Session 1: 8 April 2020
Using the Flipped Classroom Model to Promote Critical Thinking and Lifelong Learning Skills
Reya Saliba
Weill Cornell Medicine (Qatar)
Using the Flipped Classroom Model to Promote Critical Thinking and Lifelong Learning Skills The flipped classroom model is a learner-centered approach in which students take responsibility for their own learning supported by online course materials available to them prior to class time. Therefore, class time is used to assess students’ acquisition of new knowledge and provide them with the chance to apply these skills in an active and collaborative space. Technology plays an important role in supporting teaching, learning and assessment and facilitating communication, teamwork, and student engagement. In my role as Learning and Student Outreach Librarian, I am in charge of the Information Fluency Curriculum which I revamped in 2017 to include more critical thinking and lifelong learning skills. This led to a new library’s instruction and training program: the flipped classroom replaced the traditional one-shot library session, and class time was used for interactive activities that provide a context in which students can apply critical thinking skills and put into practice the knowledge they acquired. However, this transformation in the library instruction and training program cannot be successful without an understanding of the local education system and the importance of revising and adjusting our teaching approach to accommodate the needs of local students. From my experience working with Qatari students coming from government schools, it is important to guide them through the process of learning and helping them become responsible for their own learning. Guidance, clear instructions, and continuous communication, especially during their first year of college, are critical to help them understand the requirements of a transnational higher education curriculum and ensure their success. This short presentation will share some lessons I learned from my current role and provide some tips on how to succeed in revamping the information fluency curriculum, integrating critical thinking activities and lifelong learning skills, while implementing the flipped classroom model.
Co-creation in Citizen Science as a Form of Lifelong Learning for Cultural Heritage
Barbara Heinisch
University of Vienna (Austria)
Language(s) and language varieties, such as dialects are considered to be intangible cultural heritage. Since language is used by everybody, individuals, local communities and related associations can actively participate in its preservation and help conduct linguistic research. Citizen science is an approach to engage citizens as participants in academic research beyond being the mere subject of investigation. This may take the form of data collection or data analysis by participants. Co-creation as the most comprehensive form of citizen science aims at integrating citizens in all steps and decisions in the entire research process. This study investigates the role of co-created citizen science for lifelong learning, especially the acquisition of sticky knowledge and competence development. Among the benefits of (a co-creation approach to) citizen science related to lifelong learning are that participants acquire a better understanding of science and develop academic literacy. Since co-created citizen science usually addresses the concerns of participants, they may feel part of the process of discovery or problem-solving process. Through workshops or free learning material, participants can independently gain the required domain or procedural knowledge for a citizen science project. Moreover, learning has an added value if participants can see the value of their contributions to the advancement of knowledge (in academia) or evidence-based policymaking and if they can impart their knowledge to novice participants. In addition to knowledge co-production and the use of science to solve problems of public concern, citizen scientists may also develop competences that are necessary for informed decision-making and preservation of cultural heritage. Exemplified by a citizen humanities project asking citizens to raise (and answer) their own research questions, the combination of the acquisition of domain knowledge and academic literacy, including academic methods, academic reasoning and academic writing, are illustrated. Therefore, a combination of project-based and problem-based learning in co-created citizen science may enhance the acquisition of sticky knowledge.
