It would seem that technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested in 2020 as an essential spontaneous response to a world event. This article examines the current crisis in physical art and design studio learning in higher education as a consequence of the COVID‐19 outbreak and the sector’s response to the fast‐track conversion of blended learning to a distributed model. Universities are focusing on virtual community building where group work, ‘crits’ and presentations are being carried out online. Moving assessment and engagement to online formats has consequences for practice‐based art and design courses: distributed learning changes how we teach and learn. This article discusses the implications of art and design studio education in a time of distributed learning. It considers the loss of control over a physically based, practical curriculum and the repercussions for students unable to perform to the depth and rigour required for creative art and design practice. Studio education is considered a signature pedagogy, and has a distinct set of guiding principles such as facilitating critical play, thinking and making, and a pedagogy of ambiguity. This article examines the successes and challenges of moving these pedagogical principles into distributed spaces to support student engagement, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a research framework. The article also examines pedagogical strategies that support students to engage in physical forms of creative practice that enable them to connect their lived experience in a time of crisis.

The aim of the Inter-Life Project was to investigate the use of virtual worlds and creative practices to support the acquisition of transition skills for young people to enhance their management of important life events. In particular, the authors have been investigating the role of the Inter-Life virtual worlds in supporting the development of life transition skills in young people, some of whom were in the care of local authorities. Creative practices, such as photography, digital storytelling and filmmaking, were used as a vehicle to enable young people to access and develop new personal and shared narratives as they worked together with researchers over an extended period on ‘Inter-Life Island’. The Inter-Life Project created an embryonic virtual social research laboratory in order to study how young people can use a virtual world creatively, working together as a research community to develop skills that will help them navigate their key life transitions. The project focuses on how participants act and develop in Inter-Life, while engaged in co-designed creative and research activities. It also examines how the skills and understandings that were developed through a range of creative practices map onto their real-world experience. The project environments (based upon the commercial platform ‘Second Life’) incorporate ‘in-world’ data-gathering tools (as distinct from the ‘transition tools' created for the participants' use) that support content analysis. Such data enable the analysis of complex activities in the virtual world using activity theory as a theoretical perspective. The skills acquired and the development of identities as young people engage in shared activities are reported and analysed. The article concludes by assessing the potential of augmented 3D digital technologies to assist young people in the social and emotional challenges of transition in their lives. It also considers the potential of 3D environments to support student transitions in higher education, with particular reference to art and design education.

Careers work in the twenty-first century faces a key challenge in terms of digital technologies: to evaluate their potential for careers work in challenging settings. Given the rapidity of developments, technologies require evaluation in research innovations and naturalistic settings. Virtual worlds offer potential for careers and guidance work, and the therapeutic domain. To illustrate this, we present examples in which young people explore their feelings and ideas, plans and difficulties, while preparing for film-making. During this they develop important life transition skills. We argue that the power of virtual worlds – to support emotional and cognitive engagement – could be utilised in practice settings. We conclude that they are serious candidates as digital tools in the careers and guidance domain.We need intermediate runaway objects which are less spectacular and more inviting… bringing together the big and the small, the impossible and the possible, the future-oriented activity level vision and the here and now consequential action. (Engeström, 2009, p. 305 and p. 328)

This article uses published research to explore how Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) can help to sustain learning communities to engage in creative exploration and open investigation. It then draws on this research to ask: how could we use TEL to support pedagogies of socio‐ecological sustainability in the Art and Design education community? Three interrelated themes are explored: learning communities – in developing shared values and supporting investigations around issues of concern; learning spaces – in supporting these communities and their dialogue; and theory – to illustrate and provide language to understand the values, activities and goals of participants. Theory may help us to link the impact of these community activities, supported by TEL, to global issues. This article attempts to initiate an exploration of the fundamental elements required to create pedagogies of socio‐ecological sustainability within Art and Design higher education.

Devlin, A., Lally, V., Sclater, M., and Parussel, K. (2013) This paper presents the findings from one of the first empirical research studies which has investigated the impact of Inter-Life; a novel three-dimensional immersive virtual learning environment, on learning and development of social and educational life transition skills in a group of looked after and accommodated children. Drawing on social constructivism in which meaningful learning is related to context and situated in practice, we report on a series of Inter-Life workshops that enabled young people to work together and through the processes of participation in authentic learning activities contributed to the development of life transition skills such as self-confidence, empathy, negotiation and mediation skills, teamwork and active problem-solving skills. The novel affordances of the Inter-Life virtual world which contributed to the development of the learning community included the ability to personalise learner engagement and activities from the outset along with 'co-presence' and 'immersion' and the flexibility provided by the innovative, technology-enhanced Inter-Life platform. This study presents some empirical evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of new models of learning that are mediated by innovative malleable technologies that can be shaped by the learner in a participatory manner.Keywords: Inter-Life; transition skills learning; 3-dimensional virtual learning environment; social constructivism IntroductionThe present study details a novel approach to life transition skills learning using Inter-Life, which is a novel technology enhanced, three-dimensional, immersive virtual learning environment. The Inter-Life research project is an interdisciplinary project funded by the EPSRC/ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme technology-enhanced learning (TEL) phase (http://www.tlrp.org/tel/) in the UK (Lally et al., 2009). Inter-Life is an immersive three-dimensional virtual world based on the Linden Lab Second Life TM platform but has been extensively modified and includes novel integrated automated data collection tools and private spaces for critical reflection . Since the potential of virtual worlds for learning is now being investigated (Bronack, Riