Course Title: Creative Practice Research

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Creative Practice Research

Credit Points: 12.00

Terms

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Distance / Correspondence or Face-to-Face or Internet	Sem 1 2017
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	Sem 1 2014, Sem 2 2014, Sem 1 2015, Sem 1 2016

Flexible Terms

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	RSCHYr2019 (CS91), RSCHYr2019 (CS93), RSCHYr2019 (All)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	RSCHYr2020 (All)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	RSCHYr2022 (CS21), RSCHYr2022 (CS23), RSCHYr2022 (All)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	RSCHYr2023 (All)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face	RSCHYr2024 (All)
ARCH1429	City Campus	Research	320H Architecture & Urban Design	Face-to-Face or Internet	RSCHYr2018 (C181), RSCHYr2018 (C183)

Course Coordinator: A/Prof Charles Anderson

Course Coordinator Phone: Contact via email

Course Coordinator Email: charles.anderson@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Location: 100.08

Course Coordinator Availability: Contact via email

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

Acceptance and enrolment in a Higher Degree by Research Degree (Masters by research or PhD), that will be undertaken through creative practice research. The course is specifically for candidates who will be examined by project (rather than by thesis).

Course Description

This course applies to all HDR candidates who conduct practice-based creative practice research. This can be within particular creative practice research disciplines or across disciplines.

Creative practice research is research in the medium of creative practice itself. This course will help you to locate yourself within the creative practice research paradigm and to develop the research techniques, skills and practices that will contribute to developing and articulating your specific research trajectory, and to manoeuvre more confidently throughout your candidature.

In particular, this course will enable you to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the key aspects of the creative practice research paradigm, its operational presuppositions, contexts, techniques, and background. It will further develop your critical and reflective skills, alert you to the potential and opportunities of creative thinking in relation to your practice research and dissertation, as well as enable your exploration of the relationships between the various components of creative practice research: i.e., artefacts/exhibitions, text, verbal presentations, performances, and events. This will allow you to successfully progress with the development of your creative practice research with a view towards forthcoming milestone reviews - particularly the mid-candidature and completion presentations.

The course will showcase different perspectives on creative practice research strategies and knowledge creation. Knowledge frameworks, methods and methodologies, and research contexts and communities of practice, will be foregrounded by case studies.

The course facilitates ongoing peer support networks. You will be encouraged to communicate your work and research interests through seminar and symposia discussion with peers, including peer feedback.

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

       

Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

1. Analyse and articulate the context of your creative practice within the broader paradigm of practice-led research.
2. Conceptually align your creative practice research with its formal record as a dissertation. 
3. Critically reflect on the role and positioning of the self within the framework of creative practice research, its methods, and methodologies. 
4. Critically articulate the potential contribution of your research via creative practice to a field of knowledge.

Overview of Learning Activities

This course is designed to be as flexible as possible to meet the requirements of a candidate cohort variously located around the world. This course will be offered through a scaffolded series of face-to-face and online seminars and workshops, and will culminate in a two half-day intensive to be held in the week prior to a PRS. In the course you will have the opportunity to participate in peer-to-peer presentations, discussions, and conversations and to engage with a number of guest presenters. You will be asked to undertake your own independent research in creative practice research methods as well as to critically review, analyse, and reflect upon a range of material pertaining to creative practice research including exemplar dissertations, examination exhibitions and presentations, creative practice research literature, pre-recorded lectures and panel discussions. Throughout the course you will be able to develop your research project through the production and presentation of written and visual material.

Overview of Learning Resources

RMIT will provide you with resources and tools for learning in this course through our online systems. 
Lists of learning resources will be provided during the course, and you will be expected to build on these through your own literature searches.
There are services available to support your learning through the University Library. The Library provides guides on academic referencing and subject specialist help as well as a range of study support services. For further information, please visit the Library page on the RMIT University website and the myRMIT student portal.

Overview of Assessment

Throughout the course, you will be encouraged to focus learning in relation to your specific research topics and interests, such that you are learning about and refining your research strategies as part of, rather than separate from, working on your specific research project.

You are asked to undertake three interrelated Assessment Tasks.

1. The first task, On Method/ology: Positioning the Self as Creative Practice Practitioner and Researcher, requires you to analyse and articulate the context of your creative practice within the broader paradigm of practice-led research, and to critically reflect on the role and positioning of the self within the framework of creative practice research, its methods, and methodologies. It is intended that this exercise will provide you with the basis of your dissertation writing on method / methodology / research design.
2. The second, Configurations: CPR Structure and Shape, focuses upon the development of a coherent account of your research through a consideration of the potential internal structure and overall composition of a creative practice research dissertation. In this task you will be asked to present a review of exemplar dissertations and to draft an annotated contents page. 
3. The third, titled Constellations: Situating Creative Practice and its Contribution, asks you to develop your understanding of your research’s context or community of practice and its potential contribution to knowledge, through a process of visualisation and textual reflection and proposition.

This is a pass/fail only course, which aims to be a developmental resource and support for your ongoing research particularly in the lead up to your second milestone. You will be assessed on how well you meet the course’s learning outcomes and on your development against the program learning outcomes.

If you have a long term medical condition and/or disability it may be possible to negotiate to vary aspects of the learning or assessment methods. You can contact the program coordinator or Equitable Learning Services if you would like to find out more.