Third Mission Calling – Accessing Creative Learning Environments through Blended Service Learning
Martin Gerner
Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences & Technische Universität Dresden (Germany)
Educational research has strikingly proven that meaningful advances in teaching and learning can be reached through civic commitment. It applies to both individual learning results and general effects inherent to the institutional learning context. In this respect, service learning provides invaluable third-mission momentum that particularly encourages personalized, self-determined learning experiences in related fields of action. Promising prospects can certainly be attributed to aspects of sustainability – cultural sustainability and heritage, in particular – for some reasons: Sustainability constitutes a highly relevant and enriching domain of service learning, since it is future-oriented, innovative, increasingly in demand, activating, participatory/stakeholder-involving and cross-cutting; moreover, it calls for customized solutions and applications suitable for daily routines. Interestingly enough, these characteristics equally apply to service-learning and sustainability contexts. Given the ambitious 2030 agenda on sustainable development goals (SDGs), sustainability frequently remains vague – even in scientific contexts – as to its educational implications, either too detached or too trivial in scope. Furthermore, science-driven debates on sustainability are perceived exclusive and ivory-tower-like; it has been criticized that they hardly enable permeability between science and society, commonly referred to as third mission – even though yielding respective effects is appreciated and essentially required! Instead, learning and teaching processes are increasingly threatened by fixed, curricular structures which restrict or preclude individual opportunities of self-conducted, exploratory learning. That is highly unsatisfactory since creative power is considerably wasted. Thus, the relatively novel, higher-education learning and research assignment aims at elucidating to what extent purposefully-provided scopes for development of blended service-learning settings yield learning effects (cognitive, affective, and behavioural) of students within the context of sustainability-oriented stakeholders and/or institutions of civil society and/or business sector. Such work-inprogress account assumes the challenging practice of directly contributing to the context-framing process of a cross-cutting sustainability agenda, including heritage and cultural industries. In first place, sustainability is to be made tangible, relevant and viable. Secondly, in which ways does the decision-making leeway of service learning (third mission) apply to the sustainability context? Combining service-learning within sustainability contexts, five research propositions are supported of making (cultural) sustainability/sustainable development.
- tangible in view of problem-based environments for personalized, self-determined and proactive learning;
- process-focussed in terms of coping with uncertainty and providing step-by-step solutions;
- visible due to publicity of achieved best practices;
- viable through fostering co-operative, inclusive mechanisms (team play) and joint accomplishment; and
- adaptable to shifting contexts as result of experimental creativity.
Session 2: 15 April 2020
A Brief Analysis of Teaching for 21st century Skills at Web Content Manager and Designer Program at the University of Borås
Jasmina Maric
University of Borås (Sweden)
This paper offers a brief analysis of teaching for 21st century skills at Web Content Manager and Designer Program at the University of Borås. Therefore, we started with a thorough literature review to understand what 21st century skills are. After presenting the consensus on this matter we juxtaposed 21st century skills with six problems faced by students observed in teaching practices. Looking for successful strategies for teaching 21st century skills we offered examples from recently applied teaching practices to cater for developing 21st century “super skills”. Finally, even though we argue that much more research in the field is needed, we can say that inquiry and problem based learning are gaining quite positive learning feedbacks. However, It is impossible to deliver good quality teaching for 21st century skills acquisition without consciously investing in it. Keeping that in mind, this paper can be useful as a good starting point when discovering factors that drive the motivation of adoption of 21st century skills.
Design Thinking & Maker Culture : Digital Humanities Meets the Creative Industries The IGNITE Curriculum
Susan Schreibman & Marianne Ping Huang
Maastricht University (Netherlands) & Aarhus University (Denmark)
This talk introduces IGNITE, a project funded by Creative Europe Media that unites academic institutions and creative industry partners from three countries to create open-source, online course to be delivered via the #dariahTeach platform.
Six 5 ECTS courses are currently being developed under the general rubric of ‘Design Thinking & Making in the Arts and Sciences’. These courses can be taken together or independently, wholly online or through blended learning. It can be used in a wide variety of teaching and training settings, or by lone learners who cannot access the theories and technologies presented locally.
This talk introduces the theoretical and practical tools, methods, and resources to integrate design thinking & making into one’s research or teaching practice. It makes the case for maker culture as a distincly humanities practice: as a way to expose past wrongs, develop social justice initiatives, and participate as an equal partner with other disciplines in helping to solve society’s grand challenges. Our present moment has demonstrated just how essential to life and well-being the arts and humanities are: the IGNITE suite of courses provides a vareity of case studies in our field of people who have done just this
Want to keep up with IGNITE’s progress? Follow us on Twitter @dariahTeach or sign up for our mailing list.
