The Inter-Life project: researching the potential of art, design and virtual worlds as a vehicle for assisting young people with key life changes and transitions

Abstract

Careers work in the twenty-first century faces a key challenge in terms of digital technologies: to evaluate their potential for careers work in challenging settings. Given the rapidity of developments, technologies require evaluation in research innovations and naturalistic settings. Virtual worlds offer potential for careers and guidance work, and the therapeutic domain. To illustrate this, we present examples in which young people explore their feelings and ideas, plans and difficulties, while preparing for film-making. During this they develop important life transition skills. We argue that the power of virtual worlds – to support emotional and cognitive engagement – could be utilised in practice settings. We conclude that they are serious candidates as digital tools in the careers and guidance domain.We need intermediate runaway objects which are less spectacular and more inviting… bringing together the big and the small, the impossible and the possible, the future-oriented activity level vision and the here and now consequential action. (Engeström, 2009, p. 305 and p. 328)

Beneath Our Eyes: An Exploration of the Relationship between Technology Enhanced Learning and Socio‐Ecological Sustainability in Art and Design Higher Education

“…The experience and insights gained from the Interlife Project (Devlin et al . , ; Lally & Sclater , , 2013b; Lally et al . ; Sclater & Lally , 2013b, ) have led me to question how educators, learners and others involved in the support of learning are currently enabled, through engaging in TEL, to connect their formal learning with wider issues of human concern.…”

Arts-based Methods in Socially Engaged Research Practice: A Classification Framework

“…Figure 8. Tutor and student summary from Workshop 2 on an interactive board in the "Beach" gathering arena (Lally & Sclater, 2013).…”

“…Virtual world (Lally & Sclater, 2013) Multiple forms (Skinner & Masuda, 2013) Visual art -two-dimensional. Common types of two-dimensional visual art are photography, painting, drawing, comics, collage, and graphic novels.…”

“…An avatar is "an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user in a virtual space and that interacts with other objects in the space" ("Avatar," n.d.). The Inter-Life project (Lally & Sclater, 2013) was a modified virtual world in which young people worked to understand and navigate their key life transitions. It offered a safe space for them to develop important life skills such as conflict resolution.…”

Critical Technology Enhanced Learning, Art and Design, and Higher Education

“…In this co-research, the adult research team was encouraging the young people to develop their own research agenda. This paper explores some of the themes that emerged from the results of the Inter-Life Project (2008-2012) [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9].…”