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 22 June 2012

NEWS - Debbie Flint's last day!


Today is Debbie's last day before she goes on Maternity leave. 

Those of you who know and have worked with Debbie over the past 6 and a half years will know that she is an excellent, professional colleague, an extremely important and integral member of the team and, above all else, great fun to work with! Needless to say, we are going to miss her very much. 

We send her our very best wishes and good luck for the future.

Jenny, Steve and Stuart

FROM THE ARCHIVE - Doing Media 2.0

Doing Media 2.0
Julian McDougall and Steve Dixon, Newman University College, Birmingham


This article describes and evaluates a curriculum intervention – the development of a new module, ‘Media 2.0’ in the context of the broader debates in what Lister and Dovey call ‘a very uneven field’ (Networks 07). To avoid reproducing the debate throughout the Media degree as peripheral, the subject team designed a new module to ensure a foundational context for students in which to reflect on their ‘prosumer’ activity as well as what happens to ‘the media’ as a result. 

Published in Autumn 2009Networks, Issue 8, pp. 23 - 25.

 

GENERAL NEWS - from HE

EVENT - eAssessment Scotland conference
University of Dundee
31 August 2012
Online Conference:  23 August – 6 September

This year, eAssessment Scotland turns its attention to the important issue of feedback – what forms it can take, who should be responsible for it, and how it may be acted upon once received., giving them a chance to share their experiences and examples of good practice.
The structure of the conference continues to evolve responding to the feedback they receive each year. Many delegates felt there was far too little time on the day to absorb all the good content in eAssessment Scotland 2011 and so, for 2012, they are running a parallel online component. This online conference will run before, after and during the day conference held at the University of Dundee on 31 August.

For more information
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EVENT - Academic Credit 2012: Harmonies, developments and digressions

Lakeside Conference Centre, Aston University, Birmingham
19 October 2012

This is a joint conference of the Southern England Consortium (SEEC) and the Northern Universities Consortium (NUCCAT).  Early in 2012, the UK Credit Forum (UKCF) undertook a major survey of HE credit practice in the UK.  Previous surveys had been conducted by the NUCCAT, SEEC and the EWNI Credit Forum around ten years previously. This conference will formally launch the findings of the report based on credit use in over 60 institutions.  This event includes publication of the ‘UKCF Survey of Credit and its Uses, 2012’.

Thursday 21 June 2012

EVENT - Crowd and cloud: towards a collaborative future

Designs on e-learning 2012 
University of the Arts London, 272 High Holborn, London
5 – 7 September 2012

The Designs on e-Learning (DeL) conference leads and fosters innovative practices in teaching and learning with technology in art, design and communication.

As digital technologies continue to evolve and transform the pedagogic landscape, we face exciting and innovative possibilities for the future of education. New forms of mobile learning and cloud computing are shaping the learning environment, enabling students to learn in multiple physical, social and conceptual spaces.

The 2012 designs on e-learning conference will explore the impact of these shifts on our teaching practice, and question how we can maximise their potential for improving student learning. This is an opportunity to join the crowd to collectively generate ideas, tackle problems, and share best practices in e-learning. The format of the conference will be innovative, with barcamps, streamed sessions, discussions, performances and creative work.

Topics of interest include:
  • Collaboration and Community Building
  • Digital Literacy
  • Social Media
  • Sustainability
  • Studio and Technology
  • User Generated Content
Keynote speakers:
  • Bruce Brown
  • Usman Haque
  • Steve Molyneaux

CALL - for papers to special issue of Critical Studies in Television

'The Liveliest Medium: Television's aesthetic relationships with other arts'

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2012

CFP for a special issue of Critical Studies in Television (Manchester University Press), guest editors Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock (2014)

This special issue of Critical Studies in Television explores the aesthetic meetings, counterpoints and clashes between television and other art forms. While considerable attention has recently been given to questions of media convergence in the age of 'TV3', little sustained work has focused on the distinct topic of aesthetic relationships between television and, for example, poetry, painting, music, dance, sculpture, or architecture. The issue also seeks to extend more prevalent comparative analysis of television and film, theatre, or the novel, developing a more precise vocabulary around terms such as 'cinematic television' and opening up adaptation studies in terms of aesthetic overlaps in style, structure, tone, and attitude.

Contributions are sought on the above matters and that may comprise, variously:
  • Conceptual examinations of television aesthetics in terms of internal dynamics and/or external relationships with other arts
  • Sustained critiques of the links between specific series, episodes, or television moments, and other arts
  • Appraisals of television works that engage with artists or the arts in documentary or fictional form
  • Explorations of criteria, categorisations and instances of 'cinematic television', 'television poetics', and 'the television novel'
  • Interpretative work on television as poetry, television as dance (or similar)
  • Genre and aesthetic connections
For peer-reviewed articles of 6000 words, please send proposals of no more than 250 words to s.peacock@herts.ac.uk and j.jacobs@uq.edu.au

Wednesday 20 June 2012

NEWS - report published on expectations and experiences of first-year students in Art and Design

Deal or no deal? Expectations and experiences of first-year students in Art and Design

David Vaughan and Mantz Yorke

This report, funded by the HEADTrust and the Art Design Media Subject Centre (ADM-HEA), has just been published by the Higher Education Academy. It is based upon a survey which explored the 'match' between students' expectations of higher education and their actual experience of their first year. The survey covered four main aspects of first-year students' experience:
  • influences on their choice of programme and institution;
  • expectations that they had regarding study in higher education;
  • their opinions regarding their first-year experience;
  • background demographic data.
The report details how the match between students' expectations and experience varied in four broad areas of assessment methods; learning environment; teaching quality and course organisation.

