Below is some of the feedback I have gathered during the workshops:

A mystery revealed – Copyright, design, trademark and patents

Creative Commons – sharing and promoting your work online

      
Silvia Baumgart has led the Project and it has been organised together with the Centre of Performance Course. The sessions were scheduled for the 3rd and 15 of May 2013 – CSM.

Silvia works is with Own-it a UAL service that provides advice, information and learning resources on copyright, design rights, patents, trade marks, branding, confidentiality agreements, licensing and other IP related contracts. Own-it delivers workshops for students as well as responding to queries through our online enquiries system.

Overview

Creative Commons is sometimes misunderstood as providing some sort of alternative to copyright. In fact, the whole system is based on the principle that authors of creative work should keep control over their work. It is a simple to use and effective licensing system, which makes it easy to share work with others and promote yourself online.

The Professional Online Identities project aims to identify and support development of specific digital literacies/hard and soft skills (Presentation and Relational skills) in maintaining professional online identities with the aim of enhancing student/graduate employability and industry readiness.

The session followed a previous session held on the 3rd of May on Copyright, design, trademark and patents, which looked at the reality of A & D students, who constantly create work, which is protected by copyright or design right. As well as the likelihood of using other people’s work, which are also protected by certain rights while you are researching and developing projects. The aim was to make students aware of these rights, especially because they would need to promote their work online through social media.

EVALUATION Results

Questionnaire asked to the students after the session.

1. Did you find the seminar useful?
2. How do you think this knowledge will impact on your immediate development?
3. What about the more long term goals?
4. How did you find out about the workshop?
5. Was the communication clear and the booking system user friendly?
6. Any suggestions you would like to make for future activities?

RESULTS – of the group of 7 students  

1. Everyone find it useful, we had comments such as: informative, very useful, the second session help to clarify the IP session from last week, etc…
2. All the students asked, stated that they were now more aware of their rights and of what to post online.  A students felt that now he would be more confident but also careful in disseminate his images as he felt more able to prevent people from taking advantage.
3. Another student said that she would pay more attention to the images she uses before uploading them online as she may be infringing copyrights.
4. Another student felt that the awareness she gained from these sessions will be not of immediate use but very important for her future job as she wants to start her own business, so it will be useful for her future career.
5. The total number of students attending were 11 for the session on IP and 9 for the session on Creative Commons. To the question on how did they find out about the seminar the majority of the students attending answered that it was on their course timetable and that they did not have to book it. They thought that many students on their course though would not have known about it as more would have attended and benefit from it. ( this comment was on the suggestions question asked) . From these results it seems that including the information into the course timetable is more effective than the promotion via email using the SEE network. Though we did have two students that arrived through the SEE channel and that booked online and that system is very important for alumni that have now left UAL.

6. Regarding the suggestions other points made were:

* More sessions to learn about professional identities, etc…
* Let the visitors know about the seminar.
* Wanting to learn about ‘How to promote and share my work online’ technically and how to do it professionally.
* Another request was regarding location, a student felt that outside the room was too noisy and this was disturbing the session.

Questions asked to Silvia

1. How being involved in the DIAL project has impacted on your activity.
2. Did you find it beneficial?
3. How?
4. What would you like to see in the future?
5. Could you articulate where the project is moving to and what it is contributing towards?

Silvia’s answers

1. Expanded on the development of the content for the IP sessions that I usually teach.
2 / 3. Yes very beneficial. It expanded the channels of promotion via Course directors and the sharing of resources.
4. More diverse content – development of teaching practice/ research into IP issues relevant to digital media practice.
5. Creating new resources we can share: eg: podcast, interview, slides etc…

Overall in my experience is very difficult to engage students in the subject matter of IP but putting it in the context of digital identities make it more relevant to the students so it is a great way of making it accessible. Inserting it in the DIAL project has certainly created awareness amongst the students, who took part and it is more likely that they engage with the Own-It service when they need to later on.

On the question of why it is difficult for students to engage with the subject of IP, Silvia answer was:

IP is a very alien subject and difficult to understand for any person. It is also a subject that is not in the mind of creative students since it is in most cases not relevant to their practice (apart from appropriating or using other people’s work in their own work for which they would need permission) but can become very important in their professional lives (when they are more likely to engage with it). IP is mainly seen from the perspective of plagiarism but the emphasis should also be on creating value for creative professionals in their business.

Silvia’s final Considerations

I think that it is really important to find out what is the most effective way of engaging the students to take part in such a programme – timetabling (if possible), Process Art (or any other university blog) – SEE? Or a good mix of everything. I tried to do these sessions with the learning zones (library services) and they put up a lot of posters but I had only three students on the day… Not sure if it’s also a time issue? Perhaps we need to start planning earlier so that they have these sessions at the beginning of the new academic year not at the end towards their degree shows.

Organisational Development and Learning working in partnership with DIAL: OD&L are considering supporting/taking DIAL forward the in four areas, by working in partnership - Please see notes (Read more here) from Anna Petts Head of UALs Organisational Development and Learning OD&L. The meeting was a welcome and timely opportunity to reflect on the Professional On-line Identities project (POI) collaborative work DIAL, SEE and Learn IT have been involved in over the past year and a half.

Library Services Strategy (Pat Christie): ‘Define and communicate the Library Services offer within the context of University provision, focusing on information and digital literacy’ DIAL have been working closely with library services and DIAL projects specifically Things Unlimited project will go on to inform future library DL policy and processes. (Departmental strategy 3 year road maps)

Open UAL (policy proposal) – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2013/05/14/open-ual/

DIAL has been regularly contributing to UALs new strategy developments:

• IPR policy,
• IT strategy
• Information Strategy Steering Group ISSG and
• E-Learning Strategy Group (ELSG)

• What benefits has your project delivered and who are the beneficiaries?

The Professional Online Identity project has enabled cross collaboration for Learn-IT with other key stakeholders within the University, SEE, CLTAD, DIAL and various Associate Lecturers. It has highlighted the benefits of pooling the talent and expertise within these teams, enhances this and future projects within the UAL and shares knowledge and expertise of each department. It has also benefited the staff and student engaged in the project, which can be fully evaluate with further feedback after the final course delivery.

• What other impacts has your project had?

The project has highlighted clearly what students would like to know with regards to having an online presence, the cohort used were not experts in technology or a cohort on a technology led course. This helps Learn-IT with the development of their courses for Staff in the next academic year.  Equipping Associate Lecturers and other staff with understanding the IT needs of students leaving the University, for example opening up the project to staff and student has and will allow for the sharing and cascading of skills and learning.

• How will the project be developed further/sustained?

Learn-it strongly believe that UAL promoting and supporting students and staff with the professional online experience, should be a high priority within the student experience. The work involved in piloting this project and the content could effectively be evaluated and developed further into an optional or mandatory part of the curriculum across ALL colleges.  Learn-IT’s consultancy role within UAL has found that there are varying levels of support and expertise students receive from academic staff and IT services. Students need support with digital technologies to extend their learning, whatever their required discipline and level they enter the University at.  Learn-IT are not clear where the project would sit, but are invested in supporting and developing the course content further after final evaluation.

Also see Organisational Development and Learning working in partnership with DIAL

Chris Follows is leading the DIAL project funded through JISC (£100K), which concludes in July 2013 (continues at UAL until Dec 2013). The DIAL project is designed to address digital literacy across UAL raising awareness of the opportunities in developing and delivering innovative technologies to support the student experience and integrating DIAL projects with course curriculum.

There are currently 12 DIAL projects in place ranging from 1 – 20 people, so quite varied.  One project supported by OD&L is the Professional On-line Identities project (POI) designed to support students with their on-line presence, practice and brand.

In supporting these projects there are issues related to the training of staff in particular space on campus, and the only training room with PCs being at Richbell Place in Holborn.  Encouraging staff to travel to Richbell Place can prove problematic.  Benefits could be realised with having IT training space at all of the Colleges to provide tailored support and training and to promote the projects relevant to their needs and give greater profile.

There appears to be a number of other opportunities through more coordinated support – as potentially provided through OD&L in raising awareness as well as providing the knowledge and skills to staff, such as the facility to Lecture Capture – as is in place at LCF – looking to roll this facility out across UAL as well as incorporate into the design of learning provision.

As a result there were four areas to consider in taking DIAL forward, working in partnership with OD&L: -

1)   Demonstrating value – raising the profile of DIAL through targeted learning provision, aligning Learn IT’s provision with relevant DIAL projects to create awareness and understanding, in particular how it supports and enables the student experience – one of three strategic priorities for UAL for 2013 – 14.

2)    Scheduling and planning – OD&L are currently revising their approach to course enrolment and scheduling and there is an opportunity to align DIAL training to this to proactively promote training and engage staff with DIAL projects.  OD&L to support with the scheduling of training, although recognising constraints with training space/resources.

2)   Delivery of – instructor led training (ILT) has many benefits but there is potential in developing more innovative mediums such as social media and e-learning, to provide knowledge and skill in DIAL related technologies to help augment ILT delivery or replace it.

4)    Competencies – identifying and putting in place digital literacy competencies that clearly articulate the necessary blend of knowledge and skills required to support and engage with technologies, relevant to delivering the student experience and/or enable staff to confidently interact.  A competency framework woven into recruitment, performance management and career development as well as other people practices could prove beneficial.

Also see: Reflections on the DIAL – Learn IT collaboration

See DIAL projects and activities

• UAL’s strategic plan under review in light of rapid changes in both sector and economy
• Three major areas identified as particularly important for review and focus:

• Student experience
• Internationalisation
• Postgraduate strategies

Please see DIAL open education activity below:

• DIAL blog: Open education
• Open education at UAL year one evaluation
• Open and Flexible Learning group on process.arts
• DIAL created a ‘open education at UAL‘ page and promoted at OER13

Below is a short reflective overview by John Casey of the work of CLTAD open education projects at UAL and their collaborative work with the DIAL project (mainly the ALTO UK project) and the emerging relationship between digital literacy and open education in general.

The ALTO UK project collaborated with the DIAL project in the events in 2012. See Category Archives: Open education (group)

1. 11th Jan CSM Focus group – links 
2. 7th July LCF OER & Copyright workshop about 15 people - links 
3. 18th Jan OER Workshop at UAL CLTAD Learning and Teaching Conference - links 
4. 29th March LCF OERs and Learning Resource Management – small focused meeting about how to manage course materials - links 
5. 8th March CSM OER Focus group (teachers full and part, critical friend, and teaching techs. Interest expressed in joint development of a drawing course) - links 
6. 13th March Chelsea Focus group - links 
7. 25th April Wimbledon College Focus group - links 

ALTO UK and DIAL contributed to the design of the UAL CLTAD Open Academic Practice Unit, PG Cert Development Strand unit.

What were we aiming to achieve?

Generating debate about the OER that addresses peoples’ fears, (mis)conceptions, and aspirations for what it might achieve and links to digital literacies.

General reflections and Current Developments

Open Educational Resources and Practices are closely related to each other, as open educational resources are only really open to those who have the digital literacy to use (and produce) them. The language surrounding both fields can be difficult to ‘outsiders’, with lots of acronyms and jargon, this is partly a result of the culture of the funding agencies in these fields who have maintained a sizeable consultant workforce who have produced what, at times can seem like a ‘closed shop’ of documentation and terminology – where the underlying concepts are in danger of being abstracted to destruction. Although done with good intentions this can and does limit the reach and impact of such short funded projects.

Looking forwards, the ALTO UK project found that the creation of OERs provides an excellent diagnostic ‘opportunity’ to identify digital literacy needs (both hard and soft) in the context of a practical environment and that it would be sensible to build such activities into staff development and student curricula. The benefits of this would be to develop embedded understanding of digital literacies/fluencies amongst students and staff and help participants better understand premise of their professional digital ‘trace’ and consequent profile. At UAL a policy proposal that would include measures to link open education and digital literacies in such a way (working title Open UAL) is being discussed by senior management, this is directly based on the experience of the ALTO UK and DIAL projects.

Read more about the Open Scholarship Policy – Discussion Document

Our cluster group (4 London DL projects) all gave project overviews.

• Digital literacies as a postgraduate attribute – Institute of Education, University of London
• The digital department – University College London
• Digital literacies in transition – University of Greenwich
• Digital integration into arts learning – University of the Arts London

Slides – http://www.slideshare.net/ProcessArts/dl-jisc-dial-cluster-meeting

DIAL slides

Our cluster group (4 London DL projects) all gave project overviews. Developing Digital Literacies – issues and approaches:

The session provided an update on the work of four projects that have been pursuing different institutional approaches to developing digital literacies for staff and students.

