Skip to main navigationSkip to main content
The University of Southampton
Winchester School of Art

Transitional Learning. Challenging the Data Driven Accountabilities of Contemporary Higher Education: Derek Yates Seminar

Derek Yates
Time:
16:00 - 17:30
Date:
10 February 2016
Venue:
Harvard Suite (Room Number 3032), WSA

Event details

Over the last twenty years, education at every level has been infected by an obsession with data led accountability. The influence on funding exerted by league tables and OFSTED ratings means that, in many institutions, these factors have become a key driver of the development of teaching & learning strategy. In addition, with the 9k tuition fee now firmly established, degree courses are being required to evidence the employability of their students in tangible terms. In response, many Universities have turned to DHLE statistics, internship schemes and ‘live’ projects to demonstrate their engagement with the ‘employment market’ without potentially giving enough consideration to the wider implications of this policy. While researching my book, Communication Design: Insights from the Creative Industries, I found the factors that influence the long term employability of creative graduates to be complex, multifaceted and maybe not best nurtured by ‘one size fits all’ educational models. For example, the resourcefulness to challenge received wisdom and the ability to disrupt, are often key to realizing opportunity within the volatile markets that creative businesses inhabit. However, they are not qualities always linked with traditional definitions of employability. This talk presents my research, alongside a series of case studies that demonstrate how we might use employability to initiate educational models that are more (rather than less) challenging and expansive.

Speaker information

Derek Yates,Derek’s research aims to build collaborations between design education and the creative industries. He has brokered partnerships with commercial agencies such as Wieden+Kennedy and Moving Brands, cultural institutions like the V&A and respected journals such as Eye magazine. Working with onedotzero, he co-created the award winning ‘Cascade’ education platform and launched a post-graduate boot camp with the D&AD. In 2012 he developed ‘Alt/Shift’– a mechanism for curriculum development that utilises dialogue between industry and education - the findings of which were published by The National Society for Education in Art and Design. He has recently written Communication Design: Insights from the Creative Industries published by Bloomsbury/Fairchild. According to Eye, the book "explores design and art direction in a practical way that bridges the gap between in-class work and the professional world” and "aims to equip the reader with the multimedia sensibility required in the ever changing and overlapping fields of marketing, advertising and design”.

Privacy Settings