Category: Digital Identity

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.

UAL Learning and Teaching Conference 2019

Learning and Teaching Day 2019I attended and presented at the UAL Learning and Teaching Conference 2019.  It was held at London College of Communication on 21 March 2019. The theme which ran throughout the conference was  ‘Wellbeing’.

My session (a “provocation”) explored potential tensions between Open Education / Practice and individual privacy and “wellbeing” in various forms – especially digital.  The short description on the conference website has additional details and links to  materials used.

#conference, #conferences, #lcc, #open-education, #open-practice, #presentations, #wellbeing

UAL’s Learning and Teaching Day

UAL Learning and Teaching Day 2017UAL’s Annual Learning and Teaching Day 2017 was held at CSM.

The link to the slides I used for my ‘Lightning Talk’ about a series of interviews / podcasts I have recorded with UAL colleagues, exploring how teaching and learning is developing and residing within digital spaces and practice is evolving further into ‘the digital’ is here: https://goo.gl/a5P9H0

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

Visual Rhetoric – a UAL / LSE Collaboration

Visual Rhetoric logo

Visual Rhetoric is a collaboration between the LSE and UAL (LCC) with a recently designed and launched public presence available at www.visualrhetoric.ac.uk. This fascinating knowledge exchange project brings together designers and researchers from the social sciences, arts and humanities.

Here follows an  overview of the collaboration between the eLearning Teams of UAL (CLTAD) and LSE and the academic teams to provide additional resources to support this project. Continue reading Visual Rhetoric – a UAL / LSE Collaboration

Electronic Management of Assessment – HeLF Forum

HeLF logo

Towards the end of June I attended and presented at the ‘Heads of eLearning Forum’ – HeLF – ‘Electronic Management of Assessment’ (EMA) SIG Event held at the University of Brighton. It was a fascinating gathering, most attendees being senior ‘Learning Technologists’ and ‘Heads of eLearning’ from universities across the UK.
Continue reading Electronic Management of Assessment – HeLF Forum