• Digital literacies as a postgraduate attribute – Institute of Education, University of London
• The digital department – University College London
• Digital literacies in transition – University of Greenwich
• Digital integration into arts learning – University of the Arts London

The session was chaired by Carole Baume, critical friend to the cluster

Its always really useful and interesting to hear about how the other projects are dealing with the same issues in different ways but with lots of synergies in the various findings, e.g. defining DLs is an exploratory and agile process, hard skills (digital competencies) and soft skills (relational digital skills as DIAL have identified in the PoI project and in the (Notes from kick off meetings ‘Understanding digital literacies at UAL’ focus groups) or ‘critical digital literacies’ as University of Greenwich identified). All the projects talked about digital identities in different contexts, specifically the relationships between personal and professional, University College London mentioned a ‘problem’ with dealing with 3^rd party social medial platforms in addressing identity work. Throughout the DIAL project we observed and participated in many different social media discussions and debates, its not something DIAL is addressing head on per se, DIAL are dealing with social media in our Professional Online Identities POI Programme through various different training. Our other general approach has been to try and bring together all the various groups as to exchange findings and interests in the Social Media at UAL group.

There were lots of interesting questions at the end:

Q. How do universities support the ‘digitally scared? Or the digitally ‘left-behind’ some staff at UAL have been teaching traditional practices for many years and the wave of digital tech impacting on traditional practice (professional subject specific and teaching practices) has made many staff question to what extent do they have to engage with digital or not. Its not just staff we encounter, some 19 year old students are fearful of technology too, ‘they just don’t get on with computers’ so they try and avoid at all costs. The DIAL model/approach is a great example of supporting ‘digitally scared or ‘left-behind’ e.g. encouraging staff and students to acknowledge their fear or avoidance of engaging with digital/technology (everyone has this fear in different ways, however experienced). DIAL provides these individuals with an in-house support network which can respond and support individual needs and provide ‘long term’ DL encouragement and support.

Q. To what extent do students drive the DL agenda/needs? The PoI project is a direct response to various meetings, panel sessions and focus groups with students, fundamental to its development and being (see related meetings – Enterprise Week Improving Your Prospects through Online Profiles and Feedback notes from Enterprise week session: ‘Sharing knowledge improve and develop professional identities’ and Professional Identities Workshop #legoseriousplay).

And a final question about:

Q. How could the HE DL work inform and support our schools, from primary education upwards, so new students are better prepared? DIAL have began to explore and address this issue firstly through this project ‘Assessing the level of Digital Literacy of pre- degree students’ and with future work in the university by collaborating with current engagement work between UAL and schools.

I dropped in on a presentation of a JISC Advance project called WebES (Students for webinar employability skills) session by Ellen Lessner, Abingdon and Witney College  (http://students4webes.blogspot.co.uk) at the JISC Learning and Teaching experts meeting. There are lots of relevant and useful references we can use/reuse and maybe adopt for the DIAL PoI project.

The aim of our JISC funded project is to develop employability skills for Level 3 students in relation to using video conferencing and webinars. Students will be trained to use video conferencing and to run a webinar, they will set up 7-15 short webinars with employers around the theme of ‘What does an employer want from an employee?” Our plan is to produce the following:

1. A student centred guide to running a webinar

2. Recordings of employer webinars (with full consent from employer) for use by other students

3. A student led conference, supported by the JISC RSC SE, on the theme of employability skills using video conferencing and webinars.

All the Webinar recordings can be seen on this blog – http://students4webes.blogspot.co.uk/

A DIAL version of this project:

It would be good to do a similar follow on project to Laura’s Video Presentation Skills project around issues and challenges of presenting and participating in online webinars and meetings. It would be good to first explore the different platforms as was done in WebES project. They used blackboard collaborate in the end because it had the support of JISC but after talking with the WebES team, I asked how many employers were familiar with this platform, none. So part of our project could be to first of all learn from WebES project outputs and approach and then experiment with tools employers in our sector use for online meetings etc. and involve students in a similar way to  the WebES project.  I’d particularly be interested in testing out google, skype and http://www.webex.co.uk/.

You cannot present to others what you have not presented to yourself: Papert

The purpose of these early workshops in the On-Line Professional Identities Project was to enable the participants to think about their outward facing identity, specifically in terms of their professional profiles. To consider what that identity might be before engaging with the how of putting an identity into an online platforms or engaging with technology.
Lego Serious Play is a powerful methodology for reflecting on and evaluating Individual identity, and extracting core values or simple guiding principles. The workshop followed a clearly defined structure, beginning with skills building and introduction of metaphor. At the core of the process is a simple strategy whereby everybody builds, everybody makes meaning and everybody shares. This activity is repeated three times. Firstly the participants build, from a rich pre-selected inventory of Lego bricks, their identity as they perceive it today. By handling the material and configuring it they make meaning that is individually shared as a story behind the model they have built. Secondly they are asked to build a new model which is how other see them and to consider how it attaches to the first model and what impact it has on the first Core Model. Finally they are asked to build a new third model that expresses, for them, their identity on the future. Lastly they are asked to place the two models in relation to each other and to extract from the last model what is the essential core identity of the future. They are asked to consider the distance between the two identities and what might be need to close that gap. These are written down and the participants take this way.

The group were given a short introduction into the concept of identity as explained by Henri Tajfel, that the identity consists of two aspects: PERSONAL consisting of characteristics, traits, preferences, attributes. And SOCIAL or RELATIONAL which derives from our knowledge of belonging to a certain group, which offers emotional value and social significance.
The group of 10 stage 2 and 3 students all engaged completely with the process and the idea of creating metaphor to make meaning. While some initial models were sometimes rich and demonstrated a deep understanding of current identity, many were strongly located in experiences and life story rather than concepts of identity such as values and attributes. Surprisingly the students responded extremely well in closing this gap in the subsequent building rounds.
In the next Workshop I will address this by including more information on the powerpoint slide that frames the first and subsequent activities.
Participants take away a post-it with their perception of a core aspirational external identity. How will this impact on their development of an on-line identity?

Our Aim: To set up and establish a ‘UAL wide’ focus group around ‘Understanding digital literacies at UAL‘. The group will debate and draw up collective ideas about how best to map digital literacies across UAL as a whole with an aim of understanding how UAL communicate art & design specific digital literacy definitions and competencies. http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/10/30/understanding-digital-literacies-at-ual-definitions-and-competencies/

Please see some of the key findings taken from DIAL notes at both meetings, please feel free to add comments:

Definitions and/or competencies

Understanding digital literacies ‘Definitions and competencies’ are they one and the same thing? We found it easier to separate Digital Literacies and Digital Competencies.

Digital Competencies could be seen as identifiably functional ‘hard skills’, easily defined e.g. ‘You can go on training for this, I need to learn this skill, I can do this, I need this, I can’t do this’ (technical knowledge/practices). Some DIAL project examples: Assessing Digital Literacy level of pre-degree students, and in the Things unlimited project.
Digital literacies, could be seen as ‘soft skills’ more agile and harder to define and develop. (Tacit Knowledge/practices) some DIAL Project examples: Online Reflective Practice and in open practice.
Digital literacies and Competencies together, here’s an example of a programme of activities and training focused around developing professional online identities, which addresses digital ‘literacies and competencies’ together. Some DIAL project examples: DIAL/UAL collaboration example and Video presentation skills

Mapping Digital literacies and competencies

As part of the process we hope to debate and define UALs institutional understanding of terms associated with ‘Digital literacies’ within all aspects creative practice, including media literacies, information literacies, digital practice, digital citizenship, online identities, digital/social/cultural competencies, participatory culture, digital attributes, open practice, digital fluency etc. with an aim of publishing an ‘institutional’ evidence base of UAL glossary of terms based on an iterative process of practical, subject and interest specific case study evidence.

An alternative approach to addressing all the different more generic ‘Digital literacies’ listed in the above list would be to look at the DLs as individually specific/unique and constantly agile (so trying to map such DLs in a generic form could prove a ‘messy business’).

How do we map the different levels of DLs?

Levels DLs (these levels DLs become more generic as they grow more general)

Actions:

Arrange follow up meetings at all 6 colleges.

Encourage debate and contribution online

Set up a mind-mapping environment to try and develop the above approach.

Other notes:

Defining DL – a conceptual strategy when you are designing the curriculum. When and how our digital literacy is embedded into the curriculum?

Understand DLs we need; Awareness, Confidence and Relevance

How do I capture that journey? Free mapping software

Grounded theory  – Doug Belshaw – academic reference for this approach Online groundness – the idea of a map rather then a list (field workers)

Ethnographical approach

Develop a framework to understand the issue and articulated them – in order to give people the tool to articulate their needs.

We are developing the means to understand DL in order to implement solutions.

It’s agreed the bottom up approach suits individual needs.

Staff contributions to this forum from:

Thurs 14th Feb 10am - 11am

Chris Follows
Jo Morrison
Hilaire Graham
Mark Wells
Rossella Emanuele

Thurs 7th March 12pm – 1pm

Charlotte Webb
Chris Follows
John Jackson
John Casey (Via Skype)
Rossella Emanuele
Kaye Pryce
Laura North
Nancy Turner (apologies)
Cara Lee Roth (apologies)
Gavin Jenkins (apologies)
Mehreen Talpur (apologies

Confessions

To find out more about RE and KP journey please check future posts as we will be posting a monthly update. http://confessionsofadialcoordinator.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

• This group were generally fairly comfortable already with speaking and videoing themselves. This could be because they were MA students studying entrepreneurship.
• They all found using the Flip camera fine
• The biggest improvement was how the structure of their video pitches improved – this was highlighted in the group’s feedback and in our observations. The elevator pitch training seemed to be very useful in relation to this.
• Confidence also improved. This seemed mainly to do with practice in the practical exercises, repetition of the elevator pitch and having to video themselves. The exercises where the students practiced their pitch and gave each other feedback (using a criticism sandwich) seemed effective for this
• Getting the right distance from the person (whether too close or too far) is a consideration, as some of the sound in some of the videos were too quiet
• Choosing a suitable background too makes a difference to the ambience of the video
• Quite a few of the students filmed in portrait. Perhaps better to do it in landscape due to the fact that video players are landscape, but not a big issue
• Noticed that there could be a possibility that over-training or preparation around the videos could decrease the natural energy that some of the students expressed in their first videos
• The critiquing of the videos worked well, with peer feedback both verbally and written – it was really useful to give participants to be reflective, share feedback and to discuss openly.
• Participants were slightly reluctant to give negative feedback. Encourage students to use the criticism sandwich and make sure they include the constructive criticism in the middle. Perhaps include this on the printed feedback form, eg include one positive thing and one thing that could be improved on.
• Technical issues! To be honest, these plagued us throughout, even though I am pretty comfortable with tech. The Flip cameras were all easy to use. The sound in the main lecture theatre for the first workshop didn’t work and we had to get a technician to fix it, it took quite a long time uploading the videos in the workshop break, and an equally long time getting the video player to work (VLC seemed to be the best option) – if you don’t use video players it is best to familiarise yourself in advance! The worst tech problems happened in the final evaluation workshop while using the large touch screens in the classrooms at High Holborn. The touch screen was pretty inaccurate and it was really hard work loading lots of videos, and trying to flip those recorded in portrait so they were upright. One participant came over to help, and we ended up with virtual scribbles over the screen instead! It ended up with me using my MacBook stood up on its side showing the videos to the students, which was really quite ridiculous. And even then, the sound on some videos was very quiet as they had been taken a bit too far away – the mic on the Flips isn’t particularly powerful. Phew!
• Attendance – we were expecting up to 20 students, but there were only 6 – luckily they were all dedicated and returned for all the workshops and it was easier doing the pilot on a small scale. But scheduling is clearly something important to think about, and the students were in the middle of doing big hand-ins, so the Course Director said it is definitely worth trying to schedule away from any other major activity to encourage attendance
• We could have done it in a single or two workshops, rather than three – that was the feedback from the students, and we agreed
• General staff time – everyone involved was very busy and it’s challenging for everyone to find enough time. Though now a workshop structure is more develop, that won’t be so much of an issue for staff wanting to deliver it
• Equipment – all students opted to use the Flips rather than their mobiles. We had enough for our six students to have one per pair, you could need quite a lot for a larger group
• Some sort of training around technical equipment – given the difficulties we had, I imagine others will do too. So it would be useful to develop guidance around downloading videos (especially if recorded on students smartphones), naming conventions of videos to ensure that they are easy to locate at a later date, basic training or guidance to using video players such as VLC, including how to adjust volume, rotate videos that have been recorded as portrait etc
• We didn’t include uploading videos to YouTube or Vimeo, and then embedding in blogs or websites, so that would be useful to produce or locate guidance on this for students
• We just did one-minute videos without any editing, but video editing would be a useful skill to develop as well

DIAL (Digital Integration into Arts Learning) is in the change business. It’s a cultural change programme comprising of a network of self-identifying communities within UAL. DIAL helps these communities (made up of students and staff) to express and assess their digital literacies and cultivate processes, resources and toolkits, which in turn support the communities’ development and growth.