Session 3: 22 April 2020
Makers Make: Creating Humanity Centered Open Organizations for the Purpose of Good
Eveline Wandl-Vogt
Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria)
COVID19 is a fire accelerant. A lot of processes, structures and incremental changes that were about to happen within the next few years, are happening within a few months challenging given /scientific/ mindsets. In this lightening talk the author is briefly introducing two spaces for experimentation and social innovation, “exploration space” at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Ars Electronica Research Institute “knowledge for humanity (k4h)” at Ars Electronica. Both movements are embedded in two quiet different already long time existing organizisations, the Austrian Academy of Sciences as one of the leading non-university research institutions in Austria and Ars Electronica, a private company, one of the global leading actors in the media-art sector and core player on the intersection of science:technology:society-knowledge transfer for more than 40 years. In both of these existing organisations, the new foundations act as innovation testbeds. exploration space aims to rethink genres against a background of digital humanities, wheres k4h+ is an antidisciplinary approach to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and application with the aim to democratize innovation. Both foundations are themselves innovative from an organizational setting, acting as open movements and are accredited and listed as best practice examples for Open Innovation of the Austrian Government.
The main concepts and processes of the movements as part of the Open Innovation Research Infrastructure are introduced, such as Humanity Centered Design /beyond human-centred Design/, Knowledge for Development and purpose driven foundation along the Sustainable Development Goals and against a background of a Quintuple Helix Model of Society. Certain foci are given to the open learning culture of the transdisciplinary /exploration space/ and antidisciplinary /k4h+/ spaces, the contextualisation of this according COVID19-challenge and the application of Design Thinking 3.0 in re-thinking a scientific organization as a purpose driven movement.
A series of co-designed interactions fosters cross-sectoral, cross-organizational knowledge exchange and transformation process since 2015, “brainfood. methods to inspire”. The next installation takes place in early may 2020, “exponential science”, co-designed
and co-organised in collaboration with The Businesstherapist
Niki Ernst. Due to the limited time frame having a prior look at those introductionary lectures is proposed:
1) futurecraft
2) knowledge transfer
Filmmakers Collaboration on the World’s Digital Revolution
Ludovit Labik
Tomas Beta University (Czech Republic)
Our generation of filmmakers is collaborating on the world’s digital revolution. After all industrial revolutions there is a revolution of work with data, their handling, storage, dissemination, but also with their aesthetic and artistic content associated with the specifics resulting from technological change. From the history of film, we know that every technological change that has come into film imaging has brought with it a change in aesthetics, a change in the perspective of aesthetics, and has created new possibilities for aesthetics and artistic expression. The digital revolution has also hit the ground and has profoundly influenced the criteria of speed, reliability, expanded capabilities, operability, creativity and criticism. This change affected all technological cinematic disciplines: film editing, film sound, the way and form of video capture in front of the camera, but most influenced the realization of human imagination by the creation of visual effects in picture postproduction. Visual effects are a direct successor of the trick camera, special effects, animated film, are an extended hand to realize the vision of the screenwriters and the economical wallet of the producers. Are visual effects in the film expression art? Should it be part of the festival reviews of the film profession? Can visual effects be university-type education? Last year, the University of Film Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia achieved another significant success. The Ministry of Education approved accreditation of Game Design again as the first art university education in a wide region. In the presentation I would like to present the achievements of the students of the VFX Atelier FTF VŠMU Bratislava and look for common points of intersection with VFX and GD education in Austria. Prof. Ludovit Labik, ArtD.
