Collaborative pedagogy and digital scholarship: a case study of 'Media Culture 2020'

Abstract

This paper presents an educational case study of ‘Media Culture 2020’, an EU Erasmus
 Intensive Programme that utilised a range social media platforms and computer software
 to create open, virtual spaces where students from different countries and fields could
 explore and learn together. The multi-disciplinary project featured five universities from
 across Europe and was designed to develop new pedagogical frameworks to encourage
 collaborative approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. The main objective of
 the project was to break down classroom and campus walls by creating digital learning
 environments that facilitated new forms of production, transmission and representation of
 knowledge. Media Culture 2020 was designed to pilot a novel mode of ‘blended learning’,
 demonstrating a number of ways in which ‘Web 2.0’ networked technologies might be
 adopted by academics to encourage open and collaborative modes of practice. The project
 utilised a number of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google
 Hangout, Google Docs and Blogger) to enhance the learning experiences of a diverse set
 of students from different cultural and international contexts. In doing so, Media Culture
 2020 enabled participants with a diverse range skills and cultural experiences to develop
 new working practices that respond to the convergence of digital media and art, as well
 as the internationalisation of media production and business, through the use of open,
 interactive software.