What is a typical day for a DIAL Coordinator?

KP: Most days, we support Chris and 18 (and counting) self-identifying communities cultivated by the programme. My involvement can range from: answering telephone and email queries, editing and contributing to resources, helping to plan events, writing and responding to posts, research to just serving as a sounding board. I like the nature of my job – the work is challenging and at times demanding, but knowing that I can contact Chris or Rossella when necessary is very reassuring.  I am encouraged to be creative and allowed a fair amount of freedom to perform my duties without being micro-managed on a daily basis. It’s one of the most rewarding job I’ve had – everyday is different!

RE: As we have just started a couple of weeks ago, so far a typical day has been attending meetings with Chris where Kaye and myself have been introduced as new appointed DIAL Coordinators to a number of projects that DIAL is supporting. We met many members of staff across UAL that have proposed and want to organize a project on Digital Literacy and would need DIAL support for realizing it and got a sense of what requirements they need. The overall numbers of projects that DIAL is currently involved with so far are 18th – for details see http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/all-project-groups – we have been introduced to 8.
Here as some:

• POI – Professional Identities
• No name project
• Fred Millar – Lego serious player
• Things Unlimited
• Digital Video Presentation skills
• David Simms questionnaire at LCC
• Drupal will happen soon
• Digital Literacy will also coming up soon

How is the team structured?

We’re a small team headed up by Chris Follows – Project Manager, with an Advisory Board and two DIAL Coordinators, Kaye Pryce (KP) and Rossella Emanuele (RE) in tow.

What were your first impressions of DIAL?

KP: I had no idea what DIAL was about, what my involvement would or could be or what impact it would have on my understanding of digital literacy. After much background reading, talking to Chris and colleagues, I thought, bring it on.

RE: I started the job with some understanding of what DIAL does, as I had already been involved in supporting Chris since September 2012, and had also previous knowledge of the DIAL program because in 2010, when Chris Follows started his research into Digital Literacy I worked with him at Wimbledon. So my first impression was filtered by this knowledge, nevertheless I wasn’t aware of the amount of work that Chris developed since then and the number of projects that were now involved. The expansion of the project has been incredible and I could see also the potential for further expansion though I felt I had quite a bit of catching up to do to get up to speed…

What’s your understanding of digital literacy?

KP: I had a vague idea what it was but found it hard to describe. I am inclined to agree with Josie Fraser, social and educational technologist, Leicester City Council, who said,  “…digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement…its main characteristics [is that]:

it supports and helps develop traditional literacies
it’s a life-long practice
it’s about skills, competencies and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied
it’s about social engagement”.

Ultimately the term can’t be defined easily – it’s significance and meaning is personal, it’s individual. It will represent different things from person to person, from generation to generation, from culture to culture, from country to country and so on.

RE: I think much has already been said about Digital Literacy and we can find various definitions for it and what the concept entails. I tend to think of Digital Literacy as an elastic concept: it doesn’t matter how much one knows about it will always stretch out further and there will always be new areas that challenge ones knowledge. I believe having an attitude to want to learn more about Digital Literacy is essential, as a concept, DL seems to continuously redefining itself. It is a fact that is now embedded in any form of cultural/creative undertaking and/or exchange and more… So we can’t get away from it!

Does the DIAL Coordinator post live up to your expectations?

KP: The job description gave me some indication what I was signing up for but as ever, the reality is different. Much has happened in the programme’s 18-month lifetime. Having to recall projects, names, meetings, deadlines, posts, opinions, incidences and technologies to name but a few – can be daunting. It feels like a Pandora’s Box of information which is as wide as it is deep.

It is really helpful that much of DIAL’s journey is captured online, with new items and contributors being added constantly. I rely on Chris’ knowledge, guidance and delegation – because he has a good handle on what’s what.

Overall, my experience has been a tidal wave of excitement, great interest and intrigue. Whilst I fully know and understand the premise of DIAL, my ability to apply that knowledge and understanding in a timely manner can be easier said than done.

RE: It is early stage to give an informed answer to this question; a proper feedback on the experience would be more accurate by the end of the 6 months. For now is all quite exciting and I am enjoying the work and found most of the projects we have been introduced very interesting. On a practical note it definitely requires taking in a lot of information quite quickly, good time management, ability to clearly identify priorities, as there is lots to do! The communication between myself Chris and Kaye is really quite an important aspect of the job I think, as we all need to be aware of the bigger picture and represent DIAL but at the same time individually taking the lead of some projects mainly to take some workload off Chris shoulders!

What happens post July 2013?

In its current form, the DIAL Project will come to an end. By which time, a final report will be drawn up by Chris, designed to measure the impact and outcomes of the self-identifying communities. Ultimately, DIAL aims to ensure that all self-identifying communities can be autonomous and sustainable in their individual development programmes and use the report findings to secure permanent funding.

Our objective for the DIAL online presentation skills community was to work out ways of developing video presentation skills with students.

Working with Chitra Buckley, the course director of MA Fashion Entrepreneurship at the London College of Fashion, we are aiming to create a workshop that will help students develop their presentation and pitching skills by recording themselves on a video camera doing a one-minute elevator pitch to explain their business idea or project. The pilot took place in the run up to defining the MA Fashion Entrepreneurship students’ final projects and to help in constructing a pitch for their own digital identity.

A wider aim is to provide a workshop outline and supporting materials that others can use to teach these skills to other students.

We are also collaborating with SEE, particularly with Student Development Officer Pei-Chin Tay, who is developing training material on how to make a great video pitch for the SEED Fund, and Speaking Out, a social enterprise that I run to help develop public speaking confidence.

A key part of the project was the collaboration between academic staff and the partner organisations. Chitra was devising a structure for presentation skills as part of her PGCert. We then developed the sessions further, in association with partners such as SEE, in relation to the elevator pitching, and Speaking Out for the exercises to improve presentation confidence and skills, with DIAL providing the digital literacy skills angle. Chitra also facilitated the sessions and developed the feedback sheets. This interaction between the partners was essential to the success of the project.

The following sections describe the series of three workshops that we ran, with the intention that other facilitators can run similar workshops themselves. There are a number of things we learned and things that we’d do differently included!

Preparation

Preparation for the video presentation skills workshop

Workshop 1 – trying out video pitching

Workshop 1, part 1 – filming one minute video pitches without training
Workshop 1, part 2 – watching the video pitches on a big screen

Workshop 2 – video pitch training and practice

Workshop 2, part 1 – training on how to do a video elevator pitch
Workshop 2, part 2 – exercises to practice video presentations

Workshop 3 – peer feedback 

Workshop 3 – Peer feedback on the before and after videos

The videos – before and after

[To come]

Lessons learned

Video presentation skills workshop – lessons learned

More details about the online presentation skills project and the project plan.

Michael and Fred staff form the CSM Performance Design and Practice subject area have confirmed the dates which fit into their time-tables, we are now starting to use these dates to plan the training/activities and workshops as we discussed.

• Chrissy & Learn IT- Twitter – Blogging/wordpress – Social – Web/tools development – Basic code – Privacy – open source – drupal ??
• Katie & SEE – OWN-IT/copyright IPR (Silvia Baumgart ) – employer engagement – business/industry survey/participant call out – ??
• Chris & DIAL – In house platforms – external platforms – open source/drupal web development – Creative commons – presence/physical and virtual – Ego – sharing online

CHALLENGE: The project is about identifying challenges for staff as much as for students, we are trying to fit this into a very busy and already over stretched course and team schedule. Not all course staff during term time will be able to participate in this project or come to the training sessions because most staff contracted time is already filled with teaching and admin. Offering project activities/training to the all staff and students is out of the scope of this project as it could get very complicated.

ACTION: We hope by involving two key staff members (who have offered their time) together with the project team, we hope to develop some resources to share online with other staff and students from the course and beyond.

As part of the online identities work and other DIAL workshops we would like to use the lego serious play in workshops and training sessions, Identified by Fred and supported by Alison James. See Fred’s blog post here – http://csmdigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/11/27/this-is-the-real-me-fredmeller/

We aim to develop and integrate pathways similar to this DIAL project Prototype thing: (this is a library specific template example, the aim is to provide a resource that filters information with relevant focus) we would adapt it for more generic use on process.arts.

Open source tools for MOOCS

We have been using a few true open source tools at UAL (Drupal, Moodle and Mahara). We are looking at using process.arts for the MOOC pilot as this currently offers the functionality and environment we need and is easily adaptable for small changes. We have started a drupal/open source community of practice at UAL to support open source web development initiatives – http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/drupal-ual .

Lots of students and staff have never heard of open source software development tools, so there can be a greater dependance on overpriced commercial alternatives, not sustainable in the long term.

The in-house open source/drupal community aims to empower web-users to become web-makers which supports sustainable and agile development of these new tools. We’ve been training/employing our staff and students as our drupal developers for process.arts (an experienced in-house developer is essential in this mix, fortunately we had one) – you can read more in this report - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/score-fellowship-final-report-chris-follows  

Servers are the primary contentious issue  in my opinion and seems to be the problem for most uk colleges that their in-house IT set ups are not really in tune with the technological innovation needs of those who are pushing the boundaries of the ‘institution’.

Examples of one experience can be seen here:

Process.arts overview and context – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/processarts-overview-and-context-1st-draft

Conflict and Media – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/nam-web-development-overview-and-update-30042012

Unless things change it may be best to look outside the institution in future, there are lots of commercial server setups to choose from, but ideally there is a lot to be gained from using in house server provision but the negatives far out way the positives at the moment, this could, in the long term, be a huge problem for universities who are so far behind the game that they have no other option than to use a commercial alternative/channels as primary instead of in-house as primary. This can be seen in rich media and community networks. I talk a bit more about this here - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/itunes-ual and here - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/have-we-right-balance-between-open-education-and-commercial-social-media   

Project Aim: The project will identify and develop specific digital literacies/hard and soft skills (Presentation/Relational skills see image) in maintaining professional online identities with the aim of enhancing student/graduate employability and industry readiness. The project will focus on developing independence and confidence in web development, online professional practice, open source use, participatory/online communities and digital citizenship.

The first question asked by the course director to the students was; ‘is this a useful, worth while project, are you interested’? There was a clear and positive agreement this was very welcome.

Identity/practice communication and your online identities

The Professional Online Identities project is essentially about communication, how we communicate and consume data, data that communicates who we are and what we do. It was important to introduce this project physically face to face with the students and staff at CSM, the physical element of this project has to be remembered and acknowledged as important as the digital/virtual, understanding this balance in online communication is fundamental to its success  we will be using Lego serious play early in this project.

I started the presentation by asking if anyone objected to me taking a photo f the group to be posted online, I gave people the opportunity to look away or let me know if they did not want to be in photo if they wanted (no one objected).  This helped kick off this session as the simple act of taking a group photo, in this context highlights a few questions about the rules of the web, what are the rules or the digital etiquette of the web and who makes these rules and which do we follow? I obtained permission but should I have requested they sign a more formal release form? This would take time and maybe be too formal. My photography skills are not the greatest as you can see and this also brings up the question of quality, do we trust others to represent us? We had an interesting discussion at DIALs recent Improving Your Prospects through Online Profiles panel discussion where the question of course identity was raised as a concern for some of UALs course leaders/directors in terms of students adding their work to Showtime http://showtime.arts.ac.uk/ , the University’s free online platform where graduates can present their work and creative practice. Some course directors were concerned about having the ‘right’ students work being associated with their course, e.g. they didn’t want the poorer work to be directly/publicly associated to their course in this ‘open’ way.

Then how do we manage our Professional Online Identities (POI), especially if others are adding and contributing to our POI. This is particularly the case in the creative industries sector where POIs are important to practice, your practice may be discussed, commented on by anyone and/or media or industry may write about you and your work. If you are actively updating and communicating your practice online does this make it easier to communicate or not?

Is there a balance we need to explore between how we engage, add and contribute to/with our POI:

1. Do we do nothing about your POI (be as anonymous as possible, don’t engage), there are three aspects to this to consider (less control over your POI and digital footprint)

1. I don’t want to be online in anyway. I want to be anonymous!

2. I don’t have the skills to engage or create a POI

3. I’m too busy to be online, happy to let others write about or represent me or create my POI e.g. (the public, agents, collectors, employers, fans, media, galleries etc.)

