Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2012

Advertising art directors and copywriters have worked in teams, concurrent with workshop pedagogy becoming orthodox in the UK art school. Advertising creatives now often work in larger teams using social media. The e-studio and Online Collaborative Creativity (OCC) appear as descendents of workshop pedagogy, with claims that these practices increase innovation and motivation. This article explores such assertions in an investigation that takes place within a creative advertising degree course, where teams work online while competing on a live brief. What could be the value and opportunities of introducing OCC to a traditional studio? To what extent should OCC be implemented in the curriculum? This article tackles these questions and shares findings of a contextualist and quasi-experimental approach to an analysis of OCC. In doing so, it argues for studio pedagogy to be re-aligned with a different collaborative model as a means to prepare graduates for industry.

This article examines both staff and students’ perspectives of using learning technologies within arts education in developing flexible, longitudinal support for digital literacies. Based on data collected at a small, specialist arts institution in the United Kingdom, the article explores ways in which staff may consider students’ use of technology in learning as well as how students themselves use technology in creative practices. In so doing, the article considers the digital natives/immigrants debate through a social constructionist lens to underscore how pervading assumptions about students’ use of technology may influence ongoing support and ambiguous institutional culture.

This article describes a technical action research project on how Facebook can be embedded in the structure of an undergraduate visual communication study unit. It identifies educational benefits as well as pitfalls, and how students perceive this Social Networking Site (SNS) as part of their teaching and learning process. Data was collected through an online questionnaire, content analysis of Facebook posts and a focus group. The limitations of this investigation relate to the generalizability of findings that are the result of action research. Students identified a range of educational benefits relating to peer-to-peer but also teacher-student support. Among the challenges were student attitudes and perceptions of what should or should not occur with the Facebook group when used for teaching and learning. This article provides a blueprint for the next cycle of the action research process, which can include specific refinements, but also needs to consider a number of challenges.

Current trends in integrated project design and delivery methods demand the development of new software competencies in interior design pedagogy. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has revolutionized visualization, preconstruction simulation, life cycle analysis, and enabled faster construction, thus promoting more sustainable integrated practices with a rich repertoire of building information available for the design team. This new tool presents opportunities for interior design educators to teach software and skills that are necessary to prepare students for integrated practice. This article discusses an instructional design approach of introducing BIM and Revit into the interior design curriculum at University of Minnesota. John Robert Anderson’s ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational) theory is utilized to guide students through the learning process. ACT-R theory focuses on three stages of skill acquisition: cognitive, associative and autonomous stages. These three stages present implications for teaching interior design students about BIM and Revit.

This article explores the high level of design management skills that can be acquired through work-based learning. Design domain work-based learning in business environments is described from the authors’ research and experience in operating work-based learning contracts within a master’s degree in Design Management at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. The authors’ research was based on a sample of (work-based, learning contract) students’ experiences over five years and involved the analysis of work submitted for assessment, with a view to evidencing the level of acquisition of key design management skills. A quantitative analysis of students’ achievement is described, followed by a qualitative description of work-based learning within their companies. From the research evidence, a core of design management skills was detected within the work-based experience.

The aim of this mixed-media contribution that includes the article text and an online video, is to interpret the school-cum-online community practice of ‘videoscanning’ as a social as well as creative (eco)system, and discuss it briefly against selected media theory. The first part of the article embeds this explorative practice (of editing short video-reflections on learning events) within the school’s pedagogical setting; to subsequently reveal its potential for curriculum development, as a community-embedded process of research-based innovation; and finally to reflect the practice within selected theoretical coordinates. The multi-layered interplay of theory and practice, between text and video, proves that only positive and creative interactions can secure self-reflection and improvement in social (learning) systems. If designed as communicative (eco)systems, it is especially in pedagogical settings that social media can prove most important – not only as playgrounds and marketplaces of ethical decisions, but also as platforms of aesthetical innovation.

This article addresses the growing practice of ‘rephotography’ and the medium of social network sites in relation to developing visual literacy and digital skills within informal learning. Drawing upon ongoing research, this article examines contributions made to a bespoke social network site by participants involved in a global project that aims to identify and photograph again locations once photographed during the voyage of the British scientific survey ship HMS Challenger (18721876). With a focus on the rephotographic process, the article discusses contributions made to the project by three participants in Gibraltar, Cape Town and Manila. Upon reflection of their contributions, the combination of rephotography and a dedicated social network site is put forward as a potential visual methodology for the development of visual literacy and digital skills of twenty-first century informal learners.

Artist, Researcher, Teacher: A Study of Professional Identity in Art and Education, Alan Thornton (2013) Bristol: Intellect, 147 pp., p/bk, ISBN: 9781841506449, £15.95, $25

University Libraries and Space in the Digital World, Graham Matthews and Graham Walton (eds) (2013) UK: Ashgate, 248 pp., h/bk, ISBN 978-1-4094-2382-9, £54, eBook £37

Digital Dieting: From Information Obesity to Intellectual Fitness, Tara Brabazon (2013) Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 333, ISBN: 9781472409379, h/bk, £35.00