FROM THE ARCHIVE - 'Learning on Placement' & 'Fashion, Textiles and Related Industries'

Learning on Placement: An investigation of work placement opportunities within the designer-maker community 
Andie Robertson, Buckinghamshire New University
&
Fashion, Textiles and Related Industries: Work-related Learning and the Student Experience
Catherine McConnell, Northbrook College Sussex

This section, taken from Networks 5, was compiled by Andie Robertson and Catherine McConnell. Their articles (pp. 15 - 22) summarise findings of two related projects co-funded by ADM-HEA and Skillfast-UK, the Sector Skills Council for Fashion and Textiles, examining employer engagement, work-related learning and the student experience. Their ‘Conversation’ (pp. 23 - 25) provides some practical advice and solutions to challenges encountered by students, tutors and work-placement providers in developing mutually beneficial work-related learning.

The Learning on Placement research project, set out to identify the relationships that currently exist between the fashion and textiles student, tutor, course and designer-maker business, as seen from the perspective of designer-makers. The data collected during the project, while valuable to the specific subject area, raises important issues around skills training, learning experiences and entrepreneurship (pp. 15 - 18).

The Fashion, Textiles and Related Industries paper outlines the findings of research exploring employer engagement activities currently taking place across a number of HE and HE in FE institutions delivering fashion and textiles curricula. In addition, the article also seeks to examine the staff and student experience of work-related and work-based learning in the fashion and textiles educational sector and identify some of the challenges faced by educators in this field and effective responses to these (pp. 19 - 22).

Published in Autumn 2008: Networks, Issue 5, pp. 15 - 27. 
To access the articles

GENERAL NEWS - from HE

EVENT - Curriculum Design - Opening up the Game          
Evidence and Practice for Responsive Curriculum Design to Widen Participation

The Open University in London, Camden Town, London
5 July 2012

The challenge to higher education institutions of providing a truly inclusive curriculum appears to many as complex and elusive. Our response to widening participation, greater student diversity and the increasing emphasis on the student experience is critical. One of the starting points has to be in the conception and design of the curriculum itself. This workshop will engage academics, administrators, managers and practitioners in a series of engaging interactive activities informed by evidence, which invite critical reflection on existing process and practices in curriculum design, and the  broader student experience of teaching and learning. The outcomes envisaged from these creative conversations are new strategies, approaches and opportunities for extending student engagement, retention and success of our students.

For more information

______________________________________________________________________

EVENT - Student-Generated Induction Workshop: A Social Identity Approach

Royal Station Hotel, York

19 July 2012

Participants in this workshop will have the chance to share issues and concerns relating to induction and transition. The Shared Thinking practice, developed at University of Glasgow, has already been applied to induction and transition at different universities and for different disciplines. This workshop will be useful in providing a chance to explore a particular theoretical framework and to experience a technology-supported practice that creates a participant-led approach to induction and transition.

For more information

______________________________________________________________________

EVENT - 17th Annual SEDA Conference

Excellence in Teaching: recognising, enhancing, evaluating and achieving impact

Aston Business School, Birmingham

15 - 16 November 2012

The conference will focus on Excellence in Teaching: recognising, enhancing, evaluating and achieving impact. This brings together many activities across the sector where the focus has been on enhancing the student experience.

For more information

CALL - for papers for ADCHE Special Issue on e-learning

Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education 12.2

Special issue on e-learning

Edited by Linda Drew (The Glasgow School of Art)

Deadline for full submissions: 31 October 2012 

Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education is a refereed journal that aims to inform, stimulate and promote the development of research with a learning and teaching focus for art, design and communication within higher education. 

The journal invites contributions from a wide and diverse community of researchers. It seeks to generate and promote research from both experienced researchers and to encourage those new to this field. The aim is to provide a forum for debate arising from findings as well as theory and methodologies. A range of research approaches and methods is encouraged.

For issue 12.2 the editors are inviting papers and shorter items on the theme of e-learning. This may include, but is not exclusive to: 

• the impact of electronic resources on studio learning
• the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in art, design and communication
• Online learning in design related subject areas
• New technologies for learning
• New modes of learning in virtual worlds
•  Students’ experience of using electronic resources

Major Papers (5000-6000 words) should include original work of a research or developmental nature and/or proposed new methods or ideas which are clearly and thoroughly presented and argued. 