1. And/or actively engage and create our POI, fully engage. (More control over your POI and digital footprint)

We don’t have the answers to these questions and this project aims to explore these issues and more. We hope to ask many questions and work them out together over the next few months.

Students were asked if interested in this project to express an interest by filling out this form, they were asked to, ‘Identify which one of the 4 self-selecting groups you feel you relate to you’ 90% of the group responded instantly with an expression of interest:

Unaware – not familiar with professional online identities. I am interested to find out more or I don’t want online identities

Aware – familiar with professional online identities but not in professional practice and/or not sure about its relevance

Starter – Starting to practice with professional online identities, still lots to learn, would like to learn more

Confident practitioner – developing professional online identities daily and supporting others

Which hard and soft skills do we need?

Students were also asked in the survey which direction this project should take, ‘where should this project be focusing in terms of developing support, advice, research and training?

To date DIAL have identified the following areas and these were given as suggestions, students expressed an interest in all the following areas:

After the session as I was leaving I saw this piece of work in the CSM foyer, must be a sign! Central Banner by Eva Yarza Hilario.

There was an interesting mix of Staff, students, PhD, MA students and researchers. its not the first social media event I’ve been to at UAL and I’ve also had lots of conversations with individuals throughout UAL. At the end of this session the group talked about forming a LCF/UAL social media group, there was no real conclusion for how we could do this so through DIAL I offered to create a social media group on process.arts to try and bring all these different social media groups together please see and contribute to the new Social Media at UAL group here – http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/social-media-ual

Original ad below - http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/event/social-media-workshops/

Attention social media researchers, MA and PhD students, from across UAL are invited to take part in a lively workshop with the objective being to form a UAL group specialising in social media.

With increasing social media application and interest in academic and business, this workshop will consider the following questions:

• What is social media to you?
• Which social media platforms are you researching?
• Which platforms do you find most relevant in art and design?
• Where social media is useful in the research process.

There will be a presentation from Cemanthe Harries founder of New Media Angels, who provides social media training to businesses. www.newmediaangels.com/ will provide a non-academic outlook on the subject addressing the differences she has found between traditional advertising and social media advertising.

Claire Tomlins (PhD, CSM, 2010) will talk on where social media is being applied in corporate branding.

Researchers will present their research interests and topic for 5 minutes.

There will then be an hour of lively discussion on key subject areas found within the first hour of presentations.

Students, staff and researchers from across the University are welcome, however space is limited to 25 places. Please RSVP to Luella Allen (l.allen@fashion.arts.ac.uk)

CCAD students in the canteen

Following the success of the DIAL student surveys (Six students + Six colleges) the DIAL project would like to identify and work with a group of six students (ongoing) one students from each college. The student researchers will work with DIAL as a student DIAL presence in each college to research and gather opinion and feedback from staff and students ? DIAL would like feedback on topics related to the DIAL objectives and active, ongoing, new and emerging DIAL projects.

Six students will be paid between four to six hours weekly (for a short period up to 2 to 3 months each time) through artstemps. The DIALogue digital researchers would feed back their findings weekly via post and comments on all the DIAL baseline blogs and take part in regular ‘DIAL operational group’ meetings.

If you are interested in being a Student DIALogue digital researcher please email Chris Follows – c.follows@arts.ac.uk . Please say why you’d be interested in being a ‘Student DIALogue digital researcher’ and which college you would be interested in taking part, does not have to be the college your studying at ?

In this video we walk through the process of joining my.blog.arts and joining group blogs like the DIAL UAL baseline blogs – http://ualdigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Baseline links – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/digital-baseline-links/

Call for expressions of interest for DIAL small projects, support & case studies

UAL’s Digital Integration into Arts Learning (DIAL) project aims to carry out a small number of staff and student led projects and case studies, which will explore the pace of technological change and its impact on the day-to-day practices.

See more here – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/expressions-of-interest/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Download slides here – http://www.slideshare.net/ProcessArts/tech-away-day

Links here – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/12/04/dial-project-highlight-report-291112/

DIAL Project Highlights This Period

DIAL Project Highlights This Period

Matters arising included Sharing E-learning Practice. Really important and great to hear there is an active call out for this , it also gave DIAL the opportunity to share our project perspectives on:

How can we encourage more sharing online with a wider variety of participants ? May of the projects and activities at UAL are not being communicated as efficiently as they could. DIAL mentioned although DIAL have a very active online presence and dissemination its still difficult to get the message out to a wider audience. It was noted by Charlotte Webb who was one of the panel of six speakers who discussed their experiences of creating online identities, using social media and specialist networks, and being a digital citizen. Charlotte said this presentation format ‘road show’ style events were a great way of communicating projects, tools and e-learning concepts and to get quality feedback from staff and students.

The  ‘Delivery of technical resource information online‘ highlighting sustainable development methods for encouraging staff in ‘being online’ (sometimes with resistance and for the first time). DIAL have explored how staff take ownership of presenting their resource/course areas key information online and how this can enhance CPD and provide new pathways into future e-learning engagement.

Jo Morrison presented an update on the CSM Digital Present a new blog supporting digital literacy at CSM. This blog is a great source of college led/gernerated information and is and will be a very useful case study and example of best practice in addressing and exploring digital literacy in an embed and sustainable way in colleges. Lots of Jo’s case studies and experience will help inform our DIAL led UAL wide focus group meeting starting in January exploring  UAL specific issues around ‘Understanding digital literacies at UAL definitions and competencies‘. The group aims to debate and draw up collective ideas about how best to map digital literacies across UAL as a whole with an aim of understanding how UAL communicate art specific digital literacy definitions/ideas and competencies.

We hope to feedback early findings from this focus group at future E-Learning Strategy Group meetings.

Post debate we have now set up this forum aims to encourage and continue the lively and constructive debate and presentations which took place at LCC on 15/11/2012 part of UALs enterprise week, see more about this event here – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/improving-your-prospects-through-online-profiles

Some of the key takeaway points based on responses from the students in the audience, we’ve created the following as forum topics :

Improve online visibility

Better interaction with you online visitors

Understanding online copyright and IP issues

How to build your own online spaces and networks

Protecting personal data and privacy online

Date: 15 November 2012 Time: 3pm – 5pm Location: Street Lecture Theatre, LCC, SE1 6SB

Event details: #EW_UAL
A panel of speakers will discuss and debate these questions and share their experiences of creating online identities, using social media and specialist networks, and being a digital citizen.

How the debate be structured?
3 pm	Introduction and event context Chris Follows – See presentation Short URL – http://goo.gl/M15Xh
3:10	Debate 1: Chair: Clare KennedyPresentation of practice (What you’ve done), work and profile, UAL tools and social media
3:15	Presentation 1: See presentation short URL – http://goo.gl/Bf9I6Clare Kennedy is a member of the UAL Digital Team which created Showtime [linking to http://showtime.arts.ac.uk/ ], the University’s free online platform where graduates can present their work and creative practice. Showtime has evolved over the past four years from an online representation of the UAL degree shows into a platform which is viewed as a directory of talent by gallerists, fashion houses and other creative industry insiders.
3:20	Quick questions
3:25	Presentation 2: See presentation- short URL – http://goo.gl/VLUvOAdam Watling Since joining LCF as Graduate Employment Officer, Adam has forged key relationships with influential fashion industry brands including ASOS, Arcadia, Kurt Geiger, Adidas, H&M and Jaeger, to name but a few. Through LCF’s online platform First Move, Adam has assisted graduates seeking work in many roles including Design, Buying, Merchandising, Fashion PR, Marketing and Journalism as well as other key roles within the industry.
3:30	Quick questions
3:35	Presentation 3: See presentation short URL – short URL – http://goo.gl/3rvDECharlotte Webb is an artist and PhD student at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her PhD title is ‘Working with other others: artistic production and agency in a post-user environment’. She will talk about her online artistic identity as ‘Otheragent’, and her interest in automated online entities such as Twitter bots. http://www.otheragents.net/ http://otheragents.tumblr.com/
3:40	Quick questions
3:45	General Debate
4 pm	Debate 2: Chair Chris Follows Relational identity (what you do); communicating practice, knowledge, skills and specialism online, how do we interact, participate and build professional profiles/identities online?
4:05	Presentation 4: See presentation short URL – http://goo.gl/0J1O4Chris Follows joined the University of the Arts London UAL in 2003 and since 2007 has been researching and developing open educational practice and open content communities.  Chris is the DIAL project manager ‘Digital Integration Into Arts Learning’ part of the JISC UK Developing digital literacies programme. Chris has recently completed a SCORE fellowship at the Open University and is the initiator of process.arts.ac.uk. http://process.arts.ac.uk/users/cfollows
4:10	Quick questions
4:15	Presentation 5: See presentation short URL – http://goo.gl/oLmrvJohn Jackson: John is an Educational Developer with a particular interest in digital platforms and practices, who has also worked as a business adviser (with a focus on eBusiness) in the earlier days of the internet. He is currently involved in a variety of projects and maintains a blog at http://elearning.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
4:20	Quick questions
4:25	Presentation 6: See presentationshort URL – http://goo.gl/7yRHLLuke Whitehead joined London College of Communications in September 2012 as Publicity and Social Media Co-ordinator. Previously he has worked on Digital and Social Media strategies for major UK charities including the NSPCC and Macmillan Cancer Support. He is fascinated by the humanising potential of digital and the role social media has in creating digital identities for individuals and organisations.
4:30	Quick questions
4:35	General Debate and final thoughts.
5 pm	End but please continue the debate by adding your comments to this debate forum and contribute to our resource cluster of videos, images and text.

Invited guest audience members

Lucy Brown | Creative & Cultural Skills representitive | http://ccskills.org.uk/

Anna McAndrew | UAL alumni | Visual artist and musician studying Education at Goldsmiths | My self directed education | http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/my-self-directed-education.

For further details on DIAL’s new project that explores these issues, visit – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/developing-professional-online-identities-project-detailsDate: Thursday 15 November 2012

Time: 3pm – 5pm

Location: Podium Lecture Theatre, LCC, Elephant & Castle, SE1 6SB

Cost: Free, booking essential

SEE will be hosting the fourth Creative Enterprise Awards at University of the Arts London as part of Enterprise Week 2012, to celebrate the enterprising activity of current students and recent graduates* (*Graduated no earlier than 2009)

The Creative Enterprise Awards 2012 are kindly sponsored by Natwest.

There are 6 categories of Awards:

• Freelancer (sponsored by ArtsTemps)
• New Business (sponsored by Natwest)
• Enterprising Project (sponsored by UAL Short Courses)
• Ethical or Social Enterprise (sponsored by Untld)
• Digital (sponsored by DIAL)
• International (sponsored by the Internation Centre)

APPLICATIONS FOR 2012 ARE NOW CLOSED – VIEW THE SHORTLIST HERE

Duna Sabri

October 2012

Introduction

This report evaluates the progress of four projects within the JISC-funded UAL Project DIAL (Digital Integration into Arts Learning).   This two year project is coming up to the end of its first year of operation.  This report offers a formative evaluation, in line with JISC guidance on project evaluation.

DIAL was conceived as a network of:

This evaluation (Report for year 1 – final) focused on 4 pilot project communities that were established in the first year:

Open educational resources community – led by Chris Follows and John Casey

Information literacies among library staff  – led by Jessica Crilly

Presentation skills among student entrepreneurs  – led by Laura North

 Online reflective practice for participants of the PG Cert in Academic Practice in Art,  Design and Communication – led by Lindsay Jordan

 The data sets for the evaluation of each of the above projects comprised:

1. An initial discussion about the aims of the project during January 2012 from which notes were produced by the researcher and in some in cases amended by the project leaders.
2. A follow up interview with project leaders in July 2012 which was recorded and transcribed.
3. Feedback from community members about the aspect of digital literacy that each project addressed.  This was collected and analysed by project leaders for the purposes of their own projects, and then, used for comparative purposes by the researcher.

The purpose of the initial discussions was to gain an understanding of project goals, the boundaries of the community to which they related, and the extent to which an assessment of skills and confidence levels had already been undertaken; and to identify a strategy for evaluation.  The follow-up interviews took the notes from the first discussion as their starting point and sought to understand what processes had been put in place to support development, what had been achieved, and what evidence was available in the form of feedback from community members.  To differing extents, in each case a transition had taken place in which project leaders’ conceptions of their goals had shifted and accordingly their processes for development, and the interviews often included a discussion about how evaluation strategies could be re-configured as well.

