Finding your Tribe: How Cross-institutional Collaboration Fosters Creative Connections

Hunter, A., Nerantzi, C., Withnell, N., Gillaspy, E., Spiers, A., Tasler, N. and Rachelle, O.'B. (2021) Finding your Tribe: How Cross-institutional Collaboration Fosters Creative Connections. Academic Practice and Technology (APT) Conference, London, UK, 02 July 2021. (Unpublished)

Abstract

The #creativeHE community was developed with the purpose of drawing people together to support and develop creative learning, teaching and research practices in HE (Nerantzi et al, 2016). From the beginning, the community had an online presence and space for ongoing discussions that attracted a wide range of practitioners and students; but until 2020, community events were largely held in face-to-face settings, hosted by partners based in Universities in the North of England. In response to the pandemic, the community shifted all activities online, and as a result has grown exponentially to include colleagues from all over the world in our regular online events co-organised by our distributed and international team. This workshop will explore the ways in which the #creativeHE community has used digitally inclusive approaches to sustain and grow the community remotely. Members of the team will share the cross-institutional and collaborative nature of the community, how we work together, and the impact this has on engagement, growth and practice. The team will engage delegates in activities to reflect on their own practice and consider opportunities to open-up and adopt cross-institutional approaches to finding their tribes. Description of session, see criteria for selection below: 500-1000 words (total word count) - Relevance to the sub-themes; - Relevance to the practice of teaching and learning with technologies; - Clarity of ideas and expression; - Consistency with existing literature; - Coherent proposal for presenting; - Originality. Just as the #creativeHE community thrives on the contributions and voices of individual members, so this workshop will adopt a community approach to exploring the challenges and joys of developing a creative tribe. Within this session, we will begin by discussing the development of the online community and sharing strategies for digital community building. Following this, we will share creative activities with participants, to explore what the online community has meant for us during the pandemic, with a focus on how the community has enabled the development of our teaching and learning practices. In order for workshop participants to reflect on whether the community approach under discussion in the workshop would be useful in their own practice, the presenters will lead a series of creative activities to showcase online community building and encourage reflection. Activity one will be focused on identity building, and will draw on the work of Hunter (2020) in adopting a visual autoethnography approach to identity formation. Participants will be invited to choose and share images that tell stories about what teaching has meant to them during the pandemic, or that represent their online teaching identities. Depending on numbers, this may be carried out in small groups to facilitate more in-depth discussion, or it may be facilitated as a whole group activity. Flexibility and fluidity have been critical to the growth and development of the #creativeHE community during the past year, and we intend to showcase this within the workshop itself by responding to participant needs and their ways of engaging with this task. This activity will also introduce participants to visual autoethnography as a creative research method, particularly powerful in the exploration and negotiation of identities. As a result of this activity, participants will produce qualitative data that can be used to further the exploration of their own creative identities, and how these have morphed and shifted during the pandemic. Activity two will focus on diversifying communities through online approaches. This activity will give a hands-on experience of what it is like to diversify communities through online approaches and the challenges that arise as a result of developing an online community of practice (Wenger, 1998). This will be done by dividing participants into groups to play a community building game. Each group will be presented with a scenario of an ‘online community’ they will need to make decisions about what to do with their community. Each decision will have an impact on the way in which the community diversifies. During the course of this playful activity, groups will encounter challenges such as exponential growth and a requirement to shift delivery mode. As a community, #creativeHE takes a playful and experimental approach to development. Play is well known to improve cognitive development in both children and adults (Piaget 1962; Vygotsky 1962) and gamification fosters the relationship between enjoyment, focus and learning (Tulloch 2014). We have found this approach fosters inclusion and encourages the community to take risks and have fun in doing so. This activity will culminate in a guided reflection that will provide groups with an opportunity to feed back on decision making and how they have found this experience. This guided conversation will explore those challenges of developing an online community of practice to support the development of creative approaches to teaching in HE. Participant Outcomes: By completing this workshop, participants will: Investigate the benefits and challenges of developing an online community of practice to support the development of creative approaches to teaching in HE; Reflect on how their creative selves as contemporary educators influences collaborative exploits; Network with peers to support and enhance their future creative educational practice; Consider how they could foster the development of creative communities of practice in their own online and face-to-face contexts.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Keywords: CreativeHE, Learning Communities, Communities of Practice, CoP, Creativity, Higher Education.
• Status: Unpublished
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Tasler, Dr Nathalie
• Authors: Hunter, A., Nerantzi, C., Withnell, N., Gillaspy, E., Spiers, A., Tasler, N., and Rachelle, O.'B.
• Subjects: L Education > LB Theory and practice of education; L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
• College/School: University Services > Learning and Teaching Services Division; University Services > Student and Academic Services > Academic Services

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