Ideation as an intellectual information acquisition and use context: Investigating game designers’ information-based ideation behavior

Human Information Behavior (HIB) research commonly examines behavior in the context of why information is acquired and how it will be used, but usually at the level of the work or everyday-life tasks the information will support. HIB has not been examined in detail at the broader contextual level of intellectual purpose (i.e. the higher-order conceptual tasks the information was acquired to support). Examination at this level can enhance holistic understanding of HIB as a ‘means to an intellectual end’ and inform the design of digital information environments that support information interaction for specific intellectual purposes. We investigate information-based ideation (IBI) as a specific intellectual information acquisition and use context by conducting Critical Incident-style interviews with ten game designers, focusing on how they interact with information to generate and develop creative design ideas. Our findings give rise to a framework of their ideation-focused HIB, which systems designers can leverage to reason about how best to support certain behaviors to drive design ideation. These findings emphasize the importance of intellectual purpose as a driver for acquisition and desired outcome of use

Laying Claim to Authenticity: Five Anthropological Dilemmas

The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity “deep” in oneself or beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the criteria involved in the authentication of the age of objects (with a consideration of their materiality), and 5) authenticity’s simultaneity, its contemporaneous multiple conceptualizations in context. I argue for a perspective on the study of authenticity that acknowledges the simultaneous co-existence of more than one parallel manifestation of authenticity in any given negotiation of the authentic

Piecing together creativity: feminist aesthetics and the crafting of quilts

When traditionally feminized crafts such as quilting are embraced as fine art, the discourses surrounding their elevation often serve to bolster the power of art world establishments by referencing the tenets of modernism and employing mutually reinforcing aesthetic hierarchies. In this thesis, I aim to understand the gendered politics of the separation between art and craft, and to analyze how the forces shaping the definitions of art and artist are drawn along lines of gender, class, race, and nationality. I utilize feminist aesthetics, craft aesthetics, and feminist ethics of care to examine problems of artists\u27 appropriation of quilting, traditional myths of art and individuality, the disregarding of utility in dominant aesthetics, the devaluation of feminized labor, and consumerism and craft as a luxury. I argue that a feminist analysis of quilting must include a re-evaluation of what counts as art, shifting the focus to a broader view of art that values quilting on its own terms, embracing its heritage as a feminized domestic craft. This feminist approach to quilt scholarship facilitates the potential for alternative aesthetics that nurture human creativity by blurring and destablizing dominant aesthetic hierarchies. Quilting\u27s heritage as a form of women\u27s domestic art also provides potential for employing collective innovation via the use of the humble pattern; hand-making as care of oneself, loved ones, and community; embracing the aesthetic qualities of utility; resisting commodification through heirloom-value; and resisting consumerism with a scrap-quilt aesthetic

Youth Voice in the work of Creative Partnerships

This report summarises the findings of an 18-month research project into ‘Youth Voice in the work of Creative Partnerships ‘, 2007-9, conducted by Sara Bragg, Helen Manchester, Dorothy Faulkner at the Open University, funded by the Arts Council England. Creative Partnerships (CP) was established in 2002 and is a ‘flagship creative learning programme’. It aims to foster innovative, long term collaborations between schools (often in areas of socio-economic deprivation) and creative practitioners. In particular CP states that it places young people ‘at the heart of what we do’ and claims that its programmes are most effective when young people are actively involved in leading and shaping them. CP highlights three key areas: involving young people in governance (the design, delivery and evaluation of the programme of work); building and maintaining ‘positive relationships’ with young people; working as ‘co-constructors of learning’ with them. The report maps existing youth voice initiatives in Creative Partnerships in those three areas. In addition, it considers the nature of the links between creativity and participation; explores issues of access to youth voice, such as patterns of inclusion and exclusion; explores what skills, experiences, identities and relationships are developed through participation. More broadly it attempts to understand, analyse and theorise youth voice, starting from the empirical but aiming to interpret the features of particular activities or projects to understand them more fully