 Shorter items (1,000 to 2,500 words) include: 

• Reports of research in progress
• Reflections on the research process
• Research evaluations of funded projects 

The editor, Linda Drew, and the editorial board are seeking suitable papers for consideration. They are also seeking reviews of relevant recent publications, electronic media and software and conference reports. 

This peer-reviewed journal is published twice a year.

Submissions should conform to the journal’s style guide. 
For more information

CALL - for papers for the Journal of Screenwriting

The Journal of Screenwriting is a peer reviewed publication which explores the nature of writing for the screen image in the broadest sense; this includes not only writing for film and television but also computer games and animation. The journal encompasses all aspects of academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates in this area, an area which has previously been somewhat neglected in academic discourse.  The journal of screenwriting aims to help redress this imbalance whilst encouraging further research in an international arena.  The journal is discursive, critical and rigorous whilst engaging with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.  

The journal explores a wide and diverse range of methodological approaches which includes study of the history of the screenplay, textual analysis, the relationship of screenwriting to the production process and screenwriting practice as research.

The editors invite contributions from researchers and screenwriters which discuss any aspect of the history, theory and practice of the screenplay. This may include articles concerned with film, television and computer games screenplays.

Articles should be between 4000 and 7000 words in length. In the first instance the editors request a 250 word abstract which outlines your proposed article. This is an ongoing call, there is no deadline date.
For more information

Volume 1: Issue 1 is available free online

EVENT - Pedagogies for social diversity and difference in Art & Design

University of the Arts, 272 High Holburn, London

23 July 2012

This workshop, one of the Higher Education Academy Discipline Workshop and Seminar Series, examines the way art and design institutions have responded to the challenges of including students from a wide range of backgrounds. It will provide the historical context and then discuss the theory of diversity through the concepts of critical pedagogy and social justice.

It will consider the diversity work at an individual and also an institutional level. The individual examples used to discuss this will be provided by reflections of diverse successful students from the archive of the Tell Us About It Project , housed at UAL.

These responses from students range from artefacts/videos/sketch books/paintings reflecting on the teaching and learning process.

It will also use the examples of staff who have been involved in small scale curriculum interventions to make some changes within their practice. It will also discuss the institutional practices and developments that can bring about change. This will use as an example the development of the project Shades of Noir.

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/seminars/disciplines/DW205

EVENT - Lighting a spark: Collaborative digital drawing, research and practice

Sandpit, AIR building, University Campus Tremough, Falmouth

9 July 2012

This play day is about exploring how you can capture the physical act of drawing and how to re-manifest them using digital printing technologies. This gives participants the opportunity to investigate the interface between the physical and the digital through drawing.

What happens when you rescale physical gesture, what do marks made on one surface look like on another, what are the limitations and glitches in the technologies and what potential do they hold? These are just a few things that excite the organisers and they hope to explore.

They will be using Livescribe pens that record whatever you draw on specially printed paper, drawing and painting apps for iPads, eBeam pen tracking technology that allows large scale 2D gestures and drawn marks to be recorded, and 3D room-scale motion capture that can track full body movements in space.

The computer controlled router in the Design Centre will be reconfigured as a 8’x4’ mark making machine, not just to reproduce, but to transform, translate and refigure the original drawing and movements. The router can work on a variety of surfaces with a range of media to produce different effects, and your work can be rescaled to change its impact and purpose.

This workshop is free for participants, funded and supported by the Higher Education Academy and University College Falmouth.

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/seminars/disciplines/DW268

EVENT - Credit and classification: where are we going?

Student Assessment And Classification Working Group (SACWG) Annual Seminar

Woburn House, London
21 November 2012

Speakers:
Professor Sir Robert Burgess, Vice Chancellor, University of Leicester, and
Professor Paul Bridges, Head of Research, University of Derby and Chair of the UK Credit Forum

Issues include:

• HEAR implementation
• Parallel and alternative reporting of student achievement (not limited to Honours degree classifications)
• Are compensation and condonement compatible with good credit practice?
• When is it permissible to re-use credit? 

Coffee/Tea from 10.00 am for 10.30 am start, to conclude at 4.00 pm - refreshments and lunch are included in the cost of £110.00 per person.  Places are limited to 75 persons. 

For more information and to book online: https://secure.worc.ac.uk/sacwg/