JISC evaluation guidance suggests the following questions to guide evaluation:

1. What have we done/built/achieved, to what quality and how efficiently?
2. What has been learned or confirmed through development activities?
3. How has the learning been acted on and fed back into decision-making?

The first two to of these questions are addressed in the course of this report, and it is intended that the discussion of this report, is a contribution to ‘feeding back into decision-making’.  The report incorporates comments from the project leaders as a first step in this process.  In addition to addressing these questions, this report attempts to place these four DIAL projects in a broader institutional context.

Initial observations about the four pilot projects

The aspirations for each of the projects have their roots in group leaders’ reflections on their own roles and emerged from long-standing challenges that they wanted to tackle, and perhaps up to then had not had the time or resources to attend to them.  The issues they wanted to tackle could not be dealt with in a piece-meal day-to-day way but, they felt, would benefit from an injection of attention and resource that DIAL was to bring.  However, the resourcing of the projects, with one exception, relied exclusively on the goodwill and enthusiasm of the project leaders and, furthermore, the goodwill and enthusiasm that they were expected to generate among those that they sought to engage in their project community.

There was an affective dimension to all the projects that was related to the particular kind of digital literacy that they sought to develop.  The relationship between the affective and the technological varied from project to project.  For example, online reflection dealt with teachers’ fear of learning in public, open access resources touched on the discomfort of making curricular resources public, and presentation skills development addressed anxieties relating to presenting oneself.

All of the projects were aiming to make some use of the relationships between different members of their target communities.  Some planned to get more literate/confident members to work with less literate/confident members, others aimed to bring together opposing views, staff working on similar courses from different colleges, or students from different cohorts.  The configurations varied depending on how the projects defined their particular hurdles.

How did the projects develop between January and July 2012?

In this section I take each project in turn and summarise the transition from initial aspirations to engagement with project communities.

Project 1: Open Educational Resources

The aim of this project is to expand the number of people who produce open educational resources (OER) and upload them to Arts Learning and Teaching Online (ALTO).  John and Chris, the project leaders, wanted to generate debate about OER that would address fears, misconceptions and aspirations in relation to OER.  They also aimed to review what had already been achieved in ALTO and ALTO UK with a view to informing their strategies for generating debate and awareness.

The first of these objectives was pursued through the conduct of focus groups with UAL staff in colleges.  These were conducted at CSM, LCF, Chelsea and Wimbledon.  Other significant discussions were held in other fora, notably at the Academic Leaders’ Forum, and on an impromptu basis in other settings.  The focus groups were exploratory and aimed to develop an understanding the range of meanings and responses that participants  attached to OER.

The data from these discussions resulted in the creation of a typology of awareness and engagement in OER.  This is intended for use as a diagnostic tool that allows individuals to see where they are in context – it allows them to recognise that there are different stages of engagement and that a period, sometimes a long period, of experimentation, is part of that.

There were also intentions to gain an overview through a systematic analysis of current users of ALTO but this was not carried out: partly through lack of time and possibly because it was not clear how such an analysis could be used.

In parallel with the planned activities in relation to this OER project two related developments promoted the systematic development of OER: the first was that Chris and John contributed to the development of a module on OER for UAL’s PG Cert; and the second was that Process Arts became a UAL service supported by the e-learning team.

Project 2: Information literacies among library staff

This project aimed to improve digital literacy among library staff as a precursor to developing library staff’s capacity to help students develop their digital information skills, such as, for example, evaluating online resources.  There were two inter-linked challenges facing this project: first to define the community of library staff that would participate in the project, and the second was to sustain the ambitious project activities with limited resources.  The project was originally led by David Bracegirdle as well as Jessia Crilly, but David withdrew when he took on new responsibilities.

Initially the project aimed to produce a resource inspired by the ‘twenty-three things’ format (such as that produced for researchers at the University of Huddersfield) and developed it into ‘unlimited things’.  Early on in the project, the two leaders identified that they did not know enough about the level and extent of digital literacy among library staff.  With this in mind, they initiated a discussion on Process-Arts which attracted a limited number of contributions – 11- but in excess of 900 viewings.  The discussion was about what tools individuals used, how they saw their levels of expertise, what they wanted to develop, and what they perceived to be the barriers.   In addition, they commissioned a survey of library staff at a Library Services Conference which drew 52 responses and appears to offer a reasonable overview.  At the time of writing it is not clear how representative this sample is of library staff as a whole.  Whilst some follow-up work may be needed to establish whether particular sub-groups may be under-represented, the survey seems at last to have established some characteristics of the target community for this project which might then form the basis of the design of ‘unlimited things’.

Project 3: Presentation skills among student entrepreneurs

The purpose of this project was firmly rooted in a survey of 160 students which was undertaken as part of a Teaching and Professional Development Fellowship.  The evidence from this survey suggested that there was both a need for art and design students to present in particular contexts and that they tended to find ‘nervewracking’ the experience of being filmed while speaking.  The idea of asking students to _develop a one-minute video pitch to present themselves or their project to potential clients, investors or a wider audience arose in collaboration with a lecturer, Chitra Buckley, who taught postgraduate students on the MA Fashion Entrepreneurship course. The project combined presentation skills development with digital literacy, both of which were relevant to the work of SEE.

The project defined its community as the students taking part in the MA course, but there was also a more general awareness of a wider group of students from other courses who could also benefit, and a sense that ways of working were being trialled and explored with a view to replicating equivalent experiences in other course contexts. With this in mind resources are being developed, including a video and workshop descriptions, in order to help other staff deliver similar workshops.

A series of three workshops was devised in collaboration with Chitra which six students attended. This revolved around alternating experiences of hands-on practice of recording one-minute pitches, and receiving peer feedback on the results.  Whilst there were numerous logistical difficulties, the project design included two data-sets of evaluation: the students’ perceptions of the experience and the students’ written feedback to each other about their presentations.  The first indicated that students quite often got over feelings of embarrassment, were intrigued by the process and threw themselves into the experimentation.   The second data-set indicated they had observed that the content and structure of the video pitches had improved.  It also revealed a great deal of potential for helping students to articulate and debate what would constitute a ‘good’ one-minute pitch in their particular context.

Project 4: Online reflective practice for participants of PG Cert in Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication

This project shared with the presentation skills project an aspiration to help its community members to overcome an affective dimension of digital literacy.  The premise of this project was that ‘learning openly’ has intrinsic value for individuals and promoted collaboration and social learning.  At first the community was defined as all those engaging in online reflective practice who could be accessed through an already planned survey of blog-users.  The community definition shifted to the group of staff who were undertaking two core modules on the PG Cert in Academic Practice.  The line of questioning also shifted from being directly focused on the affective dimension of open online reflection to being more holistic, thus allowing Lindsay to situate the affective dimension in a broader context of other aspects of personal motivation and social contexts.

This group was surveyed about two tasks: the first was blogging monthly about set readings and providing peer feedback in small groups about other students’ blogs; the second was the experience of producing a short video encapsulating the conclusions of their teaching development projects.  The first survey attracted 24 responses and the second 17.  It is important to note that as well as in-depth feedback from these participants, Lindsay’s own interpretations of her own and the students’ experiences form an important part of the data for this project.

Anxieties about the openness of online reflection seemed to have dissipated and given way to larger concerns about such issues as technical know-how, the relative contributions of group members, and the difficulties of finding time to do the work.  In response to the question ‘how do you think this aspect of the course changed your perceptions of online learning?’ an interesting theme emerged relating to the degree of dissonance that participants perceived between the activity of online blogging and their learning.  It seemed that where online blogging did not relate to participants’ personal or professional goals, the blog was seen as ‘more of a repository than an aspect of online learning’.  For another participant, a move to a new job was closely related to the insights gained through the experience of blogging: for example this participant was able to situate blogging as a register of discourse somewhere between academic writing and informal communication.  Some recounted their efforts to overcome the dissonance between their experience of the technology and their learning.  What seemed to characterise these accounts was a close observation of the distinctiveness of the exercise: the potential for immediacy and the impact of delay between responses; and the challenge of finding one’s ‘voice’ in a new medium with its own conventions and structures.  There was also a range of experiences of the relationship between online and face-to-face communication within the small groups: face-to-face communication was most often perceived as a means of facilitating online communication, for some an essential pre-requisite.  Finally, there were explorations of the range of media that could be integrated into blog-posts, though this potential wasn’t fully explored by all who found it difficult to rely exclusively on the written word.

Some comparative features of the projects: language, institutional contexts and capacities to sustain development

The previous section has given an overview of the DIAL projects within their own terms of reference.  This section attempts to draw out some comparative features of the projects: similarities and variations which be suggestive of guidance for the initiation or development of other DIAL project communities; and may illuminate how the original aim of DIAL is working in practice.   These points are intended as a starting point for discussion among current and future DIAL participants rather than as a definitive analysis.  Furthermore, I have not sought to specify ‘recommendations’ as these can be more appropriately formulated as a result of discussions among DIAL participants.

1. The relationship between project leaders’ ‘day jobs’ and their DIAL community project varied.  Some were able to integrate projects into their existing work and into existing relationships with others. For example, Lindsay working with students on PG Cert was able to integrate the project both in terms of its substance and in terms of drawing on existing formal relationships with her students.  In contrast Laura reached across institutional boundaries to form a new relationship with a lecturer who shared a common interest, stepping both outside her job role and usual network of relationships.  Both are desirable models because they developed awareness and use of particular technologies and were conceptually transformative.  However, their different structures have different implications for resourcing and sustenance over the longer term.
2. For all the project leaders, as for the communities they sought to engage, prioritising the work of developing digital literacy was a perennial challenge.  The expectation that work on these projects could be sustained and systematic and whilst fitting alongside existing full-time jobs resulted in some inefficiencies.  There is some evidence that this expectation results in the exclusion of all but the most passionately committed to the development of digital literacies.  Beyond the four projects that this report focuses on, there have been other potential start-ups which fell by the wayside.  Worthwhile projects were identified in January, and planning meetings took place, commitments were undertake, only to find that subsequent correspondence went unanswered.
3. Related to the challenge set out in the previous point is another, that of sustaining a cumulative process of development within each community project and in DIAL as a whole.  Because time allocation to the project can be so piecemeal and scarce for individuals it was difficult, at times, to logically connect multiple data sets, or to make time to analyse one data set before going on to collect the next.  There is a need to follow through a process of inquiry: deciding on a question, collecting data, analysing and drawing conclusions from it before going on to collect more data or producing material.
4. An area of expertise that some project leaders wished to develop was that of analysing data.  The challenge they faced was twofold: first they lacked experience of systematic data analysis.  This meant that they had limited awareness of the strategies open to them for analysis and were unable to foresee their options at the point of choosing samples and data collection methods.  The second challenge was of being of being close to the data, often operating within the same context as their respondents, and therefore not necessarily problematizing the familiar.
5. There was necessarily a mix between opportunistic developmental processes and more systematic and strategic approaches.  It was not always clear whether the latter provided a context for the former or how the two related to each other.  To an uninformed outside observer initiatives can therefore appear somewhat incidental.
6. Allied to the previous point is a larger issue of structural presentation and communication beyond DIAL’s immediate interlocutors within UAL and beyond JISC.  There is a tendency to assume a shared understanding of terminology and of decisions to change use: for example ‘open educational resources’ have at different times been called ‘open education’ and ‘open resources’.  Alongside there are the acronyms SCORE and ALTO which is also referred to as a file-store.  As well as DIAL itself, each community project has its own title.  To the uninitiated it is difficult to work out both what the terminology means and how the different elements relate to each other.
7. It takes some time to realise that the proliferation of acronyms is rooted in the history of successive grant applications, each with their own title.  Whilst there is continuity and coherence in the developmental work that has taken place, the accumulation of acronyms gives the impression of disparate initiatives, unrelated to one another.
8. Finally, there was a growing feeling among project leaders that DIAL’s aim to produce ‘resources’ was worth exploring.  Among some there was a transition from seeing resources as handbooks or hand-outs towards seeing them as primarily residing within the new awareness and expertise of their communities, whilst also finding expression in certain online artefacts and practices.   This is reminiscent of the last of the common characteristics of the DIAL projects: their aspiration of making use of the differing levels of expertise within their target communities.  This remains an area of potential development in the forthcoming year.

Reference

JISC e-learning and project evaluation http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/evaluation.aspx

DIAL are address Digital literacies in its own way (sustainable community networks) this is not to say this is the only way or that we can obtain generalised definitions from general text book/web pages etc. Digital literacy means many things to many people, it is unique to individuals, groups, courses and colleges. Looking into narrower definition through research and case studies would be beneficial.

