Chris Follows

“The views expressed on this site are mine alone and do not reflect official University policy.”

I have worked at the University Arts London for 7 years. My pedagogic research includes UAL Fellowship research pilot project: http://process.arts.ac.uk an open resource, sharing and exploring process in arts practice through the day to day practice of staff and students at UAL.

I’m a painter and my studio, an artist run space is in Stockwell, London – http://www.stockwellstudios.org.uk/ – Paintings Work in corporate and private collections: The Professional Football Association (PFA) Manchester, D Jones and J Morris Directors of the Business Design Centre, R. Kaller-Kimche Inc New York, Rumi Verjee of Thomas Goode & Co Limited and Nilsson Architects, won BHF Bank Painting Prize – http://www.chrisfollows.com/

About Process Arts: Developed with the aim of creating a new collaborative online resource that explores process in arts practice. The website provides a new user driven online studio community that focuses on making at all levels in art and design at UAL, whilst also sharing, informing and engaging with the wider community. The new user driven site will show unique insights into the acts of making whilst also encouraging users to share knowledge and experience online throughout the University of the Arts and beyond. Explore the many hidden traditional and contemporary creative technical processes practiced daily, show work and the processes involved in its making online using video, text, image and sound uploading tools.

Process Arts is managed by Chris Follows in collaboration with CLTAD for all enquiries please contact Chris c.follows@wimbledon.arts.ac.uk or 0207 514 9753.

ALTO – I have recently taken on the post of UAL ‘Arts Learning & Teaching online’ (ALTO) college coordinator:

http://www.arts.ac.uk/alto/
http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/alto
http://twitter.com/altolondon

As ALTO college coordinator I will contribute to the successful completion of the ALTO Project, the core of the project is concerned with the creation and sharing of Open Education Resources (OERs). The role provides a rare opportunity to observe and contrast how learning content is created, used, shared and re-purposed by staff and students within specific courses across the university and with partner institutions.

The fundamental challenge of the ALTO project is to facilitate ‘institutional change’ promoting online collaborations that address ‘the four Rs of OER and teaching and learning practice’ David Wiley (2008):

Reuse: the right to reuse the content in its unaltered/verbatim form (e.g., reduce repetition) Revise: the rights to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, the revisions, or the remixes with others

As part of my ALTO role I will work closely with a specific group of staff and students exploring the use of online ‘resources’ and ‘learning objects’ within the curriculum of the course.

Although technology is just a means to an end, academics will have to start thinking of how curriculum and teaching methodology could be adapted by integrating technology to better meet the needs of today’s learners and the learning styles. (Njenga and Fourie p206)

Its generally unknown how OER content is going to be repurposed and reused, its thought ALTO will attract a mixture resources, mostly granular in nature, similar to those uploaded on process.arts.ac.uk, although these standalone pieces of content are interesting they are difficult to assess in terms of ‘usefulness’ regarding learning aims, objectives and outcomes. Therefore these ‘informal’ learning resources could be dismissed as having little or no academic significance or use to the curriculum framework.

The ALTO project could facilitate the gap between ‘formal and informal’ learning online by encouraging the creation and use of ‘learning objects’ (collections of learning resources) thematic content to inform and enhance learning activities, aims, objectives, outcomes and evaluation. (See (http://ocw.mit.edu/ a leading example of this in practice)

Questions I will be exploring as part of my ongoing practice:

• How would a discipline-based, cross-university online community of practice help to overcome perceived UAL staff reluctance to create and share teaching resources in an OER environment? • How can the student voice influence the use of online resources? • How can rich media OER content be re-purposed by staff and students? • How are OER resources evaluated in terms of pedagogic relevance?

I am interested in an interdisciplinary approach, possibly developing connections with other HEIs, collaborations across various subject fields could prove an interesting OER research project, as could collaborations with business as the culture of entrepreneurialism increases in arts education.