co_LAB: an experiment in interdisciplinary collaborative learning

This session will present an overview of an educational experiment undertaken by the co_LAB Research Network at the University of Lincoln in May 2015. The project featured an intensive workshop that brought together staff and students from different disciplines to collaborate on a practice-based research challenge. The umbrella theme for the project was ‘reimagining the Magna Carta for the 21st century’. The main focus was surveillance culture, privacy and Big Data, with students tasked with incorporating a range of interactive media technologies to engage the public in a critical debate about these topics. This resulted in the design a number of interactive installations which were exhibited as part of the Web We Want Festival at Southbank Arts Centre, London. This talk will discuss the student outputs and present an overview of the methods for collaborative, project-based learning which were developed throughout. The workshop and exhibition was preceded by a number of ‘virtual’ pre-workshop activities. This ‘pre-workshop’ phase utilised a variety of digital tools to form collaborative working partnerships. It was also beneficial for pooling research undertaken by staff and students, and for sharing information between all participants and the wider public. A key outcome of the workshop was a model for embedding digital collaborative tools in the planning, production and evaluation phases of work undertaken by staff and students for projects across different departments