We have arranged two kick off meetings:

Thurs 14th Feb 10am - 11am (at High Holborn room TBC)

Thurs 7th March 12pm – 1pm  (at High Holborn room TBC)

Aim: To set up and establish a UAL focus group around ‘Understanding digital literacies at UAL definitions and competencies‘ The group would debate and draw up collective ideas about how best to map digital literacies across UAL as a whole with an aim of understanding how UAL communicate art specific digital literacy definitions/ideas and competencies. http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/10/30/understanding-digital-literacies-at-ual-definitions-and-competencies/

Please send these dates out to others who you think may be interested in these or future meetings. Also please add your ideas and comments to this post before we meet. If you’d like to be involved in these and/or future meeting please add a comment or email c.follows@arts.ac.uk

LOCAL COLLEGE MEETINGS

We’d like to arrange some college meetings, If you’d like to suggest a date and a venue we can start to arrange this with you?

CSM – To be confirmed

CCW – To be confirmed

LCC – To be confirmed

LCF - To be confirmed

In feedback from JISC they agree with our previous summary (interim report May 2012) that DIAL is a change programme (that we identified in the last interim report) rather than a project, this is the case with most institutional change projects and it is good to recognise this and the challenge that still exists to measure impact and outcomes across the institution. DIAL would like to try and formalise this finding as a way of looking for UAL long term funding?

The group will draw from existing digital literacy initiatives and from the JISC digital digital literacies programme findings – DL conceptual frameworks  – http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/46601840/DL%20conceptual%20frameworks  We would also like  to set up a sub group of this to address the sector skills and competencies needs.

See all-in-one digital literacy blog activity at:
http://www.netvibes.com/dialproject#UAL_digital_literacies

As part of the process we hope to debate and define UALs institutional understanding of terms associated with ‘Digital literacies’ within all aspects creative practice, including media literacies, information literacies, digital practice, digital citizenship, online identities, digital/social/cultural competencies, participatory culture, digital attributes, open practice, digital fluency etc. with an aim of publishing an ‘institutional’ evidence base of UAL glossary of terms based on an iterative process of practical, subject and interest specific case study evidence.

Also see:

Personal digital devices: researching learning – http://digitalpresent.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/11/15/personal-digital-devices-and-learning-insights/

Digital literacy within arts and design education? – http://digitalpresent.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/11/06/digital-literacy-within-arts-and-design-education/

Digital Literacy – http://digitalpresent.myblog.arts.ac.uk/digital-literacy/

POST UPDATED 31 Jan 2012

DIALs primary objective was to avoid the development of a digital literacy dependency framework but to support the development of a sustainable independent framework consisting of grass root mentors and communities, who develop, lead, manage and provide ongoing guidance to their digital literacy support networks. As the DIAL project becomes increasingly embedded and time dependent its relevance increases and communicating DIALs concept will be a key factor of its success.

Some key risks were identified at the very beginning of the DIAL project in our Risk Analysis – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/02/16/risk-analysis/

Lack of engagement at course level from course leaders: Face to face support and engagement, senior management support may prove critical

Lack of stakeholder participation: Addressed by specifying requirements and paying for time spent on project.

Managing expectations project scope met: Define at early stage what is in and out of scope

How can DIAL continue to encourage engagement and participation but also manage expectation and maintain the capacity to support sustainable growth?

Throughout the first year DIAL have been running at full capacity; laying the foundations, supporting the pilot project groups, fielding interest and pushing the institutional agenda for digital literacies at a senior management and strategic level. From an early start DIAL have highlighted the need for a digital initiative like DIAL, maybe larger digital programme an official UAL digital programme to really succeed.

DIAL are really pleased to see the development of the new UAL digital Life programme which aims to bring together many of UALs digital initiatives under one umbrella in order to deliver an inspirational digital experience. With the DIAL project at its heart; without digital literacy who will use the tools and services that many of the projects in digital life will deliver? ­ Read more here.

Image 1 above: Outline Digital Life Scope (i.e. there are more projects and areas within Digital Life)

What DIAL found in terms of UALs 6 college wide engagement and how the new digital life programme can support DIAL.

Looking through DIALs dissemination list we can see DIAL has been actively engaged across all stakeholders senior management, college, staff, student, service/department HE sector and sector bodies although DIAL are lacking direct employer engagement. In terms of colleges CSM have had a majority of the engagement, followed by LCF. This could be down to a few factors, one is that the other colleges or specific key individuals have not heard of DIAL, therefore DIAL need to be more proactive in the other colleges. And/or that there are specific staff colleges who are more pro active than others for example: a new project at CSM includes a whole course/year aligned project which only happened because of only one single academic leader out of a room of 50 UAL academic leaders forum who were offered DIAL support, only one who self identified themselves as needing help, took up DIALs request for help and support from DIAL. The academic leader persisted and followed up DIALs request and subsequently involved his course team and we are together developing a significant DIAL project collaboration. No other academic leaders followed up in this way on DIALs offer of support?

UP TO DATE LIST of DIAL projects: Active, ongoing, new and emerging HERE

CSM & LCF have shown a very pro-active approach to addressing, leading and following up digital literacies engagement with DIAL. I have had meetings with key staff who seem to be are driving or who are heavily involved in college digital agendas, strategies and progressive digital practice, not just digital infrastructure but practice and culture. Key and actively engaged DIAL contacts include:

London College of Fashion (LCF)

College contacts: Gavin Jenkins (Digital competencies)

• Video presentation skills: Laura North (DIAL & SEE)‎ and Chitra Buckley (Video presentation skills) and Oliver Furlong and Gabriela Daniels (learning video research)

Central Saint Martins (CSM)

College contacts: Jo Morrison (Digital present)

• Professional Online Identities: Fred Meller and Michael Spencer (Professional Online Identities) other potential key contacts include:

• Adam Thorpe: Project 2. Using process.arts (or similar) to facilitate peer mentoring and coaching linked to developing an eco-system for social enterprise at UAL. UAL DESIS Lab has been working with UAL Enterprise to access funding and support for staff and students seeking to establish social enterprises from the Unlimited HE Support Programme – see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2012/name,75028,en.html . One of the initiatives that we would like to action is the creation of a peer to peer mentoring and coaching network to support UAL staff and students in development of their social enterprises. Having heard Chris Follows presenting the process.arts OER at the e-learning we would like to know if CLTAD could facilitate the inclusion of this functionality within the process.arts site.

The CSM and LCF models are great examples of good practice, how do we encourage other colleges to do the same? DIAL have yet to fully identify and engage with the other colleges to the same extent as CSM and LCF and would like to address this in year two. WE encourage members of these colleges to engage in the DIAL networks.

Currently DIAL is currently at capacity in terms of project support, but we are continuing to engage with colleges, individuals and projects and are inviting expressions of interest although we may need to seek more funding and support from UAL to meet further demand.

In year one we identified that DIAL requires extra support and in response are in the process of appointing two 6-month DIAL coordinator positions to support the project. DIAL have also revised its year 2 objectives by reducing and also including combined institutional objectives/goals, these can only be met in realistic terms in collaboration with UAL and the new UAL digital Life programme involvement.

Even with these changes and the new DIAL coordinators, DIAL will continue to be over stretched to meet growing demand and its hoped the new UAL digital Life programme will support DIAL in meeting its capacity.

DIAL also have an responsibility to other colleges specifically Chelsea CCAD, Camberwell CCA, Wimbledon WCA and LCC who I feel are all lacking DIAL engagement, but are also lacking connections with the in-house staff who are the digital drivers which both CSM and LCF seem to actively have.  DIAL have been involved in activities across these colleges but have had little take up or interest.

Chelsea College of Art and Design (CCAD):

College contacts: Not yet identified (Dave Barnett?)

A number of projects are emerging:

• Delivery of technical resource information online: Chelsea and DIAL would like to address, develop case studies around how it deals with these issues at the ‘Technical Co-ordinators technician-related issues and strategy meetings’ and in an open conversation on the baseline blog.

• Online PPD skills & specialisms with a practice based accreditation tool

• I’ve been part of the CCW (Chelsea) SICOM process and at one of the meetings, which brought together a wide cross section of staff we discussed issues and ideas I think DIAL could really support. I would really like to follow up
  on some of the items and findings of these meetings and try and identify individuals and groups who are interested in driving these ideas forward with DIAL support. http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/10/28/online-ppd-skills-specialisms-with-a-practice-based-accreditation-tool/

• iPads in workshops – workshop spaces, wood, metal and 3D are looking into use of ipads for supporting workshop activities.

• Learning zone remote tutoring: Pilot exercise of providing video and audio editing support for Chelsea students using learning zones at CSM and LCC via Skype sessions.

Wimbledon WCA

• Project specific DIAL contacts: Current contacts: Mariana Fantich, Kaye Pryce Grzesiek Sedek (WCA) and Paul Lowe (LCC).

• Projects and IT: IT capacity to support projects problem including; IT access, over control and security problem and an IT capacity to deliver servers to projects in a timely way projects require. DIAL are writing a case study for the UAL baseline based on problem in an earlier NAM project report below: http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/nam-web-development-overview-and-update-30042012

• Open education; What does open educational practice mean to you?

• The new digital hub: A possible collaboration and support in the development of a new digital hub at WCA?

• The Development of Social Networking – Creating Students’ Weblog Communities: Mariana Fantich – http://marianafantich.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

LCC London College of Communication:

• Enterprise week Event: Improving Your Prospects through Online Profiles – http://see.arts.ac.uk/events/eventdetails/?eid=1364

• NAM server: project use case study

CCA Camberwell College of Art

New contact: Adamina Turek (recent contact keen to engage Oct 2012)

Work to be done here.

University wide, central services projects (ongoing)

See information about all below here: http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/dial-groups/

• Open education at UAL

• Things unlimited (digital information literacy)

• Online Reflective Practice

• UAL drupal Community of Practice

I would really like to follow up the induction debate and the online PPD student skills & specialisms profiles ideas. I started to look at something like this early in the project and I think year two of DIAL would be a good time to pick this up again? Practice based accreditation tool also see: http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/05/02/web-literacy-skills/

DIAL will see if there are any existing projects at UAL which cover student and staff profiles.

One of the other key themes that seemed to come out of the CCW SICOM meetings were we ‘UAL’ really need to improve communication across the whole of UAL course and college level. UAL have never been very good at using digital tools for communication and collaboration and being in the age of ‘digital communication’ we really should be using or experimenting with this more (this could be a DIAL supported project for CCW…. try and bring academics, support staff, technical staff and administrators together through better use of digital tools for open collaboration and communication?).

This is much more than a technology initiative and at its heart is the DIAL project; without digital literacy who will use the tools and services that many of the projects in digital life will deliver?

Much of the work DIAL has already produced, including the digital baselines, proved invaluable as we started to shape the programme which now includes areas such as our web sites, virtual learning, portals, online libraries, showcases and ePortfolios and our use of social tools and services outside of UAL.  We will also focus on really outstanding student engagement and build on projects such as DIAL, commonplace and ‘My Digital Life’@DEL2012.

For more information please visit the Digital Life blog.

Steve Howells – Digital Life Programme Manager

DIAL Advisory Board meeting 29 Oct 2012

DIAL Advisory Board meeting 29 Oct 2012

Meeting of the DIAL Advisory Board to consider the following items of business.

The meeting will be held on Monday 29th October 2 -5pm in HH 704 (Small Training Room), 272 High Holborn, WC1V 7E.

Chris Follows – 07703 887845

PART A – DIAL BOARD, new members and ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. Welcome and Apologies; Announcements, new members
2. Notes 12 March 2012 including; UAL baseline blogs and ‘Your Digital World’ online survey.

PART B – PROJECT UPDATE year one

5. How are DIAL engaging with key stakeholder groups? Students, senior management, academic leaders, tutors, technicians, library staff, HR, SEE, Learn IT, CCSkills etc.
6. National and International project dissemination.
7. Duna Sabri, DIAL year one evaluation findings.

PART C – INSTITUTIONAL APPROACHES

1. DIAL and the new UAL Digital Life programme
2. Cross college collaborative approach to policy and official terms:
   1. UAL to define terms associated with ‘Digital literacies, Media literacies,information literacies etc. with an aim of publishing an ‘official’ UAL glossary of these institutional terms.’

8. Cross college collaborative approach to addressing staff & student key competencies required for integrating ‘digitally enhanced learning’ into everyday practice and to support CPD & PPD.