Digital Knowledge about Research and Teaching – A User-Centred Design Approach
Florian Bettel
University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria)
The digital organisation of knowledge about current research and teaching at universities and non-university research institutions has undergone professionalisation, international networking and standardisation as well as increased commercialization in recent years. Novel digital tools enable artists and scientists to communicate with various forms of the public about their work. These tools often implement evaluation criteria that have been borrowed from specific scientific disciplines and are sold as a commercial product (e.g. Impact Factor). In this way, these evaluation criteria as well as specific forms of organising knowledge become manifest in disciplines in which previously completely different criteria were common. Against this background, the project “Portfolio/Showroom – Making Art Research Accessible” has set itself the goal of developing a current research information system that is thought out of the needs of the artists and scientists. The focus is not on the evaluation and analysis of the information entered, but on the question of how a digital tool can support day-to-day work, how and what should be communicated and in what terms can one think about one’s own work. The project relies on a user-centred design and a user-driven software development that focus on the requirements that artists and scientists place on a digital solution that fits their needs. Portfolio was released as an open source web application in summer 2019. In conjunction with the second application Showroom, these web applications were developed in accordance with the FAIR principles, which, however, were thought from the perspective of the users (“findable” in this context means for example “Where have I published the paper together with my colleague in 2012?”). The proposed contribution would like to take a critical look at the results of the software development process, the partially implemented features, it wants to locate the “Portfolio” application in the context of an increasing commercialisation as well as monopolising knowledge, and ask the question how to meet the needs of standardisation and when non-disciplinary logics are adopted.
Design-Thinking Formal Correspondence: Gamification as Learning Intervention in Curriculum Delivery
Akshata Bhatt
Dhempe College of Arts and Science (India)
Letters are an integral component of administrative activities in various domains. It is paramount that language-facilitators equip learners with requisite letter-writing skills necessary to take ownership of their actions and collaborate with different stakeholders in an attempt to tackle global challenges linked to UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. However, prescriptive and lecture-based modalities of instruction in formal correspondence often prove inadequate in instilling a nuanced knowledge of communication rubrics among learners. As a response to this pedagogical problem, faced especially in Indian classroom set-up, the present study initiates gamification as an intervention to facilitate immersive learning in formal correspondence.
The present paper traces the conception, design, prototyping, and testing of an interactive game developed by the researchers in the context of higher education. As players, learners in this self-paced, interactive game assist characters created within the module to navigate through myriad pressing scenarios. In order to progress through the game, the players need to communicate with the characters to understand the socio-cultural and economic context and then correspond with various stakeholders through proper administrative channels. They gain Experience Points along the way. In Level One, players help their characters tackle issues that arise on campus. After they graduate Level One, they have to tackle other civic issues from health care and sanitation facilities to provision for green and clean energy.
The first iteration of the prototype was thoroughly tested with undergraduate learners. Suitable pre and post-assessments were conducted. The progression of students on the verticals of format, grammar and content of letter writing was tested. The students’ responsiveness to issues that were tackled as part of the game was also recorded. Through results and conclusion, the paper puts forth the benefits of integrating such gamified modules within curriculum for enhanced experiential learning and, concomitantly, greater sensitization of learners towards social issues.
Session 4: 29 April 2020
Maker culture and industrial development and production processes — possibilities and limitations to improve the sustainability of products
Peter Knobloch
University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria)
Maker culture and industrial development and production processes — possibilities and limitations to improve the sustainability of products Since the early 2000s participants of the maker culture developed a growing number of projects, that challenge industrial development and production processes. The objective of this paper is to collect the recurring points of the discussions, confronting the possibilities and limitations of those two, sometimes quite opposing approaches, and summarise them in a structured manner to serve as foundation for any further debates to e.g. find ways to improve the sustainability of a given product. Therefore recurring points from online and print articles as well as talks at maker culture related events and interviews with developers of open source hardware/software projects were collected and used as a starting point for a literature review. The overall result is, that the main dividing lines can be found looking at aspects like intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, self determination, financial budget, time budget, agility of development processes, small/large scale fabrication methods, open/closed source, open/closed licensing models, and strategic considerations. Though one of the two sides at those dividing lines might be characteristic to one of the two approaches, they are never exclusive to them. To improve the sustainability by increasing the longevity through repairability of a given product, a combination of open source and open hardware/software licence as well as enabling small and large scale fabrication interchangeably seems to be most advantageous.
