Powerpoint Presentation for the Workshop.

Here is the Powerpoint Presentation to be presented at the Learning and Teaching Conference at the Arts Institute Bournemouth on the 4th July 2008.
learning-teaching

Keeping pace with new modes of communication.

During the 3rd annual Art, Design and Media annual forum in 2007 the Chair, Richard Berger from Bournemouth University, raised avalid point in relation to new approaches to Art & Design education. ‘Has new technology changed the way we teach?’ He was contemplating why teachers feel like their students seem to be displaying a lack of ideas and came to the conclusion that the teachers are looking in the wrong place. Hence the pressure should be on the teachers to keep pace with new modes of communication rather than expecting students to conform to established traditional conduits.

TechDis

The JISC TechDis Service aims to be the leading educational advisory service, working across the UK, in the fields of accessibility and inclusion.

Future publishing methods

The revolution in publishing that has taken place over the last few years has introduce new possibilities in the way that students can submit and publish their dissertation/alternative submission. PDF is widely used as a reliable format that allows design standards to be maintained, it is a “read only” document that cannot be altered without leaving an electronic footprint, and meets all legal requirements to be admissible in a court of law. It also allows for hypertext referencing, document searching. It is also cross-platform and can be read out by a computer. Video files can be embedded for the use of primary research or presentation purposes.

There are now several developments that allow PDF files to be exported into Flash to create a new, more interactive format. Here are a couple of good examples:

and the BBC publication Music.

Zmags
Zmags provides digital publishing software that transforms traditional print publications and PDF files into interactive presentations similar to those above. It does cot a small fee but a site licence might provide students a contemporary publishing solution.
Click here

Scholarly Rhetoric in Digital Media

Another interesting paper that we came across focuses on the impact of contemporary information and communication technologies and how interactive media can be used as an alternative publishing method to traditional print based submissions.
Scholarly Rhetoric in Digital Media
(or: Now that we have the technology, what do we do with it?)
Bruce Douglas Ingraham
Teaching Fellow, Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, UK

Ingraham makes some valid observations on the advantages of electronic publishing techniques offset with the issues that “few academics possess such skills with respect to ‘electronic’
media.”
The paper can be found here:
Scholarly-Rhetoric-in-Digital-Media

Dyslexia as cognitive style: right-brained strategies for left-brained tasks.

This paper by:

Mary Davies Study Support Tutor Swansea Institute University of Wales and
Howard Riley Faculty of Art & Design Swansea Institute University of Wales

addresses the issue relating directly to dyslexic students. The Educational Needs and Disabilities Act 2001 stresses that students should not be disadvantaged as a consequence of a neurological condition.

“In the School of Art & Design, we have focused on developing alternative approaches to the traditional written dissertation required in the area of Historical & Contextual Studies. The hypothesis is that it might be possible to encourage students to structure a dissertation in a way that is more compatible with their preferred learning strategies derived from cognitive styles which favour the wholist/visual, whilst still maintaining the required degree of academic rigour. Our case study students have completed dissertations which illustrate visual structuring strategies and alternative means of presentation of a visually-driven argument. “

The paper can be read here: Dyslexia as cognitive style: right-brained strategies for left-brained tasks.

The following notes were made by Jim Campbell on the work of Davies and Riley:

“The main theme to emerge…is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemispheres, respectively, and that our educational system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.” (Roger W. Sperry, 1973 in Edwards, 1982:209-229)

• If a students cognitive style is a fixed physiological or neurological state, (Riding & Rayner 2000) which most commentators seem to think is the case, then surely as educators we are disposed to offer students the means to communicate in a non-verbal mode.
• Davies & Riley posit a model whereby the visual elements of the project act as the binding agents and organisation structure – rather than attempting to translate material into a verbal structure.
• From a learning support perspective could the form of the dissertation not be brought into line with individual learning styles?
• The main sticking point here is that neuropsychology is not an exact science and therefore making policy based on styles of learning seems too woolly.
• The two case studies that Davies & Riley worked with indicated that a). A great deal of resources is necessary to fully determine which styles suit individual learners and that b). They learnt in totally different ways. We might therefore draw the conclusion that we should prioritise more detailed learning support examinations and that a patchwork style of teaching and communication would give students more opportunities to learn and work according to their strengths.
• The main dichotomy offered by recent studies appears to be the difference between verbal and non-verbal thinkers.
• In the case of Riley’s 2 examples it would appear that a Viva Voce may be appropriate for Louise, whereas Sabra would be better suited to a Visual dissertation. Although both produced the latter as a consequence of this study.
• Davies & Riley finish by concluding that the project

1. Raised the students awareness and understanding of the relationship between their learning styles and modes of working
2. Allowed supervisors to realise the value of matching strategies to need.
3. Raised the question of whether a diverse approach to learning styles might be employed for all students.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF ASSESSMENT AND THE DISSERTATION

Paul Grace Course Leader MA Photographic Studies, Norwich School of Art & Design, UK has published an interesting paper which addresses many of the issues under discussion.

View the paper here ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF ASSESSMENT AND THE DISSERTATION

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF ASSESSMENT AND THE DISSERTATION
Alternative Models of Assessment to Accompany the Critical Studies Dissertation

“The paper focuses on methods to augment the current critical studies level three provision, not to replace it.”

“There is little evidence that indicates that the the current written dissertation should be abandoned, but there is recognition that it may not be the most productive form of final critical studies assessment for those students who, for various reasons including disability, do not excel when faced with a project, which asks them to undertake such an extended piece of writing.”

“to provide an overview of current alternatives to the dissertation as used in other institutions, and the educational thinking, which has led to the adoption of these alternatives.”

Sir William Coldstream

The history of the academic dissertation within Art & Design education can be traced back to the first Coldstream report in 1960 and is referenced in the Art & Design benchmark statement.

Sir William Coldstream

Subject benchmark statements – Art and Design
“2 Relevance, history, and scope of the history of art, architecture and design

2.4 …..The Coldstream Report (1960) ensured that some form of historical and contextual study would make up around one fifth of the curriculum of students taking degree level qualifications in fine art and related areas (including design), so that when civic art schools were absorbed into polytechnics, they inherited teachers and researchers in the linked areas of art and design history. These staff continued to develop critical and contextual studies for art and design programmes and, from the 1970s, set up Honours programmes with a focus on the history of design and film in several HEIs.”

Carrots or Sticks

Here is an interesting piece of research undertaken at MIT which looks into whether students are ready to hand in their work digitally.

“MIT completed a pilot project in the fall of 1999 to collect doctoral theses in electronic format from students in three departments. Despite the technical savvy of most MIT students, only about a third of the sample actually chose the option and succeeded in submitting their PDF document. We discuss what happened and why electronic thesis submission isn’t yet required at MIT.”

carrot-11

MIT’s Dissertation Repository

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has led the way with archiving dissertations in digital formats for many years. D Dpace is an online institutional repository – built to save, share, and search MIT’s digital research materials. Dissertations are scanned and saved as pdf files and available for all to see on the D Space site. Registered users also have the ability to print files.

An archive of MIT Dissertations can be found here: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/
A usability study of this site can also be found here: http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/usability2003/theses-report.html