1. Professional resources for practitioners
Ian Badger
Learning & Teaching Librarian
University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury
Hi - my name is Ian Badger and I am a Learning & Teaching Librarian, who works round the corner at UCA Canterbury

2. Context University for the Creative Arts BA Graphic Design
Revalidated June 2018
Employability
Embed theory into practice
Today I am going to talk about some work that I have just done with the second year of the BA Graphic Design course at Canterbury
The course started at Canterbury September 2013, and has had several revalidations and amendments over the last few years.
The last amendments happened June 2018 with the drivers of making employability more obvious to students, with one eye on the NSS.
And also the embedding of theory into practice. Traditionally at UCA students have done practice units (where they work in the studio to make art and design) and theory units (where they write essays)
Most students prefer the practice element, and also we have a higher than average % of dyslexic students. So there has been a drive to make units cover both theory and practice – not one or the other, meaning that students have several assessments per unit and therefore if students struggle with writing they will still be able to pass the unit

3. Course Handbook – Year 2
In the validated course handbook in this particular second year unit students are asked to concentrate on an area of interest within graphic design that they are interested in
The readings suggested at the unit level of the course are very broad and about employability within graphic design

4. Brief: Outcome & Bibliography
On the student brief this has become a specific assessment component – where students produce a report on where they see themselves specialising in industry
The bibliography focuses on material for the other components – resources on producing a portfolio, personal identity – business cards
But nothing for the industry report

5. Problem – research lacking
Image searches
Lack of context to designs
Lack of metadata
Reports
Didn’t show understanding of industry
Or place themselves in what was currently happening
Academic staff asked me to help support the students with this component, as in the last couple of years their reports had been poorly researched and weren’t deemed professional or academic.
Students mainly used websites, images from image searches they liked from Pinterest/Instagram of examples of graphic design – these often didn’t have context or metadata
This meant that their reports but didn’t show understanding of how these examples fitted into industry, or show an understanding of where the profession was at

6. Solution – Presentation and Screencast
I was unable to run a workshop, as it was all very last minute so the academic and myself produced a presentation and screencast that they could show to the students in class and that they could then refer to in their own time.
From working on this with the academic it turns out that the research that the course wanted students to do was hidden to the students
They needed to look at awards and read journals, to find out what was current and what the industry thought might happen in the future
This is the kind of awareness the staff have and take for granted, but for the majority of students unless they are signposted towards them they won’t know where to look

7. Student Work
On previous slide it mentioned the annual Epica , which is a creative prize judged by journalists for graphics, PR, marketing etc
Epica – Awards 2018, Silver award in the Creative Technology category

8. Lessons Learnt
Course handbook and unit brief bibliographies are too broad
To practitioners/lecturers professional resources are current awareness of their industry
To students this is hidden but when signposted they will use