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Friday 15 June 2012

FROM THE ARCHIVE - Sound, music and radio in the creative curriculum: perspectives on undergraduate study

Sound, music and radio in the creative curriculum: perspectives on undergraduate study
Tim McClellan, Southampton Solent University

The appreciation of the impact of sound in our lives and our learning is ignored in many undergraduate programmes. Whether focussing on sound as a different learning style, putting together a podcast as an alternative to written coursework or listening to radio broadcasts with a more critical ear, creative students need to recognize how sound plays a major part in the way we interpret the world and how we present ourselves. Embedding basic radio production skills and an appreciation of sound and music into a creative undergraduate curriculum can help access an individual student’s own creativity for exploration and growth academically, personally and professionally.

Published in Summer 2009: Networks, Issue 7, pp. 14 - 16.

To access the article

GENERAL NEWS - from HE

EVENT - New to teaching workshop: Strategies to enhance learning and teaching for home and international students           
Aston Business School, Aston University
27 June 2012

This workshop is intended for staff new to teaching who have students from a range of cultural and educational backgrounds. Getting students engaged with the subject matter has always been a key challenge, but the increased diversity of students can help to open up new ways of involving them all. Participants will be asked to think about their own expectations and to compare them with alternative views and interpretations of commonly experienced teaching situations. Practical strategies will be introduced to help develop teaching practices that include all students in the learning process.
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EVENT - Inclusion in the Curriculum in the Humanities @ Aberdeen University
University of Aberdeen
19 June 2012

This workshop builds upon an existing three year programme of work which is examining equality and diversity in the curriculum in Scotland. The programme is being coordinated by the Higher Education Academy in partnership with Scotland’s Colleges and the Equality Practitioners’ Network. The programme is being funded by the Scottish Funding Council to support the delivery of equality and diversity framework for 2010-13.

The workshop ‘Inclusion in the Curriculum in the Humanities’ will explore cutting edge attempts to increase equality and diversity in humanities teaching in Higher Education. Several presentations will catalyse participative workshops in which participants will discuss issues relevant to their own context, share practice and discuss how we develop and expand inclusive practice within education.
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NEWS - Summit Report published - Thinking twice: Transition, retention and success in the Arts and Humanities

In March 2012 the Arts and Humanities cluster held a Summit which sought to identify and explore the issues which impact upon first year students as they make the transition to university. The report captures the evidence and considerations which emerged from the key questions: 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?
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CALL - The UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning (UKPSF): Help us to measure its impact
                       
Deadline for call for tenders: 9 July 2012

The UKPSF is a sector-wide framework for recognising and benchmarking teaching and learning support roles in higher education using a set of internationally-recognised criteria.

Tenders are now invited to undertake research to gather evidence about the impact of the framework (revised 2011) and to evaluate levels of awareness within the sector. This research should also investigate how the UKPSF is being used to influence the culture and practice of teaching and supporting learning in HE, and provide recommendations for further development. Funding body: The Higher Education Academy, funding available: £20,000
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NEWS – Student Attitudes and Skills for Sustainable Development Report published

HEA & NUS have just published the second report on Student Attitudes and Skills for Sustainable Development.  The findings reinforce, and in many cases strengthen, the landmark key outcomes of the first study published in 2011.

CALL - for guest editors to Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN

Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN

Deadline for proposals: 25 June 2012

As part of the MeCCSA-Postgraduate Network's remit to provide training and networking opportunities for new researchers, Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN - which publishes work exclusively from those early in their academic careers - would like to welcome proposals from postgraduate and early career researchers to guest edit special issues based in the field of media, cultural, and communication studies.

As a guest editor you work in collaboration with the journal editor, who will provide support and guidance through the process of putting an issue together. This will include drafting and disseminating a call for papers, working with the vast pool of peer reviewers to select the best quality content for the issue, writing an introduction, and preparing documents for publication in adherence with the house style.

Proposals on any subject relevant to the interests of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) are welcomed. 


Please submit proposals of no more than 300 words to Tom Phillips knowledge.networking257@gmail.com

EVENT - Bridging the Gap Conference

Employability and entrepreneurship in the media industries
Bournemouth
12 - 13 September 2012

This conference follows on from the CEMP Media Summit, and will explore issues of employability and entrepreneurship in the context of the media industries, and ask how we can work more effectively with industry to the benefit of our students.  