Translanguaging and the shifting sands of language education

It will have been almost impossible for anyone working in the field of language teaching to have avoided encountering the term translanguaging. Over the past decade, it has become one of the most influential concepts in the field of applied and sociolinguistics: indeed, I include myself in the growing number of academics, researchers, and teachers engaging with its pedagogy, theory, and/or associated practice (see, for example, García and Li 2014; Li 2018; Baynham and Lee 2019). With a proliferation of publications, papers, and workshops all pointing to a wide range of implications for language policy, educational reform, and classroom practice, grappling with what translanguaging is (or isn’t) and the extent to which this concept/approach can meet some of the more (occasionally) evangelical claims must indeed be a publisher’s dream. But what exactly is translanguaging and what is its relevance for language teaching and learning? Before introducing and discussing the five books under review, I begin first with a brief introduction to translanguaging, a reflection on the pedagogic advantages it is said to bring and some of the criticisms with which the concept has been met. Following this, I then touch on the potential institutional, structural, commercial, and personal tensions that adopting a translanguaging pedagogy may provoke and—given its orientation to social justice and linguistic equity—its relationship to ‘transformation’

C2Learn Learning Design for CER: C2Learn project deliverable no. D2.2.2

Deliverable 2.2.2 is the second of the two public versions of the document; the first was delivered in Month 9 and this one in Month 18 of the three-year project. Similarly to D2.2.1, and D2.1.1 Interim, this document explicates the key concepts and principles relating to C2 Learn’s Learning Design. Developed by the OU team working closely with feedback from other consortium members, it sets out the over-arching theoretical frame of the project which encompasses Creative Emotional Reasoning (Deliverable 2.1.2) and its practical application in relation to the project's learning approach. Deliverable 2.2.2 is structured in three parts. The first considers the overall goals of the C2Learn gameful design encompassing a 'playful' digital gaming and social networking environment or "Co-creativity space" (C2Space). The C2Space exemplifies students' and teachers 'playful' experiences or what they do: - free exploration of ideas, concepts, and 'shared' knowledge - opportunities to engage in creative problem-finding and problem-solving - opportunities to be assisted by the system (Creativity Assistants) The second part addresses what the C2Space looks like in practice utilising the affordances of currently available examples of game prototypes and digital tools. The third part documents what will occur next in how the consortium is progressing in designing the C2Space encompassing a digital gaming and social networking environment, with the learning goals in mind. Inevitably as the parts of C2Learn are developing in planned parallel development, the Learning Design will in reality remain a living document throughout the second half of the project, with terminology and processes being refined. This official version though sets down markers as to our expectation of the direction of such evolution

C2Learn Learning Design for CER: C2Learn project deliverable no. D2.2.2

Deliverable 2.2.2 is the second of the two public versions of the document; the first was delivered in Month 9 and this one in Month 18 of the three-year project. Similarly to D2.2.1, and D2.1.1 Interim, this document explicates the key concepts and principles relating to C2 Learn’s Learning Design. Developed by the OU team working closely with feedback from other consortium members, it sets out the over-arching theoretical frame of the project which encompasses Creative Emotional Reasoning (Deliverable 2.1.2) and its practical application in relation to the project's learning approach. Deliverable 2.2.2 is structured in three parts. The first considers the overall goals of the C2Learn gameful design encompassing a 'playful' digital gaming and social networking environment or "Co-creativity space" (C2Space). The C2Space exemplifies students' and teachers 'playful' experiences or what they do: - free exploration of ideas, concepts, and 'shared' knowledge - opportunities to engage in creative problem-finding and problem-solving - opportunities to be assisted by the system (Creativity Assistants) The second part addresses what the C2Space looks like in practice utilising the affordances of currently available examples of game prototypes and digital tools. The third part documents what will occur next in how the consortium is progressing in designing the C2Space encompassing a digital gaming and social networking environment, with the learning goals in mind. Inevitably as the parts of C2Learn are developing in planned parallel development, the Learning Design will in reality remain a living document throughout the second half of the project, with terminology and processes being refined. This official version though sets down markers as to our expectation of the direction of such evolution