Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Creating Creative Technologists: Playing
With(in) Education
Andy M. Connor , Stefan Marks , and Charles Walker
3.1
Introduction
The Bachelor of Creative Technologies (BCT) degree is offered by Colab, a unique
academic unit at Auckland University of Technology. The unit is a research-teaching
nexus or 'collaboratory' at the intersection of four existing schools (Art and Design,
Communications and Media Studies, Computer and Mathematical Sciences and
Engineering) in the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. The goal of Colab
is to develop new experimental alliances, research collaborations and learning expe-
riences across these overlapping disciplines. Its researchers, students and stakehold-
ers are encouraged to imagine, construct and navigate rapidly changing social,
economic, technological and career environments.
The BCT is seen as a key enabler of this goal. The fl exible and experimental
project-organised curriculum draws on philosophical notions of play, community
and interaction to promote divergent thinking and to break, blur or transcend norma-
tive disciplinary boundaries (Huizinga
2000
). In this context, we use the term
Creative Technologies as to refer to a multiplicity of design, communication, com-
puting, engineering, entertainment and manufacturing media, employed to produce
ideas, intellectual property and artefacts that characterise the outputs of emerging
occupations and professions operating across a wide range of entrepreneurial cre-
ative industries contexts.
Whilst the degree embodies this defi nition, at another level it also represents a
vehicle for the authors' ongoing search for creative, hypothesis-driven or inquiry-
based learning methodologies that address Boyer and Mitgang's impassioned call for
a new educational language … driven by the conviction that the standards used to evaluate
performance should be organized not so much around blocks of knowledge … as around
