DIGITAL TOOLS FOR CREATIVE COLLABORATION

Faced with the urgency of the COVID 19 pandemics, many teachers and students turned -out of necessity- to GAFAM, oligopoly enterprises located in the Silicon Valley, whether to find a video (YouTube), to share references (Padlet), to make a video conference (Zoom, Team, Meet) or to write a document with several hands (Google Docs). Moreover, information was widely shared through personal social networks accounts (habit students are likely to keep after graduation in their professional practice). The lack of digital education and awareness on data security became thus obvious during this crisis. Although no comprehensive study is available on this subject, due to the recent and sudden nature of the events, project partners agree on the necessity to open the debate on the alternative EU-based solutions. At the same time, design schools, whose curricula include a higher amount of inherently collaborative situations like team projects or workshops noticed limitations of the existing tools. While basic teaching tasks are certainly possible using this novel digital working environment, a striking observation is that creative processes seem to be strongly limited by the expressiveness of the involved media and tools. Being made for productive collaboration, applications currently used in digital teaching do not cover the needs of creative collaboration. Thus, remote creative collaboration, its requirements and different aspects, possible tools and pitfalls are something that needs investigation and distinct attention. The aim of the project is thus to set up a sustainable system by selecting and elaborating alternative solutions to the mainly American industrial digital tools. By testing them, training students and teachers, we will develop a broader and healthier technical culture by guaranteeing control of the data and technical infrastructure. Raising awareness on these important issues will be an integral part of this pedagogical project. This might not only provide an opportunity to significantly improve teaching quality and possibly create new teaching approaches in the context of design schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the findings should be also applicable to other domains where creative processes can be found e.g. engineering, software or research collaborations. The idea is of reaching various audiences starting with students, teachers, staff members of the HEI in art and design and reaching other target audiences, like creative sector professionals and decision-makers. Furthermore, exploring improved creative remote collaboration potentially should open up more intensive and fruitful cooperation between universities, national or international, especially in times where events like the current pandemic prevent people from meeting in person. The project will be carried out within the framework of European cooperation between three schools of art and design. European level and complementarity of these schools will enable the development of concrete proposals, with the aim of producing prototypes, manuals and other pedagogical tools to be shared and used freely by students, teachers and technicians of other HEI, but also by professional designers. The aim is to build IT communities for pedagogy and creative practices at the international level.