About the conference
DEL (Digitally Engaged Learning) is an international conference exploring and evolving digitally engaged teaching and learning in art and design Higher Education. By ‘digitally engaged’, we are referring to practices that are actively with, about or located in digital tools and spaces. DEL is a place for creative and critical making, where you will find objects, artefacts, experimental technologies and performances alongside presentations and workshops. We welcome teachers, technicians, instructional designers, artists, makers, researchers, art historians, digital humanities scholars, and others across all creative disciplines. There are opportunities to test, share and discuss emerging forms of pedagogy, art and design practice, and research. Participants are invited to submit to the open access, peer reviewed Spark Journal, which promotes new thinking around teaching and learning in the creative disciplines.
DEL is a partnership with The New School, Teaching and Learning Exchange at University of the Arts London (UAL), Penn State University and Texas State University. DEL 2018 will be hosted by the School for the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University, Toronto, Canada.
Edge Effects
Exploring zones of transition in teaching and making
“Edges are good places for looking in many directions to scrutinize and try to understand the world around us”
William Cronon, Edge Effects
The edge effect is an ecological concept that describes biological interactions happening on the boundaries of two overlapping ecosystems. Species from both ecosystems live alongside one another, as well as unique species that aren’t found in either. The unique species are specially adapted to the conditions of the transition zone between the two edges. Many species seek out edges because they offer simultaneous access to multiple environments, and a greater richness in habitat. In art and design, working at the “edges” of ideas or practices, often in spaces between disciplines, ways of knowing and bodies of knowledge, can be very fruitful. It can provide new insights, allow us to challenge conventions, and rethink our engagement with the world around us.
For DEL 2018, we offer the metaphor of edge effects as a provocation to explore zones of transition where technologies, disciplines, ways of knowing and bodies of knowledge overlap, producing adaptation, hybridity, transition and transformation. We encourage submissions that resonate with the concept of edge effects in the context of the many disciplines and practices that contribute to digitally engaged learning.
We encourage submissions that explore edge effects in various terrains:
- from analogue to digital and back
- relations between criticality, activism, art, and design
- inter-, multi-, trans-, disciplinarity teaching and practice
- bridging differences across age, race, culture, language, and borders
- alternative, activist and critical games
- shared narratives, cultures, and traditions
- Academic, cultural, industry collaboration and partnerships
These are suggested areas of enquiry from which we will form tracks for the conference. However, if you have other edge effects you would like to explore, we are open to new areas of enquiry.
See some videos from last year's conference.
Conference fee
| Early bird (until August 1st) | CAD $350 |
| Full price | CAD $425 |
| Students (with proof of ID) | CAD $65 |
Conference Chairs
Conference committee
- Natalie Coulter
- Assistant Professor, Communication Studies
- Lillian Heinson
- Instructional Technology Coordinator, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
- Ritu Kanal
- BDes Student, Design
- Michael Longford
- Graduate Program Director, Digital Media
- Natasha May
- Educational Developer, Teaching Commons
- Judith Schwarz
- Associate Dean Academic, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
- Kurt Thumlert
- Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Institute for Research on Digital Learning (IRDL)
- Sennah Yee
- PhD Student, Cinema & Media Studies
- Erin Yunes
- PhD Candidate, Art History & Visual Culture
Contact us
For any information regarding the 2018 conference, please contact Claudia Roeschmann roeschmann@txstate.edu