2021 Diploma in Creative Computing.

Information

All term dates - N.B. if you are doing a degree at UAL you are in Higher Education.
Lecturer: Joel Gethin Lewis.
Location: Creative Computing Institute, in person at Camberwell, London and online via Collaborate Ultra on ual:Moodle.
Contact me via the UAL Creative Computing Institute Slack.
Weekly Unit 1 remote teaching times are every Tuesday 0930-1300 via Collaborate Ultra on ual:Moodle.
You are expected to undertake independent study of about 25 hours per week - spread across all the courses you are taking in the Diploma.
Tutorials take place every Monday. These tutorials are for you to discuss anything you'd like - from the how the course is going, to your own practice, to work placements or anything else. My aim is to have at least two tutorials with every student on the diploma every term.
- Remote session 1: Mondays 1030-1300.
- Remote session 2: Mondays 1400-1730.
- Please see the Unit 1 Wiki Tutorial Schedule for details of when your next tutorial will be.
If your next tutorial is too far away, or you have a more urgent question, please message me on the UAL Creative Computing Institute Slack.
Unit 1 Moodle - see the Unit 1 Moodle for links to Collaborate Ultra links to our remote sessions.
Lecture and Workshop slides
Please see the Unit 1 Wiki for all non-lecture notes, reading lists and other resources.
Take a look at the student/crowd sourced set of notes on all of Block 1 from last years Diplomats!.
The Library Services Web pages aim to provide quick access to a range of relevant high quality e-resources. Benelia Salmon is the Academic Support Librarian for CCI: [email protected]. Please contact her at the email address above if you have any questions regarding library resources or if you wish to book a one-to-one session on library information and research skills. You can find more information on CCI specific library resources in your Creative Computing Institute subject guide.
LinkedIn Learning (formally Lynda.com) is also a great resource for learning software packages, coding or even 3D tools like Blender. You can find a link to LinkedIn Learning on https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/.
https://wiki.cci.arts.ac.uk/ is the Wiki for all of CCI, lots of resources and tutorial there about equipment, software and content on Physical Computing, Creative Code and Digital Making.

Code of Conduct

You can find the UAL Disciplinary Code For Students here: Disciplinary Code For Students.

You can find our code of conduct here: code_of_conduct.md, it was cloned from [https://github.com/processing/p5.js/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md](the p5.js code of conduct).

Golan Levin also offers a useful thought from his children's school:

When communicating, ask yourself:

T – is it True?

H – is it Helpful?

I – is it Inspiring?

N – is it Necessary?

K – is it Kind?

Block/Term Structure

The Diploma in Creative Computing is split into two blocks of teaching. Block 1 takes up the entire Autumn term and half of the Spring term. Block 2 follows on, taking the second half of Spring term and the entire Summer term.

Block 1 consists of three units:

Unit 1: Creative Coding and Creative Computing Frameworks - taught by me.
Unit 2: Introducing Computational Futures and Artificial Intelligence - taught by Murad Khan.
Unit 3: Creative Practice: Visual Coding and Physical Computing - taught by Andy Sheen and Mike Vanis of VAST.

Block 2 consists of three units:

Unit 4: Coding for Collaborative App Development - taught by me.
Unit 5: Working and the Digital Creative Industries - taught by TBC.
Unit 6: Creative Practice: Computational Environments - taught by Murad Khan.

Learning Outcomes and platforms for doing so

Please read UAL's guidance for students on how they will be assessed. TLDR: you will be assessed on the following 5 assessment criteria (quoting from UAL's page - I REALLY recommend watching the video here if you haven't already):

Enquiry
- Enquiry is about active learning and reflection. It’s how you explore, research and learn about your subject. Enquiry is central to all creative learning at UAL.
Knowledge
- Knowledge is about gathering information and enhancing understanding. It’s how you inform your work, explore diverse cultures and connections and appreciate what you do in a wider context.
Process
- Process is about your journey of learning. It’s how you take risks and experiment. And how you keep the creative momentum going — developing ideas from start to finish.
Communication
- Communication is about telling the story of your learning and making. It’s how you share your learning with an audience, presenting and explaining your work to different people.
Realisation
- Realisation is about the work you create and how this reveals what you’ve learned. It’s taking a look back and evaluating the work you’ve produced.

