm@heacademy.ac.uk (Please note that some earlier issues are in short supply).

The following link to the online issues:
Networks issues 13 to 15

Networks issue 16

GENERAL NEWS - from HE

CALL – for papers for #DIGCULT12
Theory, Context and the Internet
University of Salford, MediaCity
13-14 June 2012


Deadline for abstracts: 7 March 2012

This is the first Digital Cultures Conference and it will draw on the success of the 2008-2010 Digital Cultures workshops. In a world of virtual communication and social media, it can be argued that we face challenges regarding the theorization and contextualisation of Internet mediated activity. The organizers see this conference as an outlet for digital media, ICT and technology related research that may not readily sit within conventional disciplinary areas.
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CALL – for papers for Improving Student Learning through research and scholarship
20th Improving Student Learning Symposium hosted by the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD)
Lund University, Lund, Sweden
29 - 31 August 2012

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2012

The major aim of the Symposium is to provide a forum which brings together those who are primarily researchers into learning in higher education and those who are primarily practitioners concerned more pragmatically with improving their practice, and encourages the sharing of scholarly work and collaborative discussion. But from whichever starting point, papers are only accepted if they take a sufficiently scholarly, research-based approach.
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EVENT - Getting started with ebooks
JISC Digital Media Online Surgery
22 February 2012 at 1.00pm

This free, one-hour online session will appeal to anyone who is curious about the potential of ebooks. It will highlight the opportunities available for using ebooks in education and provide an overview of the current ebook landscape, focusing on the benefits, implications of use and how to get started with ebooks.
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EVENT - New models for education and training built on Open Educational Resources
The OU, Milton Keynes, UNED Madrid and online
22 February 2012  

This day workshop will explore how Open Educational Resources are stimulating new open educational practices and supporting new models in both education and training.  It provides a chance to hear about pioneering practices in Spain, Portugal and the UK, and it will explore some of the “big ideas” in open education such as the OER University and Open Badges.

The workshop is being run jointly by SCORE at the Open University and UNED in Madrid and is adopting an innovative format with audiences gathering physically in the two locations with additional participants joining online.
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EVENT - Degrees for the Future: A New Way of Providing Higher Education
Westminster, London
2 May 2012

Overhauling the current criteria for degree-awarding powers (DAP) is an essential component of the Government’s vision for higher education. In combination with recent changes to student number controls, the reforms have the potential to radically alter the way in which higher education is provided. 
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EVENT – PASS Conference 
Assessment Strategies: The way forward
Norcroft Conference Centre, University of Bradford
24 - 25 July 2012

This conference is the Programme Assessment Strategies (PASS) Project end-of-project event. The project was funded by the HE Academy's NTFS project strand. The PASS team will present project outcomes and evidence, which supports their contention that programme-focused assessment can alleviate or resolve many of the issues associated with conventional assessment and feedback practices across HE.
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NEWS – SEDA Special 31 published
Putting the ‘S’ into ED – Education for Sustainable Development in Educational Development
Edited by Debby Cotton, Stephen Sterling, Vivian Neal and Jennie Winter

This SEDA Special is targeted at the educational development community, sustainability co-ordinators or others seeking whole-institution change around sustainability.

SEDA Specials is a series of relatively short monographs on up-to-the-minute topics in higher education, bringing the distilled experience and opinions of leading practitioners in a form that is designed to facilitate easy assimilation by hard-pressed staff. All SEDA Specials are directed at new or relatively inexperienced lecturers - though experienced lecturers will also find many new ideas and approaches among the more familiar.

Thursday 16 February 2012

EVENT - Engaging with the increase in contact hours: effective virtual learning/teaching in the Arts and Humanities

University of the West of England, St Mattias Campus, Bristol
7 March 2012

This workshop, one of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series, offers a space for staff involved in the running/establishing of virtual learning to discuss their concerns and to share best practice. How can we ensure that virtual learning is pedagogically valuable, rather than merely offering a cost effective method of filling hours on timetables?

The workshop will consider two things:
  1. The differing ways in which academics have offered effective virtual teaching across the sector, including how this effectiveness could be measured.
  2. An analysis of the ways in which students have become effective virtual learners, again taking into consideration how this can judged. 

EVENT - Shift/Work: Developing participatory workshop models for educating contemporary artists

Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
4 April 2012

Shift/Work is a knowledge transfer exchange based in the School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art that develops and shares open educational resources for artists and art educators. The purpose of this workshop is to enable its participants to develop their own models of collaborative practice-based learning.

