Blog

Student as Producer: Higher education and something more

There will be an event to officially launch Student as Producer at the University of Lincoln on the 8th of November, at 5pm in room 1019 in the MAB.

All  academic staff and students and colleagues from  support and professional services are invited to attend. Friends, colleagues and students from outside the university are very welcome.

There will be some  short speeches, and the chance to meet and listen to students who have stretched the possibilities of higher education.

There will be a very nice big cake to eat, and drinks to wash it down. The event will be over by 6pm.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Student as Producer is attracting real interest on the web.  An article written by Mike Neary and Joss Winn in 2009, ‘Student as Producer: Reinventing the Undergraduate Curriculum‘, has recorded the most hits during the recent period  among all materials lodged in the university’s research repository.

For a review of the article’s repository analytics see below:

Art and Design

The artwork for  the Student as Producer poster ( see opposite above)  is based on Jacob Epstein’s (1880 – 1959) ‘Torso in Metal from the Rock Drill’  (see below).

This sculpture was itself derived from the earlier work: Rockdrill, which Epstein produced in 1913-1914. The original version of Rockdrill (see below) was a celebration of the progressive power of technology.

The later version of the sculpture, in which the power of the original piece is disabled, was a response to the machinic killings of the Great European War (1914 – 1917) and the destructive power of the automative.

What remains undamaged in the Torso is the pregnant possibility of an embryonic child.

The two sculptures, taken together, demonstrate the way in which humanity is transformed through its relationship with the machine,  and the possibilities and dangers that are inherent in  machine technology.

The lines of the font in the design for Student as Producer follow the vectoral angles of the Torso’s head and limbs, running diagonally and in parallel. These angles give the sculpture a sense of dynamic movement, which is mirrored in the shape of the lettering.

The tone and texture of the Student as Producer design is rock-like and engineered – graphic granite and metallic bronze. The chiseled angles and the verdigree suggest transformation through the forces of human production and natural history.

The CAPITAL letters add a sense of structure, which, in the form of paragraphs, are shaped like building blocks out of which something substantial can be constructed.

The poster and the flyer are engineered to be made into something else. The flyer is literally a flyer, with the straight angled lines providing the folds for a paper aeroplane. The image of the paper plane,  in the top right hand corner of the design, gives an instruction, instilling  a sense of humour and fun into what is a dark and difficult piece, like the times in which we live.

Student as Producer is indebted to Matt Chambers from Optima Graphic Design for his inspired and inspiring work – http://www.optimadesign.co.uk

Staff

This week Andy Hagyard and  I have been fixing up meetings with staff who teach and support student learning. It is important to meet with colleagues who are working directly with students to discuss the implications and consequences of Student as Producer,  and how it works as a form of pedagogic practice. We hope to get to meet with staff from across the whole University by February of next year.

Students

I have also been meeting with students who want to join us in the design and delivery of Student as Producer. So far, all the students have come from computing. They like the poster. They said it looks  ‘Grunge’. For an explanation about the design of the poster see Art and Design blog above.

I have just made contact with  a load of students from Performing Arts and hope to meet with them next week.  Dan D and Mark for the SU have already sent me some names. Karin Crawford is sorting out a list  from HLSS.  Sarah Barrow is going to try and get about ten undergraduates from MHT, across all levels.  This is a key issue for the project. If we don’t get students involved in the first stage of planning then there is no Student as Producer.

Student as Producer is to present at an event during the International Society for Studies into Teaching and Learning’s Conference  in Liverpool on October 19th. The title of the event is ‘International Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Enquiry: A Scholarly Discussion’.

The event will be attended by other universities from around the world who are promoting connections between academic research and the undergraduate curriculum.

Each university will be presenting a poster on their work  (see  the poster from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT)  below: click on image to enlarge).

For a view of all of the posters, and for further information on the conference – see http://www.cur.org/pre-ISSOTL.html