SCORE starter questions (Andy Lane)

Why do we need to be open and if so why a dedicated website and not on Flickr or Youtube? What do students gain from sharing and what do teachers gain, how does openness and OER add value to the process?

Visiting all six UAL colleges, each individual studio projects a unique intense sense of activity. The primary online communication tool at UAL is the internal VLE blackboard, in my opinion, not a popular VLE of choice by most UAL staff and students. Each subject area is locked into its own section; this area in itself can be complex and difficult to navigate. Blackboard does not facilitate sharing or browsing across courses or colleges and is closed to external users. As a result over the past few years with the development of Web 2.0 technology content learning and teaching is being dispersed across the web in various wikis, bolgs, group websites, personal youtube accounts, Flickr groups etc. although collective participation remains a problem, good quality learning material is being produced and shared either internally hidden away in Blackboard or lost in the locally shared group blog, often becoming dormant as the onus is often placed on one person ‘the teacher’ to administer and develop, some content never leaves the classroom/studio. Process.arts tries to address how we cluster all this activity together, process.arts encourages users to collaborate, share and develop content in an environment that bridges the internal and external e.g. the content remains affiliated to the institution ‘the hosts’, users are integrated into its system by using its internal login systems etc Web 2.0 CMS functionality provides an open, accessible, familiar, innovative, expandable, collaborative and user friendly environment.            

Process.arts could function as a filter for providing an online development and collaboration tool to share, create and explore innovative ways of developing arts practice. The project aims to provide an easier and more familiar and inclusive the online learning and teaching environment.

Process.arts could provide a rich source of developed tried and tested learning content, where successful and useful content rises to the top, with an history of development, interaction, user views and comments. Content could be licensed and be filtered out into the larger system, permanently preserved in open education repositories or in VLEs, websites, blogs and wikis.   

What do you think are/will be the benefits to teachers and institutions?

Some of the benefits can be seen in the answer above. Other key benefits include the reduction of duplication; resources are developed, improved and tested collaboratively. Really interesting talk here, I like the idea of information underload, creating and finding tacit content and relational identity. We've been exploring this on process.arts.

Time and preparation on resources are the main problems of production; a collaborative environment would provide mass support from all areas of expertise. Being open to the wider community provides different and new specialist perspectives and advice from interested parties around the world, enriching the development process. An important area of research would include how rich media content could be re-purposed?

Is it to allow employers and others to see student work?

Process.arts would not showcase student work as such or be an online gallery, although it would provide a valuable portfolio of working practices, active staff who fully participate could be seen as good practitioners in their field, active students who fully participate could viewed the same to perspective employers, active students could encourage better practice from staff.  I see process.arts expanding to include collaborations with the creative industry sectors students may progress to.   

What is it that you are seeking to be sustained?

To develop sustainable ways of creating, developing and hosting rich media art and design learning content.    

How is success to be measured?

Process.arts is currently measured by statistics from google analytics and the drupal software enables in-depth user tracking. More importantly to me is the observation and monitoring of comments and the collaborations, how are students and staff using these tools? Connections with 3rd party applications are important, developed content should be tested and monitored outside the process.arts collaborative space to encourage interest and interaction from other online environments and to assess different responses to content.

Is this just about looking at UAL or is there another HEI doing similar things you could also look at?

I am interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the project, possibly developing connections with other HEIs, collaborations across various subject fields could prove an interesting OER research project as could collaborations with business schools as the culture of entrepreneurialism increases in arts education.

Other possible areas of consideration are to collaborate with business links with alumni employers or employees national and international.

Project overview audio recording 2010 - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/process-arts-audio-recording-presentation-educamplondon-2010-csm

Online presentation part 1 - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/part-1-process-arts-recording-live-online-presentation-what-process-arts

Online presentation part 2 - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/part-2-process-arts-online-presentation-content

Process Arts was developed with the aim of creating a new collaborative online resource that explores process in arts practice. The website provides a new user driven online studio community that focuses on making at all levels in art and design at UAL, whilst also sharing, informing and engaging with the wider community. The new user driven site will show unique insights into the acts of making whilst also encouraging users to share knowledge and experience online throughout the University of the Arts and beyond. Explore the many hidden traditional and contemporary creative technical processes practiced daily, show work and the processes involved in its making online using video, text, image and sound uploading tools.

Process Arts is voluntary managed by Chris Follows in collaboration with CLTAD for all enquiries please contact Chris c.follows@arts.ac.uk.

Questions this site aims to explore:

How can professional and educational studio art practices be documented and shared online? What are the advantages and disadvantages of showing the art studio process and viewing the processes of others?

It is common practice for students, teachers and artists to document their practice through exploring and questioning the process, for example in sketchbooks or through samples and experimentation. Those that do, have few options for presenting this documentation to others. How do students, teachers and artists approach, view and use such forms of documentation?

By sharing studio documentation, research and methods online these once hidden and private traditional and contemporary creative processes are given new perspectives, stimulating discussion, interest and collaboration.