No, I'm not leaving QUT - but today is the first day of the new semester, and it's the first time in five years that I'm not acting as unit coordinator for KKB018 Creative Industries, one of the Creative Industries Faculty's undergraduate core units. KKB018 was the unit that I was originally employed to develop - and as far as I know, it was the first mainstream undergraduate unit (course, subject - choose whatever terminology applies in your neck of the woods) world-wide to introduce students to the creative industries. I've now finally passed on responsibility for the unit to my esteemed colleague John Banks - with my role as conference chair for AoIR 2006 and my involvement in various major research projects it simply was no longer feasible to coordinate such a large unit as well. So, today I say goodbye, with a quiet sigh of relief after what's been a long and occasionally rocky road.
Indeed, we couldn't have had a more difficult start - in 2002, the new Faculty had managed to attract a significant overenrolment of undergraduate students, and of course most of them went straight for the unit whose name matched that of their degree: my brand-new, mind-the-wet-paint Creative Industries. As a result, where we'd expected some 250 students in the first semester, we got 530 - and in my first major teaching engagement I suddenly had to double my tutorial team, put on a repeat lecture, and have tutors act as bouncers to keep the lecture theatre's doors closed once capacity was reached.
We've come a long way since then - and I'm proud to say that in spite of much tinkering around the edges, the core content of the unit has remained the same ever since I developed it, at a time when many other core units underwent a great deal of changes. Perhaps the greatest changes we did make related to assessment, and I'm very happy with the structures we have in place now: while we get students from all over the creative industries (at least as they're interpreted at QUT - spanning from dance and drama to creative writing and journalism and to communication design and media and communication), who of course need to have some very different professional skill sets, at some point I realised that the one graduate capability which is common to all of them is linked to the proposal and assessment of projects. Whether they're a journalist proposing a new story to an editor, an artist proposing a series of works to a funding body, or a communication designer proposing a new Website project to a commercial client, our students need the skills to read their current environment, identify feasible projects, and secure support and funding for their work - and if they're not proposing projects in this way, chances are they're on the other side of the negotiating table, working for a public, private, or commercial funding body.
When it's done properly, proposing or assessing projects involves a strong understanding of applicable theoretical frameworks in the creative industries, a critical appraisal of local and wider environments, and an honest assessment of the proponents' own skills and abilities - in addition, of course, to extensive skills in the development, communication, and/or assessment of project ideas in the first place. And that's what we've been trying to develop in KKB018 students in the past few years - combining a programme of key readings with an innovative assessment environment. I've written previously about the fictional town of Ipskay which we've developed as an assessment environment for this, and I hope to publish a more detailed article about the process some time soon - in short, Ipskay gives students a realistic environment of limited complexity within which they can develop their project ideas, and helps them to connect creative industries theory and project development practice. Indeed, I'm hoping we might soon see some real-world projects which had their origins in Ipskay...
Oh, and in other news: Jo has received hers - but where are mine?