Developing new sites in which art can be produced and expanding the ways in which production is supported are central to learning how to practice as an artist. To facilitate this, art education conventionally combines ‘structured’ historical and theoretical scholarship with ‘open’ practice-based learning agreements. This incoherent approach perpetuates the legacy of Romanticism, producing ‘autonomous’ auteurs rather than artist-learners. This does not prepare artists to participate in today’s artworld, a horizontally integrated network that is highly dependent upon reciprocal altruism.
 
Re-imagining the learning environment is key to facilitating the kinds of knowledge that artists now require. Developing an iterative action-based approach to artistic learning that is at once theoretical and practical is imperative.

Shift/Work aims to examine and reconfigure ways in which we can facilitate comprehensive workshop-based approaches to artistic production that are theoretically informed, practical and participatory. Shift/Work will facilitate new experiential knowledge, practices and tools for artists and art educators to adapt and implement.

Shift/Work is supported by the HEA Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series 2011-12.

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/seminars/disciplines/DW156

EVENT - Thinking Twice: transition, retention and success in the Arts and Humanities

The British Academy, 10 - 11 Carlton House Terrace, London
8 March 2012

This Higher Education Academy summit seeks to identify and explore issues impacting upon first year students as they make the transition to university. What are students' expectations of higher education? What are their experiences of higher education? What does the radical structural transformation of higher education mean for prospective students and the institutions that will support their learning?

This summit will offer opportunities to review the student experience and provide a forum for discussion and debate around various forms of support available to students across the HE sector studying the Arts and Humanities, particularly focussing on: 
  • Pre-entry information, advice and guidance; 
  • Induction; 
  • The first year experience. 

Register your interest in attending by 20 February. 

Wednesday 15 February 2012

11 Course Leaders: 20 Questions - book available for review






We currently have a collection of interviews with 11 London-based BA Fine Art Course Leaders, 11 Course Leaders: 20 Questions, available for review.  The collection is published by Q-Art London, a forum for students, graduates and self-trained artists.  If you work in UK-based art, design or media higher education and are interested in reviewing the book from a teaching and learning perspective, 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

Monday 13 February 2012

CALL - an open invitation to join Open Collaborative Crit Development Project

Q-Art London is teaming up with Commonplace and Speaking Out to create a series of dynamic and accessible learning resources that will support students in talking about, reading and describing art - in the crit, studio context, gallery visits etc. Two months ago Q-Art London carried out an anonymous survey amongst some of its 3000 subscribers - which saw 68% of respondents admit to feeling unconfident in speaking out in a crit and 82% saying they'd appreciate some kind of assistance or resource to aid with the process of 'reading' art. An ability to 'read art' is a difficult skill that is too often 'presumed' of students who enter and progress through HE art education. 

The project partners would like you to be involved in the project, helping them with research that will eventually lead to the creation of learning resources and support for students, which can be used and shared by anyone. Your help might involve:
  • Sharing ways, approaches and techniques you use when 'reading' an art work and how you share these approaches with students;
  • Discussing the issues you think contribute to students reticence or lack of confidence in talking critically about art and any experiences you have had with students who have been quiet or reluctant to share their opinions in class;
  • Consider opportunities in which this project would strengthen students' skills and confidence in presenting their own work to industry, potential employers, clients, etc.;
  • Identify students you think would be interested in taking part in the project (at a later stage);
  • Input into the design and information contained within the resources.
The finished resources will live on Commonplace and Q-Art London and be accessible and distributable by everyone.

If you would like to be involved or find out more information, please contact Sarah Rowles at: director@q-artlondon.com

EVENT - Embedding research in teaching and learning (Media and Communications)

Gipsy Lane Campus, Oxford Brookes University
12 June 2012 

This workshop, one of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series, will explore teaching practices that successfully integrate research practice into the delivery of curriculum to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the disciplines of media and communication.

Recent pedagogic debate identifies an impetus for university students at levels 5, 6 and 7 to engage with research practice. However, embedding research literacy into lectures, seminars, workshops and assessment requires lecturers who are able to communicate research praxis to students at these educational levels. The workshop will identify issues associated with embedding research in teaching and provide participants with the means by which this can be achieved in their specific teaching modules.

Drawing on the experience of key speakers and on discussion with other delegates, participants will identify their own research-informed approach to curriculum development and to delivery relevant to their specific fields within the disciplines of media and communication. Led by practitioners from publishing studies and other media fields, the workshop will take a pragmatic approach. Speakers with demonstrable experience in utilizing the conceptualization, methods and results of their research in teaching will address key issues. These presentations will then serve as the focus for extended discussions between participants.

The objectives of the workshop are to disseminate good practice in integrating research into media and communication teaching and co-incidentally to build networks for academics who are involved in media research and who are also committed to a research-led approach in teaching.