PART D – FOR CONSIDERATION AND ENDORSEMENT

1. Revised DIAL aims and objectives See full objectives
   1. a.    Support participation and communication between DIAL project communities of practice.
   2. b.    Encourage ‘open’ communities of practice and explore key issues surrounding the development of digitally enhanced learning.
   3. c.     Carry out interventions and case studies that enquire and inform change and development in individual practice and student engagement and that have potential to initiate course level curriculum change.
   4. d.    Integrate DIAL initiatives and resources with and across departments and external partners.
   5. e.    Explore key area of career preparation student/alumni representation online skills to create and present professional self.

10. DIAL new projects for year two.

1. Professional Online Identities
2. Developing projects.

11. New DIAL coordinators.

12. CCskills commission Creative & Cultural Skills Research Proposal.

PART E – OTHER BUSINESS

13. Date of next meeting

This is the provisional structure:

• Open with a clip of LCF. Intro of people involved in project: Chitra, me, Pei-Chin, Chris
• Clip of group activity, students in first workshop recording each other – voiceover introducing the project
• 1 or 2 clips of students doing their one minute video pitches with no preparation
• Clip of the students reflecting on the experience in the lecture theatre after the first workshop – voiceover describing more about the feelings that the students expressed
• Clip of Pei-Chin explaining about her ‘How to do an elevator pitch’ presentation, and clips of the good SEED Fund video applications that Pei-Chin showed to the students
• Voiceover – explain the benefits of the exercises and how it helped them prepare, practice and use peer feedback to improve their confidence and skills. Which clips to use here?
• Clips of the students presenting one-minute video pitches before and after the training, compare them back to back
• Clips of students giving feedback: they said how confidence improved overall, content improved, felt more comfortable with camera, and felt that practice helped (slides with quotes from the students?)
• Summarise how we we’ve created a series of resources to help other staff use these exercises with their students?

Chris Follows and Jess Crilly talk about University Projects DIAL and Process Arts and the Things Unlimited Information literacy project for Library Services part of the DIAL project at the Library Services Conference 2012

‘Just One Thing’ Activity

During the exhibition, complete a ‘just one thing’ sticker – with a partner identify and share one thing that each of you will do with what you have learned today, write it on a sticker and post it on the plenary board as you go to tea and coffee – keep a note for yourself of your ‘Just one thing’ on the post-it stickers provided or on the space provided on the programme.

See Things Unlimited presentation here – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/things-unlimited-library-services-conference-2012

For more information about this event http://see.arts.ac.uk/events/entweek/ or see event below:

Improving Your Prospects through Online Profiles

Date: 15 November 2012
Time: 3pm – 5pm

Location:
Podium Lecture Theatre, LCC, SE1 6SB

Event details:
Presenting your professional profile online is becoming increasingly important. What is the best way to develop your online professional identity? Do we improve or hinder our career prospects by being online?

A panel of speakers will discuss and debate these questions and share their experiences of creating online identities, using social media and specialist networks, and being a digital citizen.

This event is led by DIAL  ( http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk ) – UAL’s Digital Integration into Arts Learning project, which aims to improve graduate employability and develop confidence and capability in the adoption and integration of digitally enhanced learning for staff and students.

The debate will focus on two aspects of being online as a professional ‘Presentational‘ (presenting & promoting work online) and ‘relational’ (being participatory professional presenting practice and specialism online).

The debate will explore the challenges, limitations and benefits of how, what and why we use being online to build and enhance our careers:
How the debate be structured?

Introduction and event context – 10 min

Debate 1: Chair: Clare Kennedy

Presentation of practice (What you’ve done), work and profile, UAL tools and social media

Number of 5 min presentations from our panel (20 min total)
Audience debate – 20 – 30.

Debate 2: Chair Chris Follows

Relational identity (what you do); communicating practice, knowledge, skills and specialism online, how do we interact, participate and build professional profiles/identities online?
Number of 5 min presentations from our panel (20 min total)
Audience debate – 20 – 30.

10 – 15 minutes of general debate and final thoughts.

Start and continue the debate by adding your comments to this debate forum and contribute to our resource cluster of videos, images and text.

Panel includes:

Clare Kennedy is a member of the UAL Digital Team which created Showtime [linking to http://showtime.arts.ac.uk/ ], the University’s free online platform where graduates can present their work and creative practice. Showtime has evolved over the past four years from an online representation of the UAL degree shows into a platform which is viewed as a directory of talent by gallerists, fashion houses and other creative industry insiders.

Chris Follows joined the University of the Arts London UAL in 2003 and since 2007 has been researching and developing open educational practice and open content communities.  Chris is the DIAL project manager ‘Digital Integration Into Arts Learning’ part of the JISC UK Developing digital literacies programme. Chris has recently completed a SCORE fellowship at the Open University and is the initiator of process.arts.ac.uk. http://process.arts.ac.uk/users/cfollows

Luke Whitehead joined London College of Communications in September 2012 as Publicity and Social Media Co-ordinator. Previously he has worked on Digital and Social Media strategies for major UK charities including the NSPCC and Macmillan Cancer Support. He is fascinated by the humanising potential of digital and the role social media has in creating digital identities for individuals and organisations.

Adam Watling Since joining LCF as Graduate Employment Officer, Adam has forged key relationships with influential fashion industry brands including ASOS, Arcadia, Kurt Geiger, Adidas, H&M and Jaeger, to name but a few. Through LCF’s online platform First Move, Adam has assisted graduates seeking work in many roles including Design, Buying, Merchandising, Fashion PR, Marketing and Journalism as well as other key roles within the industry.

Charlotte Webb is an artist and PhD student at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her PhD title is ‘Working with other others: artistic production and agency in a post-user environment’. She will talk about her online artistic identity as ‘Otheragent’, and her interest in automated online entities such as Twitter bots. http://www.otheragents.net/ http://otheragents.tumblr.com/

John Jackson: John is an Educational Developer with a particular interest in digital platforms and practices, who has also worked as a business adviser (with a focus on eBusiness) in the earlier days of the internet. He is currently involved in a variety of projects and maintains a blog at http://elearning.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Invited guest audience members

Creative & Cultural Skills representitive | http://ccskills.org.uk/

Anna McAndrew | UAL alumni | Visual artist and musician studying Education at Goldsmiths | My self directed education | http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/my-self-directed-education.

For further details on DIAL’s new project that explores these issues, visit – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/developing-professional-online-identities-project-details

Date: Thursday 15 November 2012
Time: 3pm – 5pm
Location: Podium Lecture Theatre, LCC, Elephant & Castle, SE1 6SB
Cost: Free, booking essential

1. Define UALs digital projects and programmes use of the term ‘Digital literacies’.
2. Debate and define UALs institutional understanding of terms associated with ‘Digital literacies’ within all aspects creative practice, including media literacies, information literacies, digital practice, digital citizenship, online identities, digital/social/cultural competencies, participatory culture, digital attributes, open practice, digital fluency etc. with an aim of publishing an ‘institutional’ evidence base of UAL glossary of terms based on an iterative process of practical, subject and interest specific case study evidence.
3. Address staff key competencies required for integrating ‘digitally enhanced practice’ into everyday practice and to support CPD & PPD. See JISC programme material.
4. Identify gaps and best practice in the integration of digitally enhanced learning at UAL, Address key areas and themes identified in the DIAL baseline report.

DIAL will continue with the following KEY objectives with an aim of informing the new Digital Life programme from the following ‘Digital literacies’ perspective:

1. Engage and support maximum stakeholder participation and communication between DIAL project communities of practice, including open debate/forum (live & online), cross college/alumni/industry interaction, course/staff/student level case studies, events, workshops and online resources.
2. Encourage ‘open’ communities of practice which explore key issues surrounding the development of digitally enhanced practice.
3. DIAL will align this objective closely with the UAL Strategy 2010-15: Communities of Practice, people and communication priorities.
4. Carry out interventions and case studies that inquire and inform change and development in individual practice and student engagement that have potential to initiate course level curriculum change.
5. Integrate DIAL initiatives and resources with the Student Enterprise & Employability Service (SEE) and Staff development and training (Learn IT) to create new resources and paths of inquiry.
6. Explore key area of career preparation student and alumni representation online skills to create and present professional self; including online presentation skills, personal website development and online professional identities.
7. Embed DIAL networks and digital literacies developments into UAL web environment, policies and practices.
8. Develop and encourage more flexible learning opportunities and experiences for staff.
9. Explore UAL networked online communities within the university and the potential for national and international collaboration from courses, colleges, disciplines, industry and wider sectors.

My question would be who would set up and manage these kind of initiatives in all the other Colleges, this blog and the general digital landscape at CSM is managed by Jo Morrison.

To provide environments for learning that help to drive intellectual, social and economic advancement at a time of rapid and uncertain global change is the challenge of UK higher education.  Thankfully, this blog has a somewhat lesser goal, although that’s not to say that we lack ambition.

What is the purpose of Digital Present?

CSM staff and students are using digital tools and social media to enhance their learning and teaching in all sorts of new ways.  The Digital Present blog will capture and share some of these activities in order to provide an insight and to nourish the curiosity of colleagues who might be interested in exploring digital technologies themselves.

1.    Institutional digital literacies/leadership (Digitally literate organisation)

1.1. Digital Terms and definitions

Support a cross college collaborative approach to policy and official terms associated to being a ‘digital literate university’ through referencing practice and active case studies:

Debate and define UALs institutional understanding of terms associated with ‘Digital literacies’ within all aspects creative practice, including media literacies, information literacies, digital practice, digital citizenship, online identities, digital/social/cultural competencies, participatory culture,    digital scholarship, digital attributes, open practice, digital fluency etc. with an aim of publishing an ‘institutional’ evidence base of UAL glossary of terms based on an iterative process of practical, subject and interest specific case study evidence. With reference to JISC definitions.

1.2. Engage and support maximum stakeholder participation and communication through the development and support of DIAL project communities of practice, including open debate/forum, cross college/alumni/industry interaction, course/staff/student level case studies, events, workshops and online resources.

1.3. Integrate DIAL initiatives and resources with internal and external departments through project collaboration.

1.4. Support a new mode of delivery for the PGCert course Open Educational Practice unit.

2. Digital competencies, development and training

Testing current structures and frameworks: DIAL supports a cross college collaborative approach to addressing staff & student key competencies required for integrating ‘digitally enhanced learning’ into everyday practice and to support new practices and modes of recording and delivering CPD & PPD training and support.

2.1. Digital leadership.

2.2. Challenges facing leaders, identifying similarities.

2.3. Staff & student DIAL support groups & peer support.

2.4. Self-assessment/Self-development materials.

2.5. Planning and undertaking – responsibility back on the individual

3. College and Institutional digital baseline: http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/digital-baseline-links/

3.1.Case studies, workshops, focus groups and surveys

• Student perspectives.
• Staff perspectives.
• Best practice.
• Identify Gaps.
• Personal case studies/learning journeys.
• Evidence base.
• Curriculum case studies.
• Teaching/curriculum digital integration.
• Evidence and evaluation impact on curriculum development.

4. Employability; Encourage new perspectives and dialogue between universities and employers including, students, staff, employers, employer bodies and HE/FE institutions:

4.1. Stories from different perspectives through case studies.

4.2. What students, staff and employers want in terms of essential creative/digital attributes for employability.

4.3. Share/enhance digital expectations and awareness.

4.4. Raise aspirations, test the unknowns and influence change.

4.5. Develop bespoke course/subject/employer aligned key skill sets.

4.6. Digital practice evidence and examples of progressive practices.

4.7. Change process in and out, including curriculum.

4.8. Knowing and understanding expectations.

4.9. Promote entrepreneurism.

4.10. Identify digital change agents/Champions.

5.    Enhance institutional profile as a ’forward thinking institution’

5.1. Specialist in the field.

5.2. Open online presence

5.3. Sharing best practice

5.4. National and internationally recognised specialist mentors in digital practice.

5.5. Example of Sector feedback: http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/about-dial/#comment-10476

Just wanted to comment on how useful the DIAL ethos and resources have been in considering the development of our digital strategy here at GSA. We are currently engaging in student-centred research regarding digital literacies in order to inform a number of ongoing and participatory initiatives aimed at providing inclusive and flexible opportunities for both tutors and students to engage with emerging technologies. DIAL’s participative, forward-looking and integrated approach has highlighted the important areas of staff/ student collaboration, harnessing the power of mutually supportive practice communities and the merits of embedding relevant technology in purpose/subject-specific contexts. Resources related to planning, collaboration and implementation accessible on this blog as well as discussion with colleagues involved in the project have been incredibly he,pful in the formative stages of planning our priorities and approach.

Benefits of DIAL

In this video we walk through the process of joining my.blog.arts and joining group blogs like the DIAL UAL baseline blogs – http://ualdigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Myblog.arts is UALs in house blogging service.

