WIT Mentoring Certificate

This morning a very pretty parchment arrives in the post from the Academic Awards Office of Waterford Institute of Technology. My 10 credit, Level 9 Certificate in Mentoring, a component of my LIN Flexible Pathway Postgraduate Diploma in Learning Teaching and Assessment. Thanks to Sean Moran and his WIT team, as well as my fellow Mentoring colleagues, for all their assistance on this excellent module.

Sadly, the powers that be in IADT have decided that the LIN postgraduate Diploma is an 'intermediate' qualification, is not an 'appropriate' postgrad qualification (as they'd previously agreed), and therefore does not make me eligible for progression to Lecturer. I now have to wait for the completion and conferring of my Masters, sometime in November 2015, for my progression application to be even considered again. A valued member of the Institute team? It certainly doesn't feel like it.

Graduation! Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment!

24th October 2013 in Athlone Institute - the second cohort of LIN Dippers graduate! Great to spend the day with Mick Mc Grath, John Ryan, Anne Marie O' Brien, Carmel Kealey, Nuala Harding and Miriam O' Connor. Sinead Bracken and Marion Palmer were missed by all of us! Great also to meet some of the families, who've been supporting us all for the past few years through our long (but hugely rewarding) LIN teaching and learning journey!

As I said to John Ryan as we sat waiting for the ceremony to commence 'we never thought it would end here'! And our teaching and learning journey doesn't end... Next stop 'The Masters'.

Thanks to all and well done to all!

Mick, John, DQ @back, Anne Marie and Carmel at front

The Three Musketeers

Unlikely Scholar!

2013 LIN conference!

A fantastic 2013 LIN conference on Thursday 17th October in the Ashling Hotel in Dublin! Inspirational presentations from Mick Healey (on 'Sustainable Models for Engaging Undergraduates in Research and Inquiry') and from Newcastle University's Colin Bryson and Ruth Furlonger on 'Engaging Students Through Partnership'. Ruth, Newcastle's Student Engagement Officer was, for me, the STAR of the entire conference - a recent grad who drives student engagement through student-driven initiatives! An inspiration to us all! Well done girl!

Other presentations I saw were NCBI's Antoinette Fennell piece on 'Facilitating Design Students engagement with older people and people with disabilities',  IADT's Clyde Doyle's presentation on 'Making Makers' and The Maker Movement and Mary I's Margaret O' Keefe's presentation on student placement in drama education.

Marion Palmer and Nuala Harding did a great exposition on the LIN Flexible Pathway and the LIN Capstone and I, for my sins, did my provocative presentation on IADT Animation's 'links with the animation industry - not a complete bed of roses'.

Thanks to Niamh Rushe, Marion, Nuala and the LIN team for working incredibly hard to setup and run a great day for us all. I emailed them that it was 'like coming home for the day, into the LIN teaching and learning family'. LIN and the LIN conference must persist in some way, shape or form for the future!

DQ does his provocative presentation at 2013 LIN conference

Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment

The day has arrived - after a seeming lifetime (3 years) through my Teaching and Learning study journey, and following successful completion of my AIT Capstone module (Reflection, Action and Analysis), I have now completed my LIN Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment! A postgraduate qualification! As Mick Mc Grath says 'we are now PGDippers!'

Thanks to all my T+L learning network - especially Marion Palmer, Mary Anne O' Carroll, Laura Venables, Cliona Flood, Muiris O' Grady, Thelma Chambers, Barry O' Donoghue, Mick Mc Grath, John Ryan, Fiona Fulham, Eloise Tan, Anne Spencer, Nuala Harding, Miriam O' Connor, Sean Moore, Sarah Moore, Teemu Auersalo, Keith Foran, Damian Byrne, Ron Hamilton, Shirley Casey, Sherra Murphy, Elaine Sissons, Mark Riordan, Rebecca Roper, Ian Ginn, John Parry, Geert Vergauwe, Hannah Barton, Donald Taylor Black, Andrew Power, Jim Devine, Cormac O' Kane, Annie Doona, Joan Mannion, Anne Marie O' Brien, Kevin O Rourke, Leonie Sharrock, Frances Boylan and all the 'elss girls', the IADT Academic Council and the IADT T+L Committee. I know I've forgotten to mention crucial, obvious people here (I've already updated this list eight times) - apologies and thanks to you too!

Thanks most of all to Katy, Sophie, Thomas and Daniel and to my DL041 Animation students - for teaching me everything. Love to all! My learning continues.

LIN Capstone Presentation!

My LIN teaching and learning journey, begun three years ago with the AIT T+L Cert, reaches a significant milestone with Thursday's AIT T+L Capstone presentation. I found the Capstone a very useful and engaging module - far from a formality. The opportunities to map learning gaps and to plan ahead, strategising my professional development, were especially welcome, timely, necessary.

Key learning from the day - Anne Marie O' Brien's 'teaching and learning has been like learning a new language'! Great presentations from all and great to see my buddies Mick Mc Grath and John Ryan! Thanks to Marion Palmer, Nuala Harding, Miriam O' Connor and UCC's Marian Mc Carthy (and Joan Mannion in the background, organising everything)!

