Meeting #2 CSM : Press Play

Yesterday we had our 2nd community meeting with BA Criticism, Communication & Curation students, and we were joined by Joe Easeman, Project Co-Ordinator for the DIAL project. 

We looked at the Digital resources available throughout UAL and our views on them.

Online Assessment - This feature of Moodle is not used by our course and if this was something more accessible to us we would be able to properly track our progress throughout our course. The 2nd Years recently submitted work online through Moodle which was a first for them to submit work digitally. For the most part, we are using analog type methods from hand-ins to tutorial feedback.

Blackboard vs. Moodle - The students in attendance agreed that they found Blackboard simpler to use and valued having the PDF reading list available through it. Although Moodle has lots of seemingly great features, students aren't aware how to truly utilse it. Due to copyright infringement, we are no longer able to access PDF uploads from our tutors and instead are given a reading list that we need to source ourselves. Although, this helps with researching skills, it doesn't make the resources that are vital to our lectures available. Instead students will find the document and upload it to their course Facebook page. 

Facebook as a Forum (As opposed to UAL spaces) - Students start closed groups for their course year groups as well as the course program as a whole. For example there is a 'BACCC 2012-2015' Group as we as a 'BA Criticism, Communication & Curation' Group. The Year Group is used as a forum for questions on the course, connecting with Group Work classmates, uploading resources and personal messages ie. flatshares. This has proeven to be a more effective resource for the students and also has that personal/community feel.

 Workflow - None of the students in attendance use Workflow and many were not aware of its existence. To get more of a feel for it and understand it better, I aim to set up my own profile through it and make follow up notes on this.

Commonplace - Students know about Commonplace but many have not used it. After being introduced to it again, students were more interested in utilising it. 

Myblog.arts - We had NEVER heard of this! Keep your eyes peeled, CSM : Press Play will be busy blogging on this site...

Although all these various digital resources mentioned are interesting and if used probably very effective, there seems to be too many. If there was ONE platform for all of these tools it would be more effective.

The students all agreed that they wanted an online platform in which to create an Online Identity from the start of their course and be able to continue this after they graduate as a way of staying a part of the Central Saint Martins / UAL community. This way there could be a great relationship between current students and Alumi helping each other in professional development.