November 2010 - University of the West of England

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NEWS Second Life helps students prepare for Spanish placements Students at UWE can now use the Second Life platform to prepare them for placements in Spain, thanks to an innovative project by Mari-Carmen Gil and Susana Romans- Roca (both ELC). The project supports second-year students by facilitating the transition to their year abroad. By engaging in this immersive learning experience, students have found they not only improve their language skills, they also expand their real-life based skills, and increase their cultural awareness and general knowledge about the community where they will live and study for a year. Mari-Carmen said, “The materials we have developed will help students predict the effects of possible culture shock that they may feel on living abroad for an extended period of time. They can ‘visit’ virtual towns in Spain similar to those they are going to live in, such as Gijon in northern Spain, via Second Life cityscapes. Students can visit virtual art galleries in Gijon, see the main monuments and explore the city centre. They can ride in a hot air balloon, visit the Roman baths, listen to music or go swimming.” Susana continued, “Every year students go to a wide range of different places. 2D resources don’t give students the experience of a field-trip – this is a ‘real’ virtual experience. The interface is in Spanish and they can use chatboxes which helps their writing skills as well. Students have reported that being able to communicate by writing is less inhibiting than speech. “They also get to hear different Spanish accents. One student in particular had exposure to different Latin American accents and could distinguish the differences.” The Spanish Second Life activities are carried out in UWE’s Multimedia Lab and students are guided and supported by their tutors. The original funding for the project came from the Centre for Excellence in Multimedia Language Learning at the University of Ulster and Mari-Carmen and Susana have just won a further award under UWE’s Early Careers Research grants scheme to assess the potential of 3D virtual worlds for distance learning. Mari-Carmen’s and Susana’s Second Life avatars Maika Giordano, and Paradox Batista Gulgun Kayim gives a reading of material related to her Stories from the DMZ, helped by Iain Biggs, Talya Chalef and Laurie Beth Clark. Mapping spectral traces Dr Iain Biggs and Dr Victoria Walters (both A&D) attended an international, interdisciplinary event at Virginia Tech, USA, on behalf of UWE’s PLaCE Research Centre. Mapping Spectral Traces is a symposium and exhibition series that considers how difficult pasts can be researched, documented, represented, and animated in responsible and ethical ways. Iain gave the keynote paper, Deep Mapping and Spectral Traces – A Partial View. Together with two other members of the LAND2 network, Iain also exhibited both a series of his artist’s book works and a new piece of time-based work, entitled Uplands (dreams, memories, spectral traces – towards a case history). Victoria presented a paper on Josephs Beuys’ work in relation to spectral traces in the workshop session Mapping Spectral Traces as a Practice of Care. In addition to attending workshops and field visits both Iain and Victoria contributed to student appreciation of the symposium’s topics by teaching into classes, and to the interface with civic planning through contributing to a debate with local planners concerning the introduction of an ‘art district’ to Roanoke. Iain commented, “This was an important and valuable international gathering for PLaCE to be involved in, strengthening existing links and building new ones which we hope to develop in the new year.” Both PLaCE and LAND2 ( http://www.land2.uwe.ac.uk/ - a national network of artist/academics part funded by PLaCE) sponsored and were involved in this event. A full colour catalogue, which includes short essays by symposium organiser Professor Karen E Till and Iain Biggs, was produced in conjunction with the exhibitions. A copy of the catalogue can be found in the Bower Ashton Library. For more information on the PLaCE Research Centre visit www.placeresearch.co.uk/ For more information on the Mapping Spectral Traces symposium and exhibitions visit http://www.research.spia. vt.edu/events/spectral-traces/ 12
Students find out how planning can prevent crime Students find out how to prevent crime through design One hundred final-year architecture and planning students took part in a daylong workshop, jointly run by UWE and the police, on the role that a locality or environment can play in reducing crime. The workshop was organised by Mike Devereux, Senior Lecturer, (PA) and Adam Sheppard, Senior Lecturer (PA), together with Nick Hughes, Crime Prevention Design Adviser with Avon and Somerset Constabulary, helped by six police officers. It was part of the Planning and Managing Development module taken by all Master of Planning and the BA(Hons) Architecture and Planning students. Mike said, “Traditionally the police have concentrated on the offender and victim but this has now widened to an understanding of the role that the locality and environment play in preventing crime. The message of the day was that it is important to get design right at the planning stage of a proposal, rather than having to retrofit a scheme at great expense once a problem has become embedded in a community.” The day included presentations from the police on designing housing layouts to avoid making it easy for those with criminal intentions, good practice in school design, and what to consider when designing large scale infrastructure and town centre developments such as Cabot's Circus to mitigate the possibilities of terrorism. There were also in-depth workshops in which groups of students led by police officers worked on different case studies to identify and design-out problem situations. These concentrated on concepts such as providing natural surveillance, safe access, secure car parking, permeability and defensible space. Permeability means how easy or hard it is to walk or drive through an area – for example, too much permeability in a housing estate makes it easier for criminals to penetrate and get away. Defensible space is space that is naturally observed by people going about their daily business. If a reception area in a school is designed to overlook the main access way into the school or the playground, this helps prevent people being able to do things unobserved and is off-putting to the criminal. Mike added, “The workshop took place in UWE’s new Planning, Architecture and Design studios (R block) which is proving an excellent facility for bringing in and working with outside professionals. “It gave students an excellent example of how they will be working in practice once they graduate. The experience will be very valuable to employers and as an addition to a student's CV. It was a very good example of how different agencies and professions come together to create better places for everyone. Students will also follow this up in project work for the rest of the year as they design a scheme for a town-centre site in the middle of Salisbury, taking these lessons on board. “Organising this themed day was part of our continuing drive to reflect practice in our professionally accredited planning and architecture courses. It is one of a series of day long sessions students will be undertaking throughout the year. We will now be repeating the experience – probably holding the next one in February 2011- and building up our relationship with the Police and working on new initiatives to make safer places.” For more information contact Mike.Devereux@uwe.ac.uk 13
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November 2010 - University of the West of England

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