Teaching Computational Creativity

Teaching Computational Creativity examines the new interdisciplinary pedagogies of today's coding-intensive interactive media and design curricula. Students, researchers and faculty will find a comprehensive overview of educational practices pertaining to innovation fields such as digital media, 3D printing, agile development, physical computing, games, dance, collaboration, teacher education and online learning. This volume fills an important gap in the literature on creative computation, as practitioners are rarely challenged to reflect on or share their teaching practices. How do we design effective inter-, multi-, cross- and trans-disciplinary pedagogy and curricula? Brought together here are essays on the pedagogies that produce the so-called 'unicorns' - graduates who can code and create. Here, the intertwining of (what many consider mutually exclusive) artistic sensitivities and computational skills plays an essential role, calling forth a new kind of undergraduate curriculum attuned to the interweaving of skillsets and theoretic knowledge needed to create and innovate with ever-changing technologies.

Introduction. Pedagogies at the intersection of disciplines Veronika Tzankova and Michael Filimowicz; Part I. New Foundations: 1. Staying current: developing digital literacies for the creative classroom Ryan M. Patton and Luke Meeken; 2. Teaching interactivity: introducing computation to art/design students Andrew Hieronymi; Part II. Code as Medium: 3. ARRAY[ ]: coding slowly Channel Two; 4. Teaching for the design singularity: toward an entirely code-based design curriculum Brad Tober; Part III. Physical{ly} Computing: 5. A physical computing teaching initiative in Brazil Luiza Novaes and Joao de Sa Bonelli; 6. Art and technology collaboration in interactive dance performance Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo and Christine Bergeron; Part IV. Online Learning: 7. Design scenes of online code learning environments Michael Filimowicz; 8. Between code and culture: developing a creative coding MOOC Mark Guglielmetti and Jon McCormack; Part V. Critical Pedagogy: 9. Process and outcome paradigms in media arts pedagogy Nancy E. Paterson; 10. Citizens of the cognisphere Daniel Sauter; Part IV. Transdisciplinary: 11. From growing tools to designing organisms: changing the literacies of design Orkan Telhan; 12. Pedagogical experiments in creative coding Angus G. Forbes.

Michael Filimowicz is senior lecturer in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He is director of the Cinesonika festival and academic conference, and founder of 4th Foundation, a university spinout doing curriculum development in K-12 coding and technology skills. He has published across disciplines in journals such as Organised Sound, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Leonardo, Empirical Musicology Review, and Semiotica. His art has been exhibited internationally at venues such as SIGGRAPH, Re-New, Design Shanghai, ARTECH, Les Instants Vidéo, IDEAS, Kinsey Institute, and Art Currents, and published in monographs such as Reframing Photography (2010) and Infinite Instances (2011). His portfolio site is http://filimowi.cz.
Veronika Tzankova is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, having previously gained her M.A. from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at the same institution. Her research is in the area of interactive technologies within contexts of social appropriation and democratic inclusiveness. Her work has been published in journals and books, and her research has also been presented at various conferences such as the Association of Internet Researchers and the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) Crossroads.