Innovation and Application in Academia
Best Practices in Visual Arts: Using Images in Your Projects, Papers, and Presentations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Corinne Kennedy
The "Pictorial Turn" expressed by WJT Mitchell in 1994 refers to the use of images not just by the fine arts but by other disciplines in everyday use. Most people use images in social media, presentations, classes, publications, etc. without realizing they are doing it incorrectly due to a lack of knowledge. Most people unknowingly commit copyright infringement because they do not provide recognition to the creator. Academic librarians have created research guides to aid those who use images to provide proper credit to the creator. These research guides help educate their patrons and academic communities by providing information on the appropriate acknowledgement of the creator and citation format for images. Research guides developed by subject specialists at the academic level can even benefit those outside the academic community with their quality and depth of information. There are many variations in the content available in research guides which can be confusing because there is no standard. This paper will teach those attending to find and use images properly, while also providing examples on the variation of differences in research guides.
Creating an Interactive Narrative-Based Online Reality (VR) Experience for Independent Learning in Higher Education: Transferring Workplace Narratives into Online Environments for the Development of VR Training Resources
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alasdair Swenson
There have been a number of recent investments by large organisations to incorporate online reality (VR) within their staff training programmes. This is done with a view to reducing or replacing costly or physically dangerous training scenarios. These innovations in training have been implemented on a large scale indicating confidence in the technology and for its perceived benefits. While this success is seen to be a rising trend within the enterprise sector, there has been a notable lack of immersive technology development for higher education where students are increasingly familiar with or actively using this technology in early education and at home. We are developing a VR application with collaboration from academics and tutors within Law to see how we can best translate paper-based legal narratives into engaging and challenging online environments where the students can choose to observe, respond and interact with legal proceedings. Our intent is to provide an innovative learning resource for a discipline (Law) that has been traditionally slow to implement new technology. We are aiming to observe and measure improvements in challenging areas such as student recruitment, confidence, retention, and attainment. During the development phase, we are testing and implementing features focused on visual and spoken narrative interaction such as voice recognition, AI-based avatars and VOIP. We will be observing the users' reactions to the environment, and measuring the psychophysiological response of users in order to discover what might constitute a good user experience and learning outcome within a online environment.
Transformative Learning through Creative Literacy: Pedagogies for the Visual in Innovative Learning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Siu Challons-Lipton
21st-century fluencies are not solely about technical prowess. Technology, particularly the Web, requires skills for reading and writing creatively in order to derive meaning from what is being communicated. This requires creative skills and a creative language, an appropriate vocabulary to help express one’s understandings. At the Queens University of Charlotte, we recently introduced a class in Creative Literacy to address these issues. Students are encouraged to take time to examine and reflect and to foster self-awareness through this process. To this end, I insist on primary research, including archival sources and interviews, group work, Ted Talks and maintaining sketchbooks. The aim is for students to find meaning in the midst of vast amounts of information, and to find the connections that transform information into useful and valuable knowledge. I challenge students to take risks in my classes, to look at things in ways they have never imagined, taking responsibility for the person they are and will become. I am inspired by the teaching approach fostered at the experimental liberal arts college, Black Mountain College of North Carolina (1933-1956), where students were encouraged to trust their own perceptions and build autonomy. Black Mountain College was not about isolated examples or instances of art within the confines of a classroom, but seeing all life as art. Education should reflect life, to learn to make intelligent, discriminating decisions and develop a capacity for initiative and independence in order to become active citizens in this innovative conceptual world.
