Digital creativity in the
curriculum and beyond
Claire Allam – Learning and Teaching Services
Graham McElearney, Chris Clow, Tom Foster, Pete Mella - CiCS
Alan Philips – University Counselling Service
Brendan Stone – School of English
Today’s session:
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Introduction
Examples
Activity
Plenary
How we can support you
What is creativity?
• The ability to imagine or conceptualise
something new
• The ability to create some output from this
vision
– Craft skills
– Tenacity
– Project planning and management
What is digital creativity?
• The ability to realise the creative process in
the digital domain:
– Audio
– Video
– Screencast (typically presentation with audio)
– Website (which has the ability to collate all the
above)
In the curriculum and beyond…
• Subjects that do NOT ordinarily involve
creating digital media
• Maybe ostensibly text based
• Often using traditional assessment methods
• Work may typically be assessed….
• …. or may lie outside the formal curriculum
– Outreach
– Well Connected project (UCS)
Why Creativity…….?
• Expected benefits:
• New skills – information/IT literacy
• Employability – employers value creative
thinkers
• Collaborative/group working skills
Why Creativity…….?
• Use the affordances of different media to
– Visualise ideas
– Articulate ideas
– Different ways of structuring arguments, information
and narratives
• Encourage divergent thinking
• New forms of interpretation
• Creation of media leads to creation of
knowledge……
Examples
• Galdos – Hispanic Studies video interpreting
literature
• We are tomorrow’s scientists….. example
• Seeing Stars – creative and interpretive audio
soundscapes
What the students say….
• Ongoing and new projects with students from
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Law
Hispanic Studies
Politics
Biomedical Science
School of English
ScHARR
Dentistry
Architecture
Information Studies
What the students say….
• “I was given the the chance to learn new skills (which
will help me in terms of employability) as well as the
opportunity to take a different approach to my
academic studies.”
• “I really think that to encourage more creative and
hands-on learning within the University is a great
thing.”
What the students say….
• “Also producing the podcast was particularly useful
in helping to develop my verbal skills, by helping to
deliver the argument orally, which in turn led to a
deeper understanding of the topic area”
• “Engaging in the process of producing a podcast
facilitated an active exploration and investigation in
to the topic area… and in particular provided an
effective medium to put my arguments across”.
What the students say….
• “I needed to reach a greater depth of understanding
of the material in order to present it with sufficient
clarity”
• “The process of simplifying concepts and briefly
summarising them helped me to grasp the
complexity of the issue”
• I think it made his work a lot easier to understand as
we brought it to life. Also you had to analyse each
line of the dialogue to decide how you wanted it
acted, so this made me understand it more”
Activity
• Devise a creative project for your students
• work in pairs
• Use the worksheet to help structure your
thinking and write down your ideas
• report back
Activity – worksheet prompts
• Executive Summary
• Pedagogical outcomes – benefits to students
and staff
– New skills
– new understandings
• What “purpose” – replicate activity of the
teacher?
– create a learning resource for use by others
– create feedback on assessed work
Activity – worksheet prompts
• What medium to use?
– affordances of each – audio, video, screencast,
web,
– limitations of each……
– Be prescriptive or allow free choice?
• Curricular or extra-curricular?
– assessed/non-assessed
– how to assess?
Activity – worksheet prompts
• What issues might arise?
• What support will you need?
• Space for detailed notes if you wish
Plenary – a round up of ideas and issues…..
How we can support you
• Creative Media team in CiCS
– Chris Clow, Pete Mella, Tom Foster
• Creative Media Suite and resources
– Equipment and support for audio, video,
screencasting, website production
– http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/creativemedia
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5rNnvMyRrQ
• Pedagogical support in LeTS and CiCS
– Claire Allam, Graham McElearney, TEL team
• We carry mobile media production studios
around with us all the time…..