Supporting Creativity in Performance Lectures

This paper presents a reappraisal of how conventional lectures could meet the expectations of ‘digital native’ students. Our approach is to consider how digital media could be integrated further into the lecture by transposing knowledge through artistic as well as pedagogical means to form a ‘performance lecture’. We began by developing a design and evaluation framework to foster new creative thinking and also to assist as a structuring tool. The framework draws on the disciplines of interaction design, cognitive psychology and performance art. The framework consists of five elements, four design production parameters and a performer/audience interaction model. The production parameters consist of modal expressions, spatial design, temporal flow, and audience engagement and spectatorship. Connecting the five elements together are rhetorical considerations. This paper presents the outline structure of this framework and concludes with some findings from an evaluation of framework effectiveness to help in creatively developing performance lectures. Author