Information Spaces for Creative Conversations: ISCC Project

The ISCC Project is a JISC funded Curriculum Delivery Project run under the Transforming Curriculum Design and Delivery Through Technology Programme.

The project is led by Middlesex University Interaction Design Centre and partnered by City University London, Centre for HCI Design

Our project

This project is addressing a recurrent problem in design education, that students are sometimes disengaged from key ‘creative conversations’ and that this problem can be exacerbated by learning technologies. The project will deploy trial ‘information spaces’ that will provide learners with the appropriate artefacts and modes of interacting with a learning situation, and with their peers and tutors, to enable them to engage more flexibly and effectively in conversations characterised by innovation and reflective, critical thinking. Key technological components will be the management and display of design information and critical feedback across appropriate display surfaces; the capture in appropriate media of significant design information; and the ability to replay, annotate and reflect upon such captured content.

Impact and Benefits to the Community

(taken from the project final report)

The project generated benefits in a number of areas:

• For delivery of case study modules. The interventions made in case study modules provided clear opportunities for learners to engage in productive conversations without undue distractions from complex technology, but with the ability to bring digital materials and physical materials into a conversation and to review and reflect on a session afterwards.
• For staff – including new staff joining case study modules
• For students of these modules
• For staff involved in commercially-oriented work within the university that provides learning experiences for project students.
• At both City and Middlesex, we have demonstrated the pods to potential commercial partners, as well as visitors, staff, and potential students on open days.
• Presentation about the project at City, at the 'Learning at City' conference, open to all University staff.
• At City University London, Dr Sara Jones has been awarded a small amount of funding (3K) for a Learning Development Project to investigate application of lessons learnt on the ISCC project in other contexts across the School and University 
• The work of the project has been presented at a number of events, for example at a meeting the JISC Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group (13 July 2010). 

Case Studies at Middlesex

The second year of the project has seen the implementation of three case study trials of the display, capture and delivery approaches to supporting creative conversations in design-related learning. The following note describes two of these studies that were conducted at Middlesex (with a further case study having happened at City).

The document describes several elements of the case studies: the context, the technical setup that was used, the learning process into which the technology was embedded, and the evaluation, principally of the effectiveness of the interaction.

The target audience includes others engaged in teaching design and related subjects (such as human-computer interaction) who may be interested in re-thinking the processes at work in class. Such interested parties may find this case study description interesting for the suggestions it contains about the conversational approach in general, and the use of technology for supporting conversation in learning design.

AWeekInTheLife_V2.docx

Note that this document is currently a draft, and will be updated as the evaluation work and data analysis progresses.

Project dissemination

Project website

Some powerpoint presentations

Project outputs

Case studies

ISCC case study Year 1 at City University

ISCC case study Year 2 at City University

ISCC case study Year 2 context

ISCC case study Year 1 at Middlesex Univesrity

ISCC case study Year 2 at Middlesex University

Guides, tips and toolkits

ISCC Top tips for recording feedback

ISCC Guide for students

Academic papers

• B. Fields, A. Bardill, S. Jones. (2010) Conversational spaces for learning and designing. CHI2010 workshop on Next Generation of HCI and Education. Accompanying poster
• A. Bardill, W. Griffiths,  S. Jones & B. Fields (2010) Design Tribes And Information Spaces For Creative Conversations.  International Conference On Engineering And Product Design Education.

Our Team

Project Manager: Bob Fields b.fields@mdx.ac.uk

Our Cluster and Critical Friend

We are working with the following projects

Atelier-D Project

Cascade Project

Duckling Project

Our Critical Friend is Peter Chatterton