The OnCreate project was initiated by ten universities with expertise in collaborative work in online-based learning environments and explores the specific challenges of implementing university courses in creative disciplines in such an environment. The first research phase comprises a literature search on creativity and Educ Inf Technol its contextual factors in online collaboration in an educational setting. From this research a first set of possible key challenges and contextual key factors has been selected and applied to categorize the results of interviews and surveys on current good practice in creative online collaboration among experienced online teachers from the partner universities. From the key findings we formulate hypotheses to guide future research towards a framework for creative online collaboration. At the same time, the results can serve as inspiration for the educational practice. Notable observations of the good practice research among the partner universities are that they realise innovative collaboration concepts usually on mashed-up environments of state-of-the-art web services rather than on the omnipresent learning management systems (such as Moodle or Blackboard). Also, they show a paradigm shift from teaching to coaching and promotion of an open peer-review culture among the students.

ABSTRACTco_LAB is the Collaboration Laboratory, an interdisciplinary research network initiated by colleagues from the University of Lincoln School of Film and Media, to explore new approaches to teaching and learning through the use of networked digital tools, and through the transferral of knowledge, skillsets and teaching styles. The aim is to develop interdisciplinary and collaborative methods for innovation and social entrepreneurship, resulting in a variety of institutional and community impacts. In addition to undertaking a variety of practice-based research projects across the University and local community, co_LAB has developed a substantial European network of partner universities, departments and practitioners.This network has resulted in collaboration on externally-funded projects and international strategic alliances to enable the sharing of pedagogical practice, and to enhance student mobility. The co_LAB team is currently half-way through OnCreate -a 3-year EU Erasmus funded project featuring a European consortium of 10 universities. The co_LAB model is designed to break down classroom walls and departmental divisions by encouraging community-based learning and sharing between students and colleagues from different academic disciplines. This model is underpinned by the principles of the University of Lincoln's Student-as-Producer concept. The model employs a blend of structured activities and discovery-based learning methods, with much of the workshops left open for students to develop concepts, lead sessions, present ideas and receive feedback from lecturers and other participants.

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Typically understood in relation to innovations in new media and modes of peer-production, the ‘media lab’ has emerged as a contemporary phenomenon encompassing a variety of ‘maker-spaces’, ‘fablabs’ and ‘hackathons’. This article seeks to resituate the ‘media lab’ in the context of media research and education, drawing inspiration from the recent ‘nonrepresentational’ and ‘nonhuman’ turns in media and cultural theory that examine our entanglement with media on a social, cultural and biological level (Grusin, 2015b; Thrift, 2007; Vannini, 2015; Zylinska, 2012). This article contributes to such debates by presenting the lab as entangled media praxis as a set of 10 principles for teaching media as mediation: a reflexive form of ‘doing’ contemporary media studies that is primarily concerned with developing an embodied ‘attunement’ to the entangled relations of media lab participants. This framework calls for transdisciplinary modes of practice research and ‘critical making’, whereby students, artists, creative technologists and academics work collaboratively to address the affective and subjective conditions of contemporary digital culture. This article will explore these methods in relation to the concept of media entanglement, drawing out the underlying principles of the ‘entangled media praxis’ framework by examining two pilot media labs facilitated by the Arts Council England-funded project, 1215.today.