Category: Creativity

DCAF anyone?

DCAF Handbook ImageEarlier this century I contributed to the design and delivery of several business advice and mentoring projects – primarily focused on new creative businesses, digital businesses – and businesses combining both. I was privileged to work with a large number of startups and small businesses; manage an advice team in London and help recruit and grow a second team in Liverpool.  I presented occasionally at conferences and got ‘hands-on’ with the planning and development of some significant online initiatives. Much of my time was spent with a fascinating mix of inspiring creative entrepreneurs.

One of the themes we encountered a lot was that recent graduates of Art and Design Establishments were very eager to access advice and support and often commented on the lack of ‘enterprise’ advice / expertise available to them during their time in education.

Things have improved a fair bit since then, with opportunities such as ‘live projects’ and ‘placements’ embedded within many courses. At University of the Arts London (UAL) the ‘Creative Attributes Framework’ (CAF) identifies a number ‘attributes’.  These, according to research, are behaviours and skills essential, or extremely useful, to creative practitioners throughout their careers.  The ‘CAF’ is now also used by course teams when planning courses and learning activities – truly embedding ‘enterprise’ skills at the heart of the curriculum.

The Digital ‘CAF’ (‘DCAF’) is essentially a variant of the ‘CAF’ and takes as its starting point the same nine attributes.

These fall within three families:

  • Making Things Happen
  • Showcasing Abilities
  • Navigating Change

The ‘practices’ explored within the DCAF relate to Digital behaviours and skills – and they avoid falling into the trap of being prescriptive (the ‘scenarios’ column is left deliberately blank for those engaging with the DCAF to make it relevant for their own contexts).

There is a splendid blog dedicated to the DCAF which you can access at https://dcaf.myblog.arts.ac.uk

The superbly designed accompanying booklet was designed by Conor Rigby, whose abilities are showcased at http://conorrigby.com.

Digital Learning Spaces

TEL at UALInterested in Digital Learning Spaces?

You can now listen to UAL academics talking about how they and their students are using digital spaces for reflective practice, research, collaboration, showcasing work and more – @ Discussing Digital Pedagogies.

This is the start of an ongoing audio enquiry I am conducting into digital teaching and learning spaces within the art and design Higher Education context.

#digital-learning, #digital-literacy, #elearning-2, #learning, #mahara, #technology-enhanced-learning, #tel, #ual, #workflow

Evaluating Student Experience in Industry Projects

UAL LCC LogoCara Lee Roth and I have been invited to deliver another ‘Evaluating Student Experience in Industry Projects’ workshop at the LCC Learning and Teaching Day – which will take place at LCC next week – 6 May 2015.

SEE and CLTAD have developed a teaching tool for evaluating students’ engagement in industry projects. This tool can help course teams to evaluate the impact of industry projects, enhance enterprise and employability and also inform curriculum design and learning and teaching strategies on how to measure student experience. Continue reading Evaluating Student Experience in Industry Projects

UAL Learning and Teaching Day 2015

UAL Learning and Teaching Day 2015I’m looking forward to taking part in UAL’s Learning and Teaching Day at LCC on 14th January 2015. This year not just attending, enjoying and being inspired by the sessions on the day, I will also be co-presenting a session with Cara Lee Roth – Evaluating Student Experience in Industry Projects.

Wikimania 2014

Wikimania 2014 logoI (and a few other people ;-)) enjoyed Wikimania 2014 – which took place in London from August 8th-10th. For more details have a look at the programme. Most of the presentations to do with education took place on Saturday and included my new UAL colleague Dave White (Head of Technology-Enhanced Learning) with a provocative and thought provoking presentation entitled ‘What’s left to teach now that Wikipedia has done everyone’s homework?’ Videos of key presentations from Saturday are available at Livestream (you will need a Livestream account to view but that is free/easy to set up). A truly inspiring presentation was given by Jack Andraka ‘Citizen Scientist’ who told of his ultimately successful mission to discover a straightforward, cheap and effective test for early pancreatic cancer thereby saving lives Continue reading Wikimania 2014

Why ePortfolios?

Tree imageSeveral weeks ago I wrote a short piece for CSM’s ‘Digital Present’ blog in which I explored the use of UAL’s ‘Workflow’ ePorfolio – based on Mahara.

Students and academics were kind in giving of their time and experience to discuss how and why they were using ePortfolios. What becomes very clear is that this is very much a platform which can be of use and benefit to students even without it being made a core component of their course(s). The full article is @: http://goo.gl/fFuOb

Improving your Prospects through Online Profiles

Improving your prospects through online profilesOn the 15th November at LCC I had the pleasure of taking part in a SEE Event held as part of Enterprise Week entitled ‘Improving your prospects through online profiles’.

This brought together 6 speakers and a lively audience comprising mainly UAL students and alumni to debate and explore ways in which online profiles can be beneficial – as well as reviewing the potential pitfalls and how to avoid and recover from them. The slides for my presentation are @ http://goo.gl/oLmrv

This was an extremely interesting and enjoyable event which explored a wide variety of themes related to online profiles, digital identity and digital life – for more information have a look @: http://goo.gl/rlYrR