Story Maps and Open Education in the Flipped Classroom
Vladimir Aleksic
University of Niš (Serbia)
Story Maps and Open Education in the Flipped Classroom key words: medieval culture, flipped classroom, story maps, open education The presentation aims to explore the possible ways to use the flipped classroom teaching method in combination with story maps and open education practice in teaching at the university level and promoting medieval culture. The practical and theoretical knowledge acquired during the preparation of the presentation and the IGNITE events we will apply in teaching the optional subject Medieval Culture and Digital Technologies at the University of Niš, Serbia. We will describe the proposed teaching model by elaborating on the case study Sanitation Culture in the Medieval City of Dubrovnik and Neighboring Countries.
Teaching objectives:
• To investigate the legal measures and practical steps, which local authorities undertook to improve the general sanitary conditions, such as paid communal doctors, buildings of hospitals and lazarets, travel bans, etc.;
• To discuss the issue of migrations of skilled doctors (Apennine Peninsula to the east Adriatic coast) and the knowledge transfer as a research question;
• To measure the impact of the above-described situation on the overall social development. Stage one: introduction of the learning material We will put on disposal a compelling story map by using ESRI Cascade Story Map App. It will consist of the following elements:
• Introduction into the topic and importance of the researched question;
• Historical background and historical sources explanation based on vivid examples;
• A clear description of individual/group tasks of all persons involved.
Stage two: discussion and problem solving During the class, the students will face the selected teaching material to discuss it individually or in groups. It will consist of examples from the various written historical sources followed by the directly related secondary literature.
Stage three: open education Students will retype the part of the discussed teaching material so that the professor can make it public on the Open Science Framework platform as a part of a small joint and `sticky` educative open data project.
Digital Oral Histories: a Critical Look at the Practice of Preserving Oral Histories and How This May Reflect on Digital Humanities/learning
Esther Aminata Kamara
Maastricht University (the Netherlands)
Digital archiving can serve as a means to preserve and study cultural artefacts, histories and memories that have historically been disregarded in archiving. This becomes increasingly relevant when regarding this as a potential for ownership and retaliation for marginalised communities, especially when co-created with local communities. In Sierra Leone, efforts towards preserving Sierra Leonean culture and history has predominantly been undertaken by non-Sierra Leonean actors; the UK, former coloniser, has embarked on preserving historical artefacts and documents during the colonial era and is currently still contributing by digitalising physical archives (mainly documents). Oral history, however, is a key component of Sierra Leonean cultural history, and is not part of this digitisation project. This brings about questions not only of ownership, but also of power relations regarding the selection of archived materials and those involved in the process. As an integral part of Sierra Leonean culture, the lack of preservation of this tradition is concerning. The digital divide and growing urbanisation problematise notions of audience, accessibility and skills in archiving these intangible texts. Can the digital serve as a solution, or does the digital in itself contain racialisation that would further neo-colonialism? Following the concerns of the Black Digital Humanities scholar Kim Gallon, it is important to investigate the relation between computational processes and the texts we digitise and study through these digital platforms. Drawing on the case study of preserving oral storytelling from the Limba tribe of Sierra Leone, I explore whether tracing the development of consuming, disseminating and preserving narratives from an oral-history lineage would offer new insights as to how, if, and by whom this preservation could happen digitally. Ultimately, this reflects on the Digital Humanities as a possible space for academic diversity and inclusion, in which conceptualisations of non-Western narrative traditions can participate in the larger efforts towards understanding the role of digital storytelling in contemporary meaning creation and preservation practices.