The digital baseline blogs are an ongoing agile project which rely on UAL staff and student contributions until November 2013; the blogs are open for all UAL staff and students to contribute. Please add your college, course or personal stories and perspectives of best practice or gaps you have identified in UAL’s current digital provision.

The ‘digital baseline’ blogs will record all aspects of digital life, including learning and teaching, college, department, course and individual perspectives.  It is a chance for us all to contribute, view and map how we at UAL are integrating the ‘digital’ into any aspects of our day-to day practice. The seven digital baseline blogs (6 college blogs and 1 institutional one) will give us an up-to-date snapshot of how we are integrating and supporting the digital in our practice.

UAL baseline

CCA baseline

CCAD baseline

CSM baseline

LCC baseline

LCF baseline

WCA baseline

The program included presentations by:

Tony Quinn (BA Ceramic Design): Blogs to support student collaboration                              Cath Caldwell (BA Graphic Design): Exploring Workflow in BA Graphic Design                  Sian Evans (BA Jewellery Design): Facebook insights                                                           Hywel Davies (BA Fashion): What is ALTO?                                                                    Caroline Till (MA Textile Futures): Blog & Skype                                                                 Tyrone Messiah (4D):  Lynda.com revealed                                                                                 Ray Barker and Muz Mehmet (Technical staff): Workshop video guides                  Innovation Centre:  Making the most of Twitter                                                                       Geoff Makstusis (BAASO):  Make a Doodle date

Chris Follows, DIAL project manager (Digital Integration into Arts Learning) http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/about-dial/  will draw from resources developed during the DIAL project from the many groups who have been engaged in the JISC funded digital literacies (DL) project at University of the arts London (UAL).  DIAL explores the pace of technological change and its impact on the day-to-day practices of its staff and students and aims to address improved graduate employability and cultural change by developing confidence and capability in the adoption and integration of digitally enhanced learning for staff and students. Read more: http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/open-education-practice-hard-and-soft-skills-creating-open-educational-resources-oers-and-op

 Library Services Conference 2012 slides

library-dial-process-arts-120920080658-phpapp02

SEE Services – Susie Walker (SEE)

Development and Learning Programme – Andrea Farrell (D&L)

Academic Practice – Ellen Sims (CLTAD)

Digital Life – Steve Howells, Digital Life Programme Manager

iPads for Teaching and Learning – Andrew Lee (LCF)

BoB Demonstration – Caitlin Verney and SarahTurk

Location: Library / Old Library

‘Just One Thing’ Activity

During the exhibition, complete a ‘just one thing’ sticker – with a partner identify and share one thing that each of you will do with what you have learned today, write it on a sticker and post it on the plenary board as you go to tea and coffee – keep a note for yourself of your ‘Just one thing’ on the post-it stickers provided or on the space provided on the programme. 3.00pm to 3.30pm Tea and Coffee: Chelsea Canteen 3.00pm to 3.50pm Learning and Growing – what next for Library Services?Introduction (Pat Christie)Functional Leaders – plans for 2012/13Regina Everett – Site Management & OperationsPeter Jennett and Jess Crilly – CollectionsDavid Bracegirdle and Karen Ellis Rees – Learning SupportSarah Mahurter – Research Support               Location: Lecture Theatre 3.50pm to 4.00pm PlenarySummary of ‘Just One Thing’ stickers(Jan Conway and Jess Crilly)               Location: Lecture Theatre 4.00pm to 4.15pm Conference CloseHousekeeping and thanks               Location: Lecture Theatre 4.15pm to 5.30pm Reception and NetworkingAfternoon tea & wine               Location: Green Room

‘Just One Thing’ – notes

]]> http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/09/18/dial-at-the-library-services-conference-2012/feed/ 2 http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/09/18/digital-research-development-fund-for-the-arts/ http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/09/18/digital-research-development-fund-for-the-arts/#comments Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:57:52 +0000 Chris Follows http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/?p=1348 Continue reading →]]>

The £7 million Digital R&D Fund for the Arts is a partnership between the Arts Council, the AHRC and Nesta. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Pages/Digital-Research-Development-Fund-for-the-Arts.aspx

It will support research and development projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or explore new business models for organisations with arts projects.

The fund is open for application 2012-15, organisations with arts projects, oechnology providers and researchers or research teams are invited to form collaborative relationships and make joint funding applications.

Themes of the fund

The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts has been designed to accommodate a range of innovation projects which will include key themes identified in collaboration with the arts sector:

What we agreed:

Steve agreed to write an overview introduction blog post of the DIAL blog which, introduces the Digital Life programme, says how DIAL has informed the DL programme, what DL would like from DIAL, list the 5/6 gaps to address. The Digital Life Programme will also look at taking forward the DIAL baseline work to date, using the blogs and format that already exist – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/digital-baseline-links/ .

I agreed to review the DIAL objectives and rewrite the DIAL year 2 project plan and workpackages inline with the Digital Life programme objectives and needs. 

1. Priority will be placed on the following collaborative ‘institutional’ objectives: (in collaboration with the DL programme and all involved projects, as the below are too large for DIAL to deal with alone and require as much input as possible from many perspectives as possible)
   
2. Define the DL programmes use of the term ‘Digital literacies’
3. DIAL will explore and seek institutional clarification (in collaboration with the DL programme and all involved projects) terms such as: Multimedia literacy, Media literacy, Computer literacy, Information literacy, New literacies,  Digital identity with an aim of publishing an ‘official’ UAL glossary of these institutional terms.
4. Address staff key competencies required for integrating ‘digitally enhanced learning’ into everyday practice and to support CPD & PPD.

1. DIAL will continue with the following KEY objectives with an aim of informing the DL programme from the following ‘Digital literacies’ perspective:
   
2. Engage and support maximum stakeholder participation and communication between DIAL project communities of practice, including open debate/forum (live & online), cross college/alumni/industry interaction, course/staff/student level case studies, events, workshops and online resources.
3. The DIAL project will encourage ‘open’ communities of practice and explore key issues surrounding the development of digitally enhanced learning.  DIAL will align this objective closely with the UAL Strategy 2010-15: Communities of Practice, people and communication priorities.
4. Carry out interventions and case studies that enquire and inform change and development in individual practice and student engagement and that have potential to initiate course level curriculum change.
5. Integrate DIAL initiatives and resources with the new Student Enterprise & Employability Service (SEE), bringing together the work of Creative Careers, the Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts (ECCA), Artquest, Own-it and ArtsTemps.
6. Explore key area of career preparation student/alumni representation online skills to create and present professional self; including online presentation skills, personal website development and online professional identities.

See more details here – http://ccaddigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/09/14/library-services-conference-2012/

]]> http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/09/14/dial-presenting-at-the-library-services-conference-2012/feed/ 0 http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/08/01/dial-update-open-education-at-ual/ http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/08/01/dial-update-open-education-at-ual/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:36:30 +0000 Chris Follows http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/?p=1316 Continue reading →]]> DIAL update – Open education at UAL

1.    What were/are you aiming to achieve?

Generating debate about the OER that addresses peoples’ fears, (mis)conceptions, and aspirations for what it might achieve

Reviewing the factors that have underpinned achievements in ALTO and process.arts and formulating some strategies accordingly.

Approach

Part 1 of the plan is to set up a live debate, preceded by an online debate on OER.  Two prominent speakers will be invited.  The first debate will focus on OER in Fine Art.

Part 2 is to start reviewing ALTO, we will work compile demographic information about the authors who have contributed thus far.  E.g. which colleges they come from, the number of items contributed, discipline areas, staff group, types of resource.

See related posts:

Notes from meeting on DIAL Open Educational at UAL project

Updated notes Open Educational project

2.    What you’ve managed to achieve to date and who with?

The DIAL ‘open educational practice at UAL ‘project is being led by John Casey and Chris Follows. Both John and Chris have been simultaneously working on related OER and open practice projects including ALTO UK and a SCORE fellowship.

Both John and Chris integrated the DIAL open practice at UAL work with there own related projects. Both agree it was difficult or unproductive to try and separate work being carried out in the many areas being explored and they all naturally crossed over and DIAL is a good platform to join up general ongoing progress.

The DIAL project has provided an opportunity for both John and Chris to step outside their ‘day job’ and reflect together on how all the different and dynamic approaches are related and being addressed, this also presented an opportunity to reflect on the bigger picture quickly developing at UAL.

The DIAL open practice project carried out small focus groups with a collaborative ALTOUK, SCORE and DIAL perspectives.

The following focus groups were carried out: (who and how many participants, students, staff, sector) etc.

A round up of blog notes can be seen here – Open practice focus group meetings

What does open educational practice mean to you? – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/what-does-open-educational-practice-mean-you

An impromptu focus group was carried out during this staff training day: Introduction project management, DIAL & open education at UAL a case study

Learning studio events: http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/learning-studio

A focus group was organized for Chelsea College, unfortunately there was only one attendee.

Open practice stories –  http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/open-practice-stories

3.    Resources developed:

The DIAL, ALTOUK and SCORE collaborative approach supported Chris in the development and approach of the following resources and processes:

OEP PG Cert unit

Chris and John also both contributed to the bid and development of the open practice PG Cert unit due to be integrated next term. This provided a useful and timely focus for John and Chris to identify synergies and ideas with each other and the CLTAD team and a course perspective. CPDF Open Academic Practice Unit, to the Open Educational Resources Programme, Phase 3, PG Cert Development Strand. Supporting UAL in this development.

OEP unit group development notes on Google docs – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1llO7yFnLS7f7ftifHFoyoraHM7wqcwQhswmp3zJNd6s/edit

Chris Follows notes for the PG Cert Open Educational practice Unit including learning outcomes – http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/unit-title-open-educational-practice

SCORE on process.arts

Chris developed a bespoke subject specific SCORE area on process.arts to support open education in general, whilst also specializing in art and design practice based subjects, http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/score.

Additional resources were developed and clustered in specific areas across the site and the SCORE section also includes specific areas of practice such as OER, OER arts resources, SCORE dissemination, Open practice, Copyright issues, OER reuse, Useful websites and Learning video research.

Over 100 OER SCORE resources were developed and made available under creative commons licenses on process.arts.

OER over 90 resources about Open Educational Resources, majority produced through the SCORE fellowship

OER arts resources OER related content specifically within the art & design practice based subjects

SCORE dissemination 20 plus conference recording, lecture notes and papers of my SCORE dissemination

Open practice Focus her is on open practice and communities and less on OERs

Reuse 100 resources including web tools, websites, reuse stories and experiments

Copyright issues A really interesting & developing batch of resources exploring, IPR, appropriation & CC licenses

Learning video research a new area currently being developed and populated by new individuals and projects

The SCORE area on process.arts will continue to be used and developed as part of the DIAL open practice project.

Surveys 

Can be viewed on the UAL baseline blogs – http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/digital-baseline-links/

Drupal community of practice

Process.arts was initially developed by UAL in-house developers in 2008 and development continued or was taken over by teaching staff and student developers who practiced as in-house drupal developers. Seeing the benefits of using in-house student developer on process.arts Chris bid for funding to develop a ‘drupal UAL’ in-house community of practice for student and staff webmakers to explore and gain skills in drupal development http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/drupal-ual.

Process.arts moving to a service 

In 2012 UAL began the process of rebuilding its VLE framework, and process.arts was identified as a valuable resource that could fit into the University’s new portfolio of tools; consequently, process.arts is due to be officially introduced as a supported ‘service’ in September 2012.

Group and mentor development

There is some difficulty encouraging participation and interaction, the recent drawing out group (conference group) were all asked by their group facilitators to uploaded their own work to process.arts, they all did this without any problems http://process.arts.ac.uk/category/project-groups/drawing-out-2012.  There was no visible presence on the group space and I feel like other groups, the lack of visible online presence or group mentor means little or no debate. In contrast this forum http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/2-or-3-things-start is starting to get comments/ interaction on its subject, because Jess and David the group/project ‘owners’ are actively online and engaged, pushing the debate forward. 

The important thing is that groups have a few experts or active interested members posting on the group and who are a regularly actively presence in this space encouraging, setting up debates and adding support etc. This is a core skill of being doing ‘open online practice’, its not something you can necessarily learn its something you do and keep on doing. See OPEN ONLINE PRACTICE

John Casey’s notes: ADD HERE

4.    What you would like to do next/aim to do next. Develop resources etc, support networks etc.

• Develop and support the integration of the OEP PGCert unit
• Develop the SCORE area on process.arts
• Help support process.arts transition into a institutional service
• Group and mentor development
• OER open course books (John ADD NOTES?)