Exploring free & open education at University of the Arts London
University of the Arts London (UAL) has led the field in open education & digital literacies activities & projects in arts & design subjects over the past eight years, which have contributed to UALs growing reputation as forward thinking university in this newly developing area.
Below are a few examples of projects & activities UAL have been involved in over the years which have contributed to UALs open educational advancements, building on UALs growing reputation as forward thinking university in this newly developing area. Of course there's loads more activity in and around UAL much of it being initiated through grassroots interests so please add a comment to this post to highlight any work we've missed and we'll add it to the below. Also if you are interested in future open & free education projects at UAL please post a comment.
See useful list of Acronyms & Terms at the end of this post.
There's also lots of great information about open education to be found in the 'Open Education Handbook', UAL staff contributed to the development of this handbook.
What is Open Education | History of open education | Some key terms
Funded developments
UAL has been awarded funding from JISC & the HEA to develop open education projects, funded projects include:
Changing the Learning Landscape (2014)
The Changing the Learning Landscape: Online identities group is a UAL CLTAD - DIAL project, part of the wider Changing the Learning Landscape groundbreaking partnership between the ALT, the HEA, Jisc, the NUS and the Leadership Foundation for HE.
UAL/JISC Kultur Project
The aim of the Kultur Consortium is to create a transferable and sustainable institutional repository model for research output in the creative and applied arts - funded by JISC, under the Start-Up and Enhancement strand of its Repositories and Preservation programme. The project is running from 31 March 2007 - 31 March 2009 More about the project.
UAL Research Online
UAL Research Online was an institutionally supported output of the above JISC funded Kulture project. UAL reseaech Online is the open licensed online repository for UAL research papers - http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk. The UALRO funning lasted two years and since 2009 UAL have invested in the development of research online and it continues to grow in strength and is a rich open education resource.
Free and Open-Source software in the Arts
Free ‘Libre’ and Open-Source software in the Arts, an open research group to encourage experimentation in the use of open source in arts practice and education. Learn more & contribute here.
Copyright Issues
Copyright Issues: This group aims to bring together debate and support around all the copyright developments and issues relevant to digital literacies UAL practice. Please tag related post with copyright issues.
DIAL (2011-2014)
The DIAL project, partially funded by JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme, is a two-year project (ending December 2013) at the university of Arts London. The DIAL project set out with the key aim of exploring cultural change and improving graduate employability in the arts.
Over the project lifetime, processes, resources and toolkits will be developed and made openly available so the communities can be increasingly autonomous in their development programmes and continue to develop confidence and capability in the adoption and integration of digital technologies and practice. DIAL supports open educational practice at UAL and all content and resources are openly licensed online, please see a full list of DIAL resources and activities. Also see
DigiTell 2014 Student led symposium; Exploring Online Presence in Creative Practice
The internet is no longer used merely as a portfolio display case; online presence is inherent in creative practice and retains various shades between personal and professional that often overlap. Bringing together Digital experts, this symposium brings to the forefront the important discussion of online identity for art practices.
ALTO UK (2011-2012)
The project was initiated by and based in the UAL Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design with the express aim of helping to drive cultural change and awareness across the UAL and its partner institutions, in relation to the benefits of creating, sharing and using Open Educational Resources OERs and developing associated Open Educational Practice (OEP). In this respect it has achieved success in acting as a lightening rod around which a number of diverse discussions have begun in areas including IPR policy and awareness, digital literacy, developing staff skills in instructional design, bridging the gap between managing learning resources (as OERs) and research data and outputs in HE, and exploring personal and disciplinary differences in educational philosophy.
Additional project information can be found here and the final project report here.
ALTO UAL (2010-2011)
ALTO was a project funded by HEFCE to develop the capacity of the UAL to participate in the rapidly developing open educational community movement. ALTO focused on developing institutional infrastructure and capacity to engage in open educational practice.
See an archive of ALTO project work from the FileStore website
Open Practice Unit
This 20 credit validated unit is part of the Academic Practice Provision offered through the Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design. The unit aims to explore definitions of what Open Education might mean and the implications of moving towards open online social spaces to support learning. Participants explore existing and create new OERs that stem from teaching practice and may include learning content and software tools that can be freely and openly shared on the web using a Creative Commons Licence.
Online learning at Camberwell Chelsea & Wimbledon Colleges of Art (CCW)
Short overview of online learning activity at CCW.
CLTAD Teaching Development Projects
Staff sharing their learning experience & journey.
Open Education, UAL and the Tate Gallery
Example of possible future collaborations
Grassroots development
Process.Arts
http://process.arts.ac.uk is an open practice platform for sharing art, design and media practice based learning and teaching, the site is open to anyone to encourage open communities of practice between individuals, groups, and institutions worldwide. The site offers a rich media/social media experience to sharing arts practice, users are encouraged to openly share and use creative commons licensed content and support others in doing the same.
SCORE Fellowship (2011-2012)
The aims of the SCORE fellowship were to explore relationships between traditional arts practice and OER practice: Including use and reuse of OER, best processes and practices, OER communities, inter-college collaborations and the development of an open Arts-UKOER community of practice. See SCORE Fellowship report
My self directed education
Student perspectives on self directed education.
Acronyms & Terms
| Acronym/Term | Description |
| Open | Any online content, from text, images, video, comments etc. which are openly available online to view or download without the need to login or join. |
| OP / Open Practice | Individuals and groups who share personal and professional practice online through participatory blogs and online community networks. Content (resources & ideas) are mostly unrestricted to access and freely downloadable for use and reuse, content is openly licensed using creative commons or similar (see below). |
| OEP / Open educational Practice | Those open practices specifically related to educational activities. |
| CC - Creative Commons | An open licensing system to provide content creators option to add specific use guidelines to their content whilst retaining their intellectual property rights on the content/item, e.g. CC BY you can download & use my video, but please attribute me. |
| OER / Open educational resources | "OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." Hewlett Foundation |
| VLE Virtual learning environment | University managed online learning environment this includes Moodle and its related UAL tools, blogs, e-portfolios and process.arts, see VLE map here |
| MOOC / Massive Open Online Course | MOOCs are large free open online courses; some MOOC's are more 'open' than others. Anyone can enroll or join a MOOC and users follow/take part in the course remotely without paying a fee for participation. Some MOOCs are self directed and some involve the support of a teacher, however, in bery large courses support is typically minimal. Peer networking and support can be an important aspect of some MOOCs. Some MOOCs offer accreditation for a fee. Mini MOOC is a small version of a MOOC |
This Work, Exploring free & open education at University of the Arts London, by cfollows, is free of known copyright restrictions.