Design Thinking in Interactive Digital Narratives for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: Museum-school Synergies in Museum Affinity spaces
Stefania Savva
Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus)
The proposed presentation shall give insights into the potential of design thinking for interactive digital narratives employed in immersive virtual learning environments (IVLEs), to inform teaching and learning in primary and secondary school curriculum across Europe, especially targeted to culturally and linguistically diverse students. This investigation is part of the Museum Affinity Spaces (MAS) project, an empirically based, pedagogically-driven postdoctoral research (POST-DOC/0916/0248), funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation. The innovation of the project derives from the theoretical framework, drawing on a creative synergy between multiliteracies pedagogy, flow theory and affinity spaces theory, implemented through design thinking principles. The project employs design-based research (DBR) and is structured to unfold in three phases: preliminary analysis, the prototyping stage, and implementation and evaluation or assessment. This presentation shall focus on the findings from the first and second phase of research since the project embarked, including the design and implementation of the MAS infrastructure: a strategic partnership search finder featuring the creation of institutional profiles to match organisations such as museums and schools (MAS-Portal); the virtual museum creator, being a desktop application with a virtual environment created according to the MAS Pedagogical Framework (MAS-Cabinet); access to resource packs with pedagogical learning scenarios and lesson plans, tutorials and webinars on how to deliver successful museum-school partnerships (MAS-Archive); and a support mechanism for the MAS community to communicate and collaborate (MAS-Hub). The triangulated mixed methods analysis of data from participation in the project of 210 museum educators, school teachers and students, coming from 13 countries from across Europe, has two aims equally significant: firstly, to explore how the interactive digital narrative experiences of participating students are formulated; second, to reveal how the design thinking aspect, affects the teaching and learning experience cycle for adult educators and diverse students.
DigiCulture: a MOOC for Creative Industries Professionals
Chiara Zuanni
University of Graz (Austria)
‘DigiCulture’ is an Erasmus+ project, which aims to develop the digital competencies of adults in the creative and cultural industries. It aims to provide opportunities for developing digital skills necessary for working in the cultural and creative industries in Europe, with a focus on Romania, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Lithuania, UK, and Ireland. Project partners in these countries are developing a MOOC, which will be piloted, also in a blended-learning format, in 2020 and officially launched in 2021. The MOOC curriculum will include modules on: the Internet, World Wide Web and introduction to the digital world; publishing digital content; copyright and open licenses; digital curation; digital safety, security, and ethics; digital storytelling; digital audiences and analytics (Google, Facebook, Twitter, SEO); social media for culture; augmented and virtual reality; mobile apps and mobile user experience; digital management in culture; digital communication and presentation; online and mobile digital media tools (audio-video production). This poster will present the preliminary research conducted between 2018 and 2019, and introduce the content of the MOOC, drawing on the examples of the two modules developed by the University of Graz. The module in Digital Curation has been developed so to introduce course attenders to the notion of digitization, online catalogues and archives (including metadata enrichment), virtual exhibitions, and the engagement with online collections. The module on copyright and open licenses is instead introducing the main regulations in the field, and focusing on the example of the Creative Commons so to enable students to evaluate the best approach to the dissemination of their work, as well as understanding the implications of reusing online content.
Embracing Design Thinking for Sustainable Fashion
Nimrah Syed
Ontario College of Art & Design University (Canada)
When a basic cotton T-shirt reaches the user, it has already gone through so many hands during an extensive process of sowing, harvesting, carding, spinning, sewing, dyeing, washing, transporting, packaging and retailing. By this time, this T-shirt has consumed approximately 2700 litres of water and its life has just started with its user. The consumption of this t-shirt i.e., wear, tear, washing and how many more lives the t-shirt will get, if not ended up in a landfill, remains to be seen. It is high time that the fashion industry is looked at beyond its glitz and glamour. In response to this immediate need, a course called Sustainable Fashion was introduced at Interactive Media Arts (IMA) program, New York University Shanghai. IMA is an emerging media program with a focus on conceptual development along with practical hands-on technical skills where students explore the expressive possibilities of new technologies. With an emphasis on critical development and maker culture, the course encouraged students to reflect on the current design practices in the fashion industry and examine the concept of circular economy. As critics of unsustainable practices and enthusiasts for sustainable development, the students explored factors involved in the business of fashion and solutions through the use of design thinking and sustainability frameworks for challenges identified as part of their inquiry process. This paper discusses design thinking framework used in a Liberal Arts course at an introductory level with an interdisciplinary student body bringing a range of skill sets. The design interventions created by students in response to the problems identified in the fashion industry are reviewed as examples to facilitate the discourse around the application of this particular framework.