Digital Hybridity

Today I'm presenting at the 'Digital Hybridity' conference talking about "Three Faces of the Virtual World: Simulation, ‘Stripped-back’ Teaching & Problem-based Learning". This event is hosted by the Digital and Material Arts Research Cente (D-MARC) at the University of Derby in collaboration with EMUA colleagues, and in association with CTRG Creative Technologies Research Group. Their guest speaker is the fantastic STELARC.

As successive software and hardware innovation facilitates crossovers between traditional arts disciplines, Hybridity is becoming a defining feature of the emerging creative digital environment. In this regional university event we wish to interrogate and explore this notion and its implications for the field of arts, design and communications. As boundaries dissolve between traditional practices and aesthetic, theoretical, ethical and technical questions are raised regarding their future alignment, meaning and development. The latest developments in digital technology require that we elaborate new categories of practice and criticism, which also involve rethinking our relationship to the history of traditional practices.

The event will facilitate a range of presentations by arts practitioners and theoreticians to help frame the debate. This full day event is open to acedemics and PhD students from East Midlands Higher Education Institutions. Text taken from  http://www.derby.ac.uk/digitalhybridity

Here is my abstract.

The sense of immersion within multi-user virtual environments can provide educators and students with the ability to connect and communicate in ways that greatly enhance the learning experience. These innovative methods of teaching place the student at the centre of the learning by involving them in the experience itself. However, immersive virtual worlds can also offer a non-experiential ‘stripped-back’ platform for teaching that removes distractions from the learner’s environment and focuses on individual sequential learning. Existing pedagogies may not be sufficient to inform good practice in these settings. This presentation will outlined a framework for understanding the relations between the tools, techniques and technology used in learning, support and research in these evolving virtual spaces.

Comments welcome.