The 6 2013 LIN T+L Dippers - Carmel, Anne Marie, John, Sinead, Mick and DQ

The 2013 LIN T+L Capstone staff - Marion, Miriam, Marian and Nuala

AIT Capstone Progress

I've just finished my first draft of my AIT Teaching and Learning Capstone Assignment One - the core of it is around 4,200 words (target was 3,500), and the entire document is over 10,000 words. A very useful reflection on my Teaching and Learning journey from 2010 - my how our ideas have evolved over three short years (seems like a lifetime).

Document needs some drawer time now. I need to focus on my Research Masters.

AIT Capstone - 19th June 2013 - and a revelation!

July - just catching up on blogposts. Back on the 19th of June, we returned to AIT for the 2nd session of the T+L Capstone module. Great session! I feel this module will allow me finally to PLAN my professional development over the next few years.

Whilst doing the Learning Outcome Mapping Exercise for the module, I had something of a revelation, realising that the LIN T+L modules have been a most unusual postgraduate experience, because the learning from the modules has from the outset, plugged straight back into our professional practice to the benefit of our students. Quite unlike most 'normal' postgraduate activity.

10th May - AIT capstone

Friday the 10th of May and the AIT Teaching and Learning Capstone commences! On completion of this, I'll have earned a LIN Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning, which will allow my progression to Lecturer to finally proceed.

Thanks to Nuala Harding and Marion Palmer for leading the session - some good work done! This is Dave's scary mask from one of the reflective sessions - an expression of your professional practice. (I called it 'a Day in The Life of Dave').

Great to see Mick Mc Grath and John Ryan there! Our joint Teaching and Learning Network continues...

Revisiting Practice Research

Revisiting Practice Research Gradcam

21st March, 10.30-4.00pm

What has come to be termed Practice Based Research has been in a feature of third level and research cultures of the last 15 years. Yet it’s emergence has not been a greeted with consensus nor has it been without challenges in both its traction or implementation. Each institutional setting has performed PBR in different ways.  Across many of the institutions involved in Art and Design on the island of Ireland, PBR has been adopted at the PhD level though Level 9 is now a prospect.

In this context, GradCAM with the Learning and Education in Art and Design (LEAD) network are hosting a platform that takes stock of where we are and where we have been with regards to this emergence and its surrounding debate. It will allow for a focused discussion on the nature and problems of conducting PBR in the Creative Arts, Art and Design and Media at this current moment. We are inviting a number of partners and contributors across the network to present position papers on what they understand by PBR or Practice Led Research and all of the permutations in between. However, rather than only leave it at this top level discussion for senior staff and supervisors, we also seek presentations from researchers recently graduated that ground and anchor the actualities of PBR in these institutions.

I like the way the descriptor has refused to describe such research as 'practice based' or 'practice led'. An incredibly interesting discussion and an obvious sense that IADT is trailing far behind in this postgraduate area.

Animation Wins in HEA Report!

It’s official? Animation are the apparent darlings of Creative Arts Education in Ireland!

‘While we don't have detailed data, anecdotally, except for in animation where almost all of
our graduates go into employment in the field in which they trained…’  (page 19 para 4)

Let’s not run away with ourselves… Things are not as rosy as they seem, even in the darling area of animation.

After a long wait and much anticipation, the HEA’s Dublin Creative Arts Review Report is finally out. At first, I was concerned that our discipline was singled out in the Report’s Introduction…

‘Due to a shortfall in NFQ level 8 places, bottlenecks are particularly prevalent in disciplines such as animation and film;’ (page 3 top para). The bottlenecks issue is revisited more critically in the Report’s 3.2.3 section ‘Small is not always beautiful…’

‘This is problematic if the size of the local creative industries sector grows or if the international reputation for arts training in Dublin were to grow. In either scenario, it seems it would be almost impossible to be able to quickly scale course offerings to meet levels of demand.’ page 45 para 4

In animation, we’ve been at this ‘impossible’ stage for years – running at saturation in terms of student numbers and without any permission, resources, funding or space to grow.  How can we scale up our operation successfully and how will we get to areas of animation education that we’re not currently reaching? All whilst preserving the potentials of our students and grads - ‘future-proofing’ our kids with strong basic, core skills?

But the Report was far more critical (almost damning) in its analysis of more general creative arts education, pointing out that many creative arts graduates are either unemployed, underemployed or living in poverty.

“Many artists aspire to make a living from the arts, though most cannot.”
“For the vast majority of artists their income is below the poverty line.” (page 17 para 4)

And the relative complacency of the creative arts educators is pointed out too…

‘Courses in the arts are popular and easy to fill but this does not mean that there will be employment when the students finish.’ (page 19 para 5)

Whilst recognising the broader educational objectives, the Report focuses firmly on vocational aspects… ‘there should be a reasonable chance of employability at the end of the course.’ (page 15 para 4).

