The aim of the learning technologies group in OUCS is to providing University staff and students with training in IT literacy skills and how to effectively use C&IT in teaching and research:
- Promoting that use;
- Providing well equipped teaching and training spaces;
- Recognising and celebrating creativity.
It would be easy to be quite complacent about that role. To stick with what works and not change your programme too much, but that’s not the OUCS way, we are always looking to review our provision and push the comfort envelope a bit.
At a university like Oxford it is important to think about how rapidly the skills staff and student need change. Our new Apple Training Room is all about the 21st Century digital literacy skills which are needed for teachers and researchers who work on a global stage.
Skills which were one the province of artists and filmmakers are now the medium of an entire generation— and this phenomenon is emerging in amazingly similar ways in countries across the globe.
Tools that allow sophisticated manipulation and creation of images, video, and sound are more and more commonplace, and in higher education, the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to create new knowledge content and disseminate it, to manipulate and trans-form digital media, to distribute it appropriately, make it discoverable for others and use it ethically are new key skills in teaching and learning.
One of the things we are doing today is launching a new creative strand embedded within our teaching programme that will run over the next two terms, it will run like a red thread though the programme highlighting specific skills and use of new media.
The work done in this strand and the work created as a result will be showcased in the summer as part of our annual OxTALENT awards.
This strand will be called make: and will include within it opportunities to see the creative potential in a number of different areas, currently:
make: audio
make: images
make: music
make: open
make: posters
make: presentations
make: together
make: videos
make: websites
make: open will build on and embed the learning coming out of our open educational resources project. Around the need for colleagues creating materials to make informed decisions about how and where materials are made available, how they are licensed for re-use, or not, and how those choosing to use or reuse existing materials in a new contexts can use them ethically within the copyright licence granted to them by the author.
make: together will emphasise the synergy that exists between the different creative disciplines, brining different media and approaches together, but also, of course, in the work of student teams and collaborative working on projects.
This room will provide a venue not only for our own courses our own courses, workshops, lunch time sessions, but also as a place to showcase and support the creativity of staff and students.