Professional Online Identities

A cross UAL partnership project between, DIAL, SEE, Development & Learning , CLTAD and UAL Communities of Practice (supporting cross department and project collaboration at UAL)

Central Saint Martin School of Art - The Centre for Performance

Chris Follows; Rossella Emanuele‎; Kaye Pryce; DIAL | Katie Mills; | Laura North; SEE | Christine Kelly; Learn IT | Michael Spencer & Fred Meller; Course staff | John Jackson; CLTAD | CCSkills

MAIN RESOURCE GROUP:

http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/professional-online-identities

THE POI FULL PROGRAMME: The programme will create and adapt existing training to meet the needs of this agile programme, we aim to identify and offer bespoke/new training and create unique communities of interest where staff and students learn together. 

The project team will research and evaluate sector needs for developing resources, support, training and skills in creating, developing and maintaining professional online identities.

• Tailored training and related training materials e.g. presentations, training video, worksheets, guides
• Online professional/digital identities resources for staff, students, graduate – openly available on process.arts - e.g. tool kit, guidelines, case studies, videos
• Project impact monitoring, research and evaluation – which could inform a strategy for wider roll out – potentially a 2^nd year version of ISHE focused on Professional Identities for Post Study (PIPS).
• Information and research on digital skills/experience employers and creative industries want and need and how they value or assess these in recruitment (this is dependent on half day event and/or CCSkills/UAL employer research/survey)

We have four projects in this area and the professional ID project is our priority for now, we are researching:

COURSE IDENTITY with Fred's No name project

STAFF IDENTITY with Michael's proposal Using video for messages, information and personal tutorials

We could also align the 'this is the real me fredmeller' project with the students ID project so you take the same journey as the students (and other staff maybe)? Would make the project interesting to address from staff perspectives too and for the students to see this. Another thought was to try and build and retain links in some way online with ex members of staff, these would be great industry links to take advantage of if possible?

Local Dissemination:

Student Surveys - http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/category/survey/

Feedback notes from Enterprise week session: ‘Sharing knowledge improve and develop professional identities’ 

DIAL Enterprise week Event at LCC: Improving Your Prospects through Online Profiles debate at Enterprise Week

Project kick off with course staff and students - Meeting and survey notes for online identities project  also see Audio recording of Developing Professional Online Identities project introduction

National Dissemination:

OER13 - EGOER and open practice identities: http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/egoer-and-open-practice-identities

CHALLENGE: The project is about identifying challenges for staff as much as for students, we are trying to fit this into a very busy and already over stretched course and team schedule. Not all course staff during term time will be able to participate in this project or come to the training sessions because most staff contracted time is already filled with teaching and admin. Offering project activities/training to the all staff and students is out of the scope of this project as it could get very complicated. 

ACTION: We hope by involving two key staff members (who have offered their time) together with the project team, we hope to develop some resources to share online with other staff and students from the course and beyond.

CHALLENGE: DIAL have found it difficult (time consuming and work intensive and therefore unsustainable) to try and coordinate all the training with your course direct, running this training with a course its not going to work without full course buy-in and some course integration, commitment and ownership by the course staff and students. 

ACTION: We were given the programme administrators details and we booked spaces through them. It's been difficult trying to squeeze all this training into a busy course or programme so it made a lot more sense to offer the resources online and some face-to- face training sessions generally to UAL, DIAL also supports courses who have staff with a particular interest (like the Lego sessions) who want do (organise and facilitate) particular related activities with their students which supports the wider POI programme aims, therefore the programme was split in two:

1. The general POI resources and training will be available to all UAL staff and students (these will include Learn IT and OwnIt, Lynda.com and any other sessions we come up with...ongoing) these will be bookable on a first come first serve basis and will be openly available online.     
    
2. DIAL will support course embed and POI related activities, such as: SLP Lego sessions, Video presentation skills workshops at LCF and all the other DIAL mini projects - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/dial-projects-and-activities

CHALLENGE: Finding a suitable digital environment (computer rooms), DIAL found some college integration issues (access to computer facilities, The DIAL and POi team being seen as outsiders) the POI team had to find other computer training room spaces outside CSM. Different colleges have varying resources and access, can be difficult to run training or integrate with courses as an outside project or even a department.

ACTION: Raised this as a issue with Anna Petts Head of UALs Organisational Development and Learning OD&L. "In supporting these projects there are issues related to the training of staff in particular space on campus, and the only training room with PCs being at Richbell Place in Holborn.  Encouraging staff to travel to Richbell Place can prove problematic.  Benefits could be realised with having IT training space at all of the Colleges to provide tailored support and training and to promote the projects relevant to their needs and give greater profile." Read in full here.

Lessons learned:

• Reflections on the DIAL – Learn IT collaboration
  READ HERE - Please see updates below from Christine Kelly from Learn IT reflecting on the Professional On-line Identities project (POI) collaborative work DIAL, SEE and Learn IT have been involved in over the past year and a half: " It has highlighted the benefits of pooling the talent and expertise within these teams, enhances this and future projects within the UAL and shares knowledge and expertise of each department."

• Organisational Development and Learning working in partnership with DIAL
  READ HERE - Please see notes below from Anna Petts Head of UALs Organisational Development and Learning OD&L. The meeting with Anna, Christine Kelly from Learn IT and myself was a welcome and timely opportunity to reflect on the Professional On-line Identities project (POI) collaborative work DIAL, SEE and Learn IT have been involved in over the past year and a half.

• POI Programme – IP and Creative Commons Sessions Feedback
  READ MORE - Evaluation feedback from the IPR and creative common workshops

• DIAL
• DIAL activity
• DIAL projects
• Digital Literacies
• digital literacy
• Digital Literacy in the arts
• Professional Online Identities
• University of the arts London