Clip Cetl: enhancing textile practice

Blending Learning – Promoting Dialogue in Innovation and Practice was the First Annual Blended Learning Conference held by the University of Hertfordshire and the Higher Academy to capture new insights into blended learning and institutional change. This paper, CLIP CETL: enhancing textile practice, shares and discusses practice in relation to institutional change. It represents the culmination of a research project building on earlier pedagogic work into the development of e learning and blended learning.

This conference presentation lead to an invitation from the Higher Education Academy Art, Design and Media subject centre (HEA-ADM) for development as a case study. This case study addresses sector-wide problems and their impact on design students’ experience of their subject.

The significance of the study is in the documentation of pedagogical response to changing practice in learning and teaching within a subject area requiring studio practice. It brings into the public domain methodology for enhancing learning and teaching in the practice-based area of textiles.

The philosophy of the University of the Arts London's strategy for learning, practice, research and development is one that is based in practice, in events and ‘doing’. The IT research and development Unit at the University of the Arts London lead the way in providing training, pedagogical advice and technical enhancements to the VLE environment as a whole, thus actively encouraging institutional level change in teaching practice-based disciplines.

This study builds on research begun into e-learning ('Enriching Embroidery: blended learning enhances practice'), presented at the international conference Designs on eLearning Teaching and Learning with Technology in Art, Design and Communication at the University of the Arts, London 2005. The conference demonstrated the University of the Art’s place at the forefront of eLearning in the creative disciplines internationally within a subject area requiring studio practice.

This led to an invitation to present a paper entitled ‘Enriching embroidery: blended learning enhances practice’ to the University of the Arts London May 2006 Learning and Teaching Conference.