CCW Digital are really pleased to be 1 of 28 projects who have been awarded funding by the Teaching and Learning Exchange supported projects focusing on Creative Curricula. Projects will run Spring Term 2017 to Autumn Term 2017. Visit the Teaching and Learning Fund for more information.

Summary: Digital Making in the Curriculum Project

Over the past two years the Digital Maker Collective (DMC) have been exploring multi-disciplinary interest led groups. It is now an active group with over 200+ participants although we have little evidence or research about how this work relates and is beneficial to the curriculum.

What we will do

This project aims to explore how we integrate ‘digital making’ art & design practice and the curriculum. The project will focus specifically on new digital technologies and its relationship to how we teach, use and consider developing digital making in creative practice.

Outcome 1: Debates/workshops

The project will cumulate in a large symposium event

• We will hold a series of workshops/seminars made up of students and staff from across UAL to explore and share models of practice that encourage knowledge creation and sharing and possibilities for the curriculum and debate Digital Making as pedagogy.

Outcome 2: Knowledge Transfer

A draft template/framework for Digital Making in the curriculum & work with DMC staff & students to codify the knowledge

• Review and curate resources which point to content that already exists.
• Develop new training packages/models of practice to support entry level, basic understanding of concepts, up to exploring advanced specialist processes through student led social learning.
• Create an online learning framework/digital making course outline
• New approach to developing resources e.g. exploring the potential of 360 video and virtual reality as learning & teaching practice. 

Outcome 3: Enhance Knowledge Exchange

Test a new online approach during the development of the framework

• Document learning online in an ongoing & agile way so to share with others
• Experiment with fusing the face-to-face meet-up activities with a virtual offer, this could include live streaming, Facebook live, skype, google hangouts and explore new forms of connectivity across sites.
• New approach to developing online collaboration & communication.

How will the project enhance or improve the student experience?

Demand from staff and students to experience, learn and share knowledge about Digital Making & new technologies continues to grow rapidly, this is evident in the growing numbers of staff & students requesting to join and participate in the DMC activities.

Much of the new digital work and experimentation is student led, and students currently provide the momentum for change and in defining its relevance, mostly from outside the curriculum.

It’s very difficult for course teams to respond to rapid and complex digital change in the sector and learning & teaching (L&T), e.g. Understanding what’s out there, pointing students in right direction, having critical perspectives, sourcing specific teaching expertise and finding/creating resources.

The challenge for Colleges is how we manage the impact of digital on curriculum so its integrated and comprehensive across all the different silos of innovation and/or resistance.

For this project we aim to support debates and workshops which will inform the co-development of a framework for supporting course (staff & students) to better experience, understanding and support of new technologies and digital making in the curriculum. Which in turn will ‘enhance or improve the student experience’.

The following rough outline framework approach would include:

• Technology Play & relate to the curriculum & practice
• Explore different pathways of exploration & relate to sector (critique & debate)
• Develop a line of enquiry (individual & collaborative)
• Project development (individual & collaborative)

We will explore the below areas as an interconnected framework for support sustainable practice:

• Physical Spaces: College (cross college R&D) Basecamps, Mobile/Pop-up spaces and wider Eco system (other colleges, makerspaces & sectors)
   
• Online Spaces: Open online learning, collaboration, communicating practice, open practice and sharing.
   
• Collaborative practice: Knowledge generation & exchange, communities of interest/practice, physical meet-ups, projects & events
   
• Expertise & teaching: Knowledge transfer, workshops, lectures and activities

How will you know you have been successful?  How will you collect evidence and evaluate the project?

The project team has access to a wide variety of course staff and students who will contribute to the development and success of this project. The project will also be co-developed so we will be continually critical and methodical in its development.

Evaluation will be integrated from the start, where we plan to keep reflective documentation of our progress and share updates online.

Each part of the project will be tested in a fail/safe pilots with members of the DMC so we can feedback and improve and continue an iterative process.

The goal for this project is to produce something tangible course teams can pick up, develop and integrate into their curriculum. Evidence of this would be a key measure of success for this project.

The final symposium event will discuss all the findings and showcase case study examples from the project.

In what way do you think your project will be of value to others (e.g. students, staff, subject/disciplines and/or college and university)?

The project has potential to impact on many staff and students as well as across many other levels of engagement:

College/Course Value:

• Will help bring digital making culture to studios
• Courses have a clearer understanding of the relevance of new technologies
• Support multi- disciplinary conversations
• New learning pathways & networks to help point students towards
• Larger ‘critical mass’ of knowledge exchange
• Curriculum Integration
• Explore ‘Open Practice’ collaborative learning
• Support Live projects, knowledge exchange & transfer

UAL Value:

• Support new short course development
• Collaborative, cross course, college and multi- disciplinary approach
• Manage growing demand and capacity to reach more UAL students  
• Make it easier for less tech savvy to toe dip into the new technologies culture

Wide reaching: engagement:

• Developing open online learning model will help us:
  • Reach new and a wider audience
  • Complement our current face-to-face activities & events
  • Maintain dialogue and connection with Alumni
• Develop a framework for online learning to test the potential for larger future engagement and ‘massive’ open online course development in the future.

Describe how your project will support University priorities identified above?

Digital Learning

• We will help bring digital making culture to studios
• New learning pathways & networks to help point students towards
• Explore ‘Open Practice’ collaborative online learning spaces
• New approach to developing student led online learning
• The role/place of the educators as knowledge providers or facilitators

• Students will gain new digital literacies through digital collaboration
• Explore the role of the student as knowledge creator, sharer or facilitator
• Knowledge exchange & transfer presents new digital literacy challenges
• Students observing will see new forms of digital literacies being used
• Digital Making will become more explicit/understandable to others

• A way to bring together silos across colleges, through shared interests
• Wider online use with face-to-face will support cross college inclusion
• Try out new forms of digital communications and interaction across sites
• Advance understanding & relationship to digital economy & the sector

Student-Staff Collaboration

• Student led cross disciplinary collaboration
• The project will be mostly student led, with staff guidance & support
• Staff & students will bring their expertise to the table  
• Students will codify knowledge & create new forms of collaboration
• Students will be equal partners in curriculum development
• New courses will be co-develop & delivered with staff & students

Staff Collaboration

• Bringing together staff with students from the Digital Maker Collective:

The project aims to use the courses/academics/dept.