N.B. The Diploma is assessed to Level 5 Assessment Criteria Descriptors - see the link to the PDF at the bottom of this page.

At the end of this block (midway through the 2022 Spring term) you should have the following outcomes, with subheadings for methods and platforms we will use to do so. To be clear, I want you to obtain knowledge and then use that to make projects. My aim is to have every student graduate with new creative computing core knowledge and a portfolio of projects that relate that new creative computing knowledge to their chosen BA subject elsewhere at University of the Arts London (UAL).

Unit 1 / Block 1: "Creative coding and creative computing frameworks"

Code creative computing assets in relevant languages (Knowledge, Process)

Understand the use of key frameworks for creative computing (Knowledge, Process)

Use online tools to collaborate and support your creative computing projects (Enquiry, Communication)

Teaching Style

I want to spend as much time working through problems and discussing them together, rather than you listening to me lecture. Each Tuesday's teaching session will be structured in the following way:

Hour 1: 0930-1030: Explore/engage - discuss the previous week's lecture, meditate, reflect, explain.
Hour 2: 1045-1145: Experiment/play - work on creative code exercises based on the previous week's lecture, our discussion in the previous hour and excerpts from Code as Creative Medium: An educator's handbook by Golan Levin and Tega Brain.
Hour 3: 1200-1300: Watch/listen - absorb a lecture from me, in preparation for next weeks session.

You are expected to undertake independent study of 25 hours per week over the three units that you will be taught every block.

Assessment

At the end of Block 1 (halfway through the Spring Term) and at the end of Block 2 (at the end of the Summer Term), you will be assessed individually. The two units I teach (Unit 1 and Unit 4) are assessed in the same way, via multiple choice test and practical exam. Each part is worth 50% of the unit mark. In the multiple choice test you will be presented with a 20 questions relating explicitly to course content. You must choose between up to 4 potentially correct answers per question. You will be given 1 hour to complete the 20 multiple choice questions. In the Practical Exam you will be individually asked to write a basic program to demonstrate the application of creative coding to a set problem. You will be given 2 hours to complete the Practical Exam.

I would STRONGLY encourage you to complete the mocks when I issue them for both Units 1 and 4 multiple choice/practical exams - not just to practice them, but to practice SUBMITTING your work - last year I had several students fail exams because they submitted the wrong files for their practical exams, or didn't submit their multiple choice tests correctly.

You can find the first year of the Diploma Unit 1 Multiple Choice test here and the first year of the Diploma Unit 1 Practical exam here.

Units 2 and 5 are assessed via an essay.

Units 3 and 6 are assessed via the submission of a 5 minute video and accompanying PDF document.

Experiment/Play exercises

In addition to the formal assessment at the end of Blocks 1 and 2, we will be participating in weekly Experiment/play workshops. We will discuss and work on the weekly exercises in groups of three on Monday afternoons during the Experiment/play hour. The weekly Experiment/play exercises won't be assessed, but will be in your interest to complete.

The Experiment/play exercises will be based on excerpts from Code as Creative Medium: An educator's handbook by Golan Levin and Tega Brain.

This of idea of small technical exercises was inspired by Caitlin Morris and her advice:

Remind students that technical exercises can be the root of a bigger idea. I’ve had students submit small sketches along with their introductory exercises under the prompt of “if I worked on this for another month/year, what could it become?”. Some really beautiful ideas emerge and I’ve found that it makes students more concept-attentive in their weekly projects, as well as providing some groundwork for larger final projects.

~~Throughout the term, you will be working in pairs. This is a technique known as Pair Programming. You may change pair partner as often or sparingly as you like.~~

Following the latest research, I've decided to shift us from pairs to threes. After all, three is a magic number.