EVENT - BOUNDARIES: Illustration-practice-research

Plymouth University and VaroomLab Illustration Symposium
14 15 September 2012
Plymouth University

The symposium is a platform to consider issues around the subject of illustration practice and research, sharing of knowledge and experience whilst pushing the boundaries of critical engagement.

This event will explore how new technologies, concepts, and professional issues are encouraging innovation, shaping the subject and pushing the illustration community to practice in new ways.

The symposium aims to:
  • disseminate and showcase research and practice from the subject
  • facilitate the debate of research
  • provide networking opportunities for participants
Speakers
The event will include peer reviewed presentations by illustrators and academics, an opportunity to hear Audrey Niffenegger, Babette Cole, and this year’s V&A Illustration award winner Matthew Richardson talking about their work. Dr. John O’Reilly, Editor of award winning Varoom magazine and respected writer will be keynote speaker.

Registration
The earlybird fee of £50 includes lunch and refreshments during the symposium
and an invitation to the drinks reception of the Making Great Illustration exhibition.
Tickets after 31 July will cost £75

Please register at: http://tinyurl.com/7dnj8x8 

Definition of VaroomLab
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. 

Tuesday 19 June 2012

CALL - for papers for the Journal of European Television History and Culture

Vol. 2, Issue 3: ‘European TV Memories’

Deadline: 6 September 2012

The Journal of European Television History and Culture welcomes paper proposals for its third issue dedicated to 'European TV Memories' and guest-edited by Jérôme Bourdon (Tel Aviv Univeristy) and Berber Hagedoorn (Utrecht University).

The journal is the first peer-reviewed multi-media e-journal in the field of television studies. Offering an international platform for outstanding academic research on television, the journal has an interdisciplinary profile and acts both as a platform for critical reflection on the cultural, social and political role of television in Europe's past and present as well as a multi-media platform for the circulation and use of digitized audiovisual material.

The journal's main aim is to function as a showcase for a creative and innovative use of digitized television material in scholarly work, and to inspire a fruitful discussion between audiovisual heritage institutions (especially television archives) and a broader community of television experts and amateurs. In offering a unique technical infrastructure for a multi-media presentation of critical reflections on European television, the journal aims at stimulating innovative narrative forms of online storytelling, making use of the digitized audiovisual collections of television archives around Europe.

The theme of third issue of the journal, due for publication in April 2013, is European TV Memories. The editors welcome two kinds of contributions:
  • scholarly articles (historical, sociological or anthropological with a European focus) of 4,000 words
  • discoveries: journalistic essays (2,500 words) which include audiovisual sources as a central component and reflect on the practical challenges of doing television research in an archival or academic environment (e.g. case studies, new collections, news from archives, audio/video interviews)
For more information

Monday 18 June 2012

CALL - for papers for Documentary and the Environment

Documentary and the Environment Symposium
University of Surrey
14 September 2012 

Deadline for proposals: 29 June 2012

The third in the series ‘Documentary and …’, hosted by the Film Studies programme at the University of Surrey, will be on Documentary and the Environment. The ‘Documentary and …’ series seeks to explore the conjunction of the documentary project with the worlds it encounters and the practical and conceptual modifications these combinations bring. 

The first decades of the twenty-first century have seen a consistent flow of environmental documentary films which have managed to gain attention beyond special interest groups.
This one-day event aims to explore the emergence or perhaps resurgence of this documentary subgenre. How have documentary filmmakers worked with the concepts of the environment and environmental awareness?  What are the ethics and aesthetics of environmental documentary filmmaking?  How do theories of documentary, ecology, and the theorisation of environmental politics interact?  How do audiences respond to environmental documentaries?

They invite speakers and contributors working on documentary film and non-fiction media as well as on the intersection of documentary with environmental education, environmental communication, and environmental psychology to respond to these questions.  The following topics are a guideline to potential paper proposals and are not meant to exclude other interpretations of the seminar’s title Documentary and the Environment

  • Defining the eco-doc: experimental, documentary and activist representations of environmental issues
  • Place, space and ecology in environmental documentary
  • Environmental justice and the documentary
  • Nature and the natural in environmental documentary
  • Wildlife documentary and environmental issues
  • The history of the environmental documentary
  • Support structures for the production and distribution of environmental documentaries
  • The evolving environmental film festival circuit and the social hub
  • The sustainability of documentary filmmaking
http://www2.surrey.ac.uk/dft/research/currentprojects/surrey/