Kylie Budge

New practices in doing academic development: Twitter as an informal learning space

Using social media platforms to build informal learning processes and social networks is significant in academic development practices within higher education. We present three vignettes illustrating academic practices occurring on Twitter to show that using social media is beneficial for building networks of academics, locally and globally, enhancing information flows, inspiring thinking, and motivating academic practice. Using a reflective and diffractive methodology, we illuminate how different flows of forces and relations are enacted. We argue it is in this fluidity of informal learning that perspectives are contested and shaped, and that academic developers can benefit by encompassing such practices.

Academic development is a creative act

This paper argues that academic development is a creative act. Creative acts have potential to inspire, critique, inform and in many cases to change. The creativity literature identifies a number of core features of creative acts that assist in developing independent creative practitioners. Those features are observing, attending to relationships, engaging and persisting, exploring and risk-taking, problem-solving, intuiting, reflecting and envisaging. The realm of academic development in tertiary education necessitates many of those same features to support the complex human interactions involved in bringing about change in learning and teaching. In this paper we explore how the core features of creative acts are utilised in our work as academic developers. We argue that conceptualising academic development as a creative act is of value because the intent of the work is to develop creative educators who are critically reflective and responsive to change within challenging tertiary educational environments.

Academics who tweet: “messy” identities in academia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the growing use of Twitter in academic and artist practices. The authors explore commonalities, overlaps and differences within the reflections on the initial and ongoing motivations, usage and learnings the authors have encountered whilst immersed in this environment. Design/methodology/approach – The authors locate the particular inquiry by drawing on the literature surrounding digital identities, academic literacies and digital scholarship. Departing from other studies, the focus is on a narrative inquiry of the lived experiences as academics and as artists using Twitter. Findings – Academics use of Twitter plays a distinctly social role enabling communication that connects, and fostering accessible and approachable acts. It enables a space for challenging norms of academic ways of being and behaving. In addition, the authors draw conclusions about the “messiness” of the interconnected space that incorporates multiple identities, and highlight the r...

Student and teacher perceptions of learning and teaching: a case study

Exploring student and teacher perspectives on approaches to learning and teaching reveals interesting insights and new understandings for practice by involving the two key groups of participants in the learning and teaching story. Do students understand and experience learning and teaching similarly or differently from the way teachers intend them to? This paper describes the findings of a study that explored perceptions of learning and teaching in one discipline of an Australian dual-sector university from both a student and staff perspective. Teachers’ conceptions of teaching are also explored and provide extra insight and understanding of the approach to learning and teaching taking place. Key findings of this multifaceted study employing a case study with a mixed method approach include a difference between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of approaches to learning and teaching. Implications for broader practice are highlighted and explored.

Finding Pockets of Agency

Academic life can be a joyful and an immensely collaborative experience that nourishes the mind and the soul, and also the reverse: lonely and tough. The flights I have experienced so far in academia have taught me much about the need to develop a path that aligns with my personal values and goals, and one that may not mirror the dominant paths I observe around me.

Teaching art and design: Communicating creative practice through embodied and tacit knowledge

How do artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design? There is much discussion about the ‘mystery’ of creativity, but little understanding of how teaching occurs in creative contexts. Understanding this topic better will develop greater knowledge within the academy of how art and design is communicated by the creative practitioners who teach it, and could benefit other academic disciplines. In this article, I draw on data from a recent Australian study with artist/designer-academics. It provides rich qualitative data to explore in detail how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design. Tacit and embodied knowledge theories are used to provide frameworks for explaining this phenomenon. I argue that artist/designer-academics embody their creative practices and communicate these through teaching in both tacit and explicit forms, and that they do this through modelling knowledge, skills and practice.

Museum objects and Instagram: agency and communication in digital engagement

Abstract In recent years, museums have focused on engaging the public in their collections, exhibitions and programming as they reimagine themselves in the light of changes in technology and visitor expectations. This article spotlights public engagement with museum objects from the perspective of museum visitors, specifically how they engage with objects through the visual social media platform of Instagram. It draws on a case study of Instagram users who visited one popular, urban, Australian museum of contemporary art. We argue that visitor engagement with museum objects on Instagram is informed by agency and authority on the part of the user, and a primary motivation to communicate shared experiences using photography. Findings include a significant focus on objects despite public concerns that social media use in museum spaces is leading to a decreased public engagement in this area. Implications stemming from the research include specific insights for museum practice and understandings that have a potential to impact communication, engagement, and contemporary cultural practices generally.