I’d disagree with the inference that all graduates need to ‘get a job’ in their discipline. In animation, this would suggest that we would ruthlessly train all of our students to ‘fit into studios’. Instead, our determination should be to allow all of our students to do what they want to do within our discipline, or within a related area. Graduates may choose to work in studios, they may want to setup their own studios or they may want to develop projects in related areas like illustration, internet video, transmedia or app development.

I like the Report’s realisation about what we’ve long called ‘future proofing’.  ‘It is likely that future art forms may rely on a student having a whole range of knowledge, skills and ways of working.’ (page 30 para 2) Get with the programme people! The creative arts and digital media have been this way for the past twenty years at least!

The Report is also more than a little naïve when it preaches about linkages with industry…

‘Internships and co-op arrangements are among the most effective ways in which to give learners the opportunity to experience not only the work world, but also potentially the professions that may enter. (page 45 para 2).

This is easy to say, but practically impossible to setup, without a really deliberate effort on the part of the industrial stakeholders. Desk space in studios costs money and studios don’t always ‘get’ (or care about) educational outcomes. To get line personnel from the studios is equally difficult. Don’t get me wrong – I agree with the Report. Internships and co-ops are the way forward. The practicalities remain challenging. We will persist.

I did approve of the Report’s dismissal of the supposed hierarchical stratification of Irish higher education as inapplicable to creative arts education…

‘This implies a hierarchy in which universities as located at the top and other providers further down. This view cannot be sustained within the creative arts in which individuals that undertake technical and practical training, and even those who are self-taught, can often gain greater professional status and more income than those with higher degrees.' (page 28 para 4)

The big news is on page 31 of the Report, where the ‘constituent college’ idea I’ve been preaching for an age gets a big endorsement.

‘There is currently a problem of scale. One way to overcome this could be to maintain the individual differences and histories of the various arts institutions but for them to become constituent colleges of a larger university organisational structure. In a constituent college model, the division of powers is balanced between the central governance structure of the university and its constituent colleges.

A collegiate model gives the constituent colleges a substantial amount of responsibility and
autonomy while still being structurally embedded in a larger and more cohesive overall university structure. A ‘constituent college’ model enables the richness and diversity of the offers to be maintained while having a more coherent structure in which to collaborate. A ‘college’ model also is less likely to lead to a homogenisation of offers where the ‘strongest’ may dominate but rather makes synergies more meaningful. A collegiate model also lends itself to effectively maintaining and marketing particular identities while avoiding undue overlap and internal competition.’

The other big news is in the Report’s Recommendations, on page 47...

‘It should be considered whether current courses could be consolidated into a three-year Model.’

I believe that, between a move to a 3:2 course model, with a big integration of postgraduate research (especially research by practice), internationalisation of our linkages, a more matrix delivery of course content, and truly flexible delivery (online material, part-time delivery, special purpose awards, real modular segmentation of our current courses), we can surge forward over the next few years. Add in the consolidation and rationalisations which will emerge from ‘mergers and alliances’ (or a ‘constituent college model’), as well as the considered integration of industrial stakeholders and I believe we have great scope for sectorial development. Such a flexible model is described on page 39 of the Report…

‘Delivery of higher education in Ireland must be characterised by flexibility. Higher education itself will need to innovate and develop if it is to provide flexible opportunities for larger and more diverse student cohorts. The nature of the learning community and the modes of teaching and learning are likely to change significantly over the coming years. These changes will be supported through innovative approaches to research-led learning, programme design, student assessment and a quality assurance system—all of which will emphasise nurturing creative and innovative minds.’

I do hope that HR are listening closely to the Report’s page 41 recommendations…

‘The current employment contracts for higher education teaching staff should be reviewed with a view to recognising artistic production and practice-based inquiry; community engagement; professional partnerships; reputation and standing; impact and teaching expertise.’

These are sweet words to the ears of people like me who've entered education from a discipline base. I do hope that our HR and RPL policies change rapidly to reflect the efforts of staff. Am I holding my breath? Curiously enough, I'm talking to HR this week...

I completely agree with the Report’s finding on page 43...

‘It is important that all levels of higher education do not educate for now. Education has to be about educating for the future. Education systems have to educate for future jobs that do not currently exist.’

I've been saying that forever!  We must try to be ahead of the curve! Yes!

This is an exciting Report, identifying many potentials for our specific discipline (animation) and for our broader third level sector in Ireland. There are exciting possibilities in this time of disruptive change, but we can't waste time, nor can we be complacent.

It's time for big-picture, future-thinking decision making!

Crumpled but Welcome!

It seems like a lifetime ago, but I set up this blog less than a year back, as part of a Level 9 DIT Personal Development Module (5 ECTS). Work was completed on the module in June 2012, and we've heard nothing until now...



Our DIT module certs have arrived! Rather crumpled and a little bit worse for wear but... They've actually issued us with real paper certs! I believe all LIN modules, large and small, should issue such certs on successful completion. I'm so proud!

Looking back, my PDP targets haven't changed - they've just been added to... Personal development is ongoing!

http://quindpdp.blogspot.ie/2012/06/pdp-june-2012.html