UoG and international partners explore complex relationship between technology and education

University of Gloucestershire academics and students have collaborated with international research partners to explore the evolving and complex relationship between technology and education, particularly in the context of illustration and creative practices.

Illustrator and designer Kimberly Ellen Hall,
Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for BA (Hons) Illustration, and students from the University worked with counterparts from Pakistan, India and Hong Kong to expand the conversation around technology’s opportunities and challenges, including the impact of AI.

The findings of the cross-cultural knowledge exchange were presented at the 15^th Illustration Research Symposium in Istanbul, Turkey. These included insights around data loss and its implications, artistic ownership, and technology costs.

The University’s research partners in the project –  funded by a Shaping Teaching grant from the Academic Quality Enhancement and Innovation fund at the University – were the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru, India; Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan; Academy of Visual Art, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong.

Kimberly Ellen Hall, from the University’s School of Arts, Culture and Environment, said: “The study provided our Illustration students with an important opportunity to enhance their learning through collaboration with an international cohort.

“The 20 collaborative researchers comprising students and staff found crossover, whether from culture or concept, illuminated their research, and that the interdependence of ideas and co-creation were their most powerful tools for understanding.

“Technology often creates an illusion of universality, but tools, whether high-tech or traditional, are reliant on the hands that they are in, and our project focused on the diverse hands holding these tools.

“We examined topics such as the power of the undo button, the ethical and sustainability concerns around AI, sharing cultural heritage through technology, and the relationship between craft and value, among many possible others.

“Our paper presented these tensions about technology as we create a global classroom and use methods that contradict the very structures on which technology is often built and deployed.”

Main image: Kimberly Hall (right) and international research partners