In this report on a specialised topic of remix and emergent learning we will demonstrate an open education project that emerged from the future. Using open and inclusive practices, a global group of educators engaged in some serious fun to collaborate and share digital and physical artefacts based on a poem. The poem itself was collaboratively created using open, online software, and allowed for serendipitous participation without the need to learn new skills. The set of work that was and is being created is beautiful, diverse, and far reaching. We discuss the practices of remix that this collaboration uses and show how these seemingly trivial experiences both nurture wellbeing, lead to serious learning, and have wide applicability in other, more formal, learning contexts.

Can collaborative creativity help to connect digital practitioners with each other and enhance their well-being? In order to answer this we undertook a piece of qualitative research. Using bricolage as our methodology, we surveyed participants of a collaborative creative project and used grounded theory in order to categorise the responses. In order to illustrate our findings and better explain the nature of the creative project, we share some of the artwork and music that was created by participants as part of this project. We conclude that as well as enhancing well-being, this creative endeavour also added to the personal learning of these participants.

In this concise paper, the authors provide a forum for thinking about creative and collaborative inquiry in research-informed practice. Higher educators may benefit from creative academic and professional development, beyond traditional programs in contemporary, technology-enhanced learning. Creative practice may take many forms. An educational developer and an educational technologist reflect on their practice through the forms of vignette and poetry, to exemplify how narrative can reveal insights that may otherwise have remained hidden. In telling our stories, we encourage other academics and professionals to use creative and collaborative ways to reconnect and thrive. Further research on creative practice may lead to more fictional, interdisciplinary ways of connecting and continuing professional development.

Although multimodality is increasingly used in teaching, learning and assessment, there is little in the literature that speaks to how VoiceThread (VT) is used for assessment purposes in higher education. This study contributes to this knowledge by evaluating how VT was used for assessment purposes at one Australian university and exploring how lecturers and students experience the use of VT in assessment tasks. Data were collected through interviews with lecturers, surveys and a focus group with students and review of the use of the VT tool itself. A five-part VT assessment process was identified and support structures for staff and students were mapped. The study found that despite the multimedia capability of VT, text only slides and text with visual slides were the most common design of student created media, while text, audio and video commenting were used across the six units in the study. Lecturers primarily used audio comments and grades in the feedback process. While assessment submission was not always straight forward, and students required extra support with this unfamiliar tool, the opportunity to engage in multimodal assessment tasks was received positively by students and staff as an opportunity to enhance the diversity of assessment and feedback.