This article is an interdisciplinary reflective response to an intensive studio learning and teaching experience involving artists, academics and postgraduate students. The authors of this article teach, research and practise in coding, digital design, dance, and virtual and live performance. As lecturers and students we reflect upon and propose future approaches to art practice in tertiary education informed by live performance, performance capture and studio‐based responses to digital and virtual platforms. We reflect on an innovative contribution to the field of research–teaching nexus as informed by digital and virtual data capture identifying the key element of immediacy in live performance and choreographic improvisation with systems. We reflect on practice‐based inquiry via the Choreographic Coding Lab (CCL) model – a dialogical negotiation between capture technology and interdisciplinary artists in industry and academia. How can we encourage potential studio inquiry as an adapted model in tertiary learning and teaching? Our interdisciplinary voices, presented as authors’ reflections, provide suggestions for future studio‐based, active learning contexts.

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This study draws upon the perspectives of sport and recreation undergraduate students in New Zealand who were involved in the design of their own assessments, and discusses the implication of the teaching and learning environment on this process. In a previous study, student criticism had emerged of current teaching strategies and assessment methods at their institution. The purpose of this current study was to directly address some of these concerns and for lecturers and students to work collaboratively to develop a more learner-centred teaching and learning environment. Students from a second-year sociology of sport paper were invited to design their own exam. A session was facilitated where learning outcomes and exam strategies were addressed. Students were then given the opportunity to create their own exam questions in a student-led classroom environment. Concurrently, students from a third-year sports coaching paper were invited to fully design their own assessments. Student experience was captured through focus group interviews. Self-determination theory (SDT) provided the theoretical lens used to examine the data, with a specific focus on how the basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) of participants were either supported or thwarted. The findings suggest that the second-year students struggled with a perceived lack of teaching direction throughout the process. However, third-year students were extremely positive about the opportunity to have ownership of their learning experience, and analysis revealed an increase in intrinsic motivation to learn. This study highlights the importance of student voice, and encourages a process that allows students to contribute meaningfully toward the design and delivery of their own programmes of study. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for a co-leadership model of students’ learning experience to emerge. Furthermore, it allows for reflection from both staff and students regarding the impact of the learning environment on student motivation to learn.

How can the light-weight video camera in the hands of the improvising dancer, enhance compositional choices in moment-to-moment or retrospective decisionmaking in studio? I propose that the camera in the hands of the dancer moving and passing the camera between dancing subjects/objects is a form of improvisational investigation. I refer to this dyadic approach as camera-dancer, distinct from the tradition of the camera as archival instrument, in multimedia or interactive performance. The camera-dancer as instigator/provocateur opens perspectives towards composition otherwise not considered. In this paper I highlight approaches that moving image pioneers Maya Deren and Dziga Vertov held towards the camera and how this has informed studio improvisations myself and dance collaborators apply. Perhaps it is how we as dancing operators react to moments before, discoveries in the moment, a retrospective 'camera consciousness,' that enhances compositional openings as a form of camera dramaturgy.

This paper engages with multiplicity in methodology through reflections on a dance and risky play research project in a shared problematisation of children’s physical activity. A research-practitioner team explored perspectives on physical activity and risky play through dance. This project aimed to distance itself from the idea of an expert other in both research and professional development – an approach that employs a Foucauldian reading of power/knowledge to make sense of the multiplicity of agendas around dance and physical activity. One early childhood centre teaching team participated in two focus groups (pre and post) and a workshop. The workshop conducted in the centre was designed in response to the first focus group, applying creative dance elements within the Aotearoa New Zealand curriculum concept of people, places and things, indoors and outdoors. We reflect on how the relationships to expert knowledge emerged and aligned with the research aims and design.