Delegates will have the opportunity to 'grill' panels of media employers and entrepreneurs about the ways in which our programmes can best prepare our students for the realities of the media industries. You will also be able to interrogate a range of existing models of HE/ Industry partnership through specific case studies, presented by teams representing both HE and industry partners. 

The conference is free to delegates, including Wednesday night dinner, sponsored by Skillset.

Key note Speaker  Anthony Lilley OBE – “The Death of Digital” 

Employers Panel to include: 
  • John Paul Chapple, Endemol UK
  • Darren Yeomans, Ubisoft
  • Christan Fonesbeck, Windelov/Lassen Interactive
  • Additional speakers TBC
Entrepreneurs Panel to include:
  • Rajeeb Dey, Enternships.com
  • Andy Price,  Entrepreneur;@tees
  • John Klepper, ImaginationStudios
  • Neil Kidney,  Seed Animations
  • Rachael Givens, Mirror Image Films
For further information, and to book your place, go to http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/whats_on/events_details.cfm?event_id=4451

Thursday 14 June 2012

CALL - for applicants in The Leviathan: a twenty-four hour comic book project

The Leviathan: a twenty-four hour comic book project
Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth University
19 - 20 September 2012

Call for applicants to participate, deadline: 1 July 2012

The BA(hons) Illustration course at Plymouth University is hosting a remarkable event in which artists will use the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville as the inspiration for their own comic book creations.

At the stroke of twelve o’clock midday on 19 September, twelve artists will begin drawing twelve individual narratives, creating one twenty-four page illustrated story each over the next twenty-four hours.

If you, or your students, are interested in taking part, please send 3 examples of your work with a short statement explaining why you want to take part to Tom Barwick. 

If you have any queries please email tom.barwick@plymouth.ac.uk

Tuesday 12 June 2012

CALL - for papers and creative works for CODE Conference

CODE - A Media, Games & Art Conference
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

21-23 November 2012

Deadline for abstracts: 22 June 2012

Code is the invisible force at the heart of contemporary media and games, routinely obscured by the gadget fetish of breathless tech marketing and scholarly focus on more visible social and technical interfaces. With the recent material turn in media studies and the refinement of new approaches including software studies and platform politics, which emphasise interrogating the formal characteristics and underlying technical architecture of contemporary media, the time has come to bring code out into the open.

Code can be defined in two distinct but related ways: as an underlying technological process, a set of rules and instructions governing, for instance, the permutations of all those 0s and 1s obscured behind user interfaces, but also as a cultural framework navigated and understood socially and performatively, as is the case with legal, social and behavioural codes. As an operative principle, code’s significance thus extends far deeper than its current digital manifestation. For this conference, the organsiers invite submissions of papers and creative works that consider the role of code as a simultaneously material and semiotic force that operates across the wider cultural, social and political field, with particular emphasis on media, games and art.

The conference theme is also an opportunity to reflect on how, as academics and creative practitioners, we often participate in but can also challenge the disciplinary and institutional codes that can arbitrarily separate these domains. CODE will be a transdisciplinary event that brings media studies, media arts and games studies into dialogue through individual papers, combined panels, master classes and an included exhibition.

The organsisers welcome submissions related to any aspect of code in all its diversity. Possible considerations might include, but are not limited to:

  • Code and the in/visible
  • Code and/as ideology
  • Coding the disciplines
  • The deeper history of code
  • Code and the public/private
  • ‘Code and other laws of media’
  • Security codes
  • Code and agency
  • Bodies in code
  • Failures of code

Creative works
Code operates, as if by stealth, beneath the materiality of networked media performances, software art, games, mobile apps, locative and social media. But code also presents artists, performers and creative practitioners with opportunities to construct innovative hybrid media forms that can extend our understanding of contemporary art practice. From video installations in the 1960s, through to sophisticated interactive media and augmented reality applications, artists have arguably been at the forefront of innovation, adopting the language of the computer to forge new creative frontiers. They invite contributions that examine the creative potential of code, including but not limited to, the implications of code for contemporary artists, code as art and/or performance, code as avant-garde, virus and anti-art.


The CODE conference will include a thematic exhibition. They are seeking submissions of screen-based works, pervasive games, and locative media projects that respond to the conference themes. Projected and performance works will also be considered.

A special journal issue or edited collection on the conference theme is planned.

For more information: http://code2012.wikidot.com/call-for-papers

NEWS - Varoom 18 published and ongoing call

Varoom – the illustration report, has just published issue 18 on the theme of Entertainment. This issue contains a peer reviewed paper by Stephanie Black exploring how forms of illustration provide a truly engaging sense of time. Also, Moonbot Studios elegiac animation about books, the BAFTA illustrators whose single images of movies act as illustrative film criticism, and cartoonist Huw Aaron who ‘performed’ live drawing at a cartooning festival. 

VaroomLab is an international research project that fosters research activity within the subject of illustration. This collaborative network of researchers and practitioners aims to be a catalyst for innovation in illustration in the 21st Century and to expand knowledge and understanding of the subject.

The editors have married a peer-review process with editorial intervention to facilitate robust evaluation and discourse around articles submitted by the academic community for potential inclusion in Varoom and to create an equivalent of an academic journal within VaroomLab on line.

Submissions are welcomed at any time on relevant subjects, and specific calls for papers are placed the Call for Paper section of the site. Call to be announced (Varoom 20)

http://www.varoom-mag.com/

Monday 11 June 2012

CALL - for responses to BUFVC's Survey of Off-Air Recordings

The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC)’s Shared Services Project (funded by HEFCE) is conducting a survey to find out how HE and FE institutions currently select, record, retain and catalogue their off-air recording collections. This is a follow-up to the BUFVC’s 2009 off-air recording survey.

Deadline for responses: 2 July 2012

The survey is open to all individuals within an institution who are involved with off-air recording. To access the survey 

Everyone that takes part will get the opportunity to win an iPod Touch or £170 Amazon vouchers.

The Project is looking for as many participants as possible so please forward this link to other colleagues who are involved with off-air recording at your institution.

For more information: http://bufvc.ac.uk/2012/06/11/14898

CALL - for papers for special issue of Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies

Reflexivity in the Digital World: Rethinking journalism teaching and learning in an interactive world

Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2012
Deadline for final papers: 15 March 2013

Digital and interactive technologies have revolutionised the way people use and consume media content in the past two decades. As a result, ways of practising journalism and delivering news have been challenged. Traditional mainstream news media have struggled to keep up with these changes and survive in a rapidly changing society. As a consequence, the journalism labour market too is changing dramatically, which raises serious issues regarding the future of journalism education and training. 

This special issue of Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, (Guest Editor: Jairo Lugo-Ocando, University of Sheffield) will offer a platform to share research and experiences with regards to the future of journalism education in a digital and interactive world. This issue welcomes long and short papers from scholars and practitioners that address these issues. They welcome scholarly articles, essays and book reviews *. The special issue will be published in the second half of 2013. Some of the questions for journalism educators include among others:
  • Is there a future for journalism education in the digital age?
  • What should be the scope and nature of curricular developments in journalism education in light of these changes?
  • To what degree have journalism educational provisions been able to deliver the knowledge and skills needed to face the challenges posed by the new media landscape?
  • From which experiences in journalism education can we learn the most about teaching and learning in a changing media landscape?
  • How do tensions from old and new demands affect the delivery and teaching of journalism education in the context of technological change?
  • What new approaches, paradigms and philosophies have emerged in education in recent times that could help us understand/assess better the impact of technological changes in journalism education?
  • How are digital technologies affecting the traditional debates/tensions between journalism training and journalism education?
  • How have digital technologies affected the construction of journalism identities of prospective journalists, journalism students and journalism educators?
  • Are there areas in journalism education more affected than others by technological digitalisation, media convergence and audience fragmentation?
  • Should journalism educators follow industry trends to set and develop the parameters of journalism teaching and learning or explore alternative ways?
  • What is the role of journalism academic research in journalism education in light of technological changes?
These and other similar questions open new discussions, while re-opening old debates, regarding the nature, objectives and reach of journalism education in an age of profound changes. Therefore, the editors want to invite also pieces describing, assessing and analysing innovative experiences in learning and teaching journalism. They also want to invite papers and essays from practitioners of both, journalism and journalism education who think they might make a contribution towards this debate.

* Long papers: 6000 to 7000 words, Short papers: 2500 to 3000 words, Book Reviews: 500 to 800 words.

Papers can be sent to: j.lugo-ocando@sheffield.ac.uk


Volume 1, Issue 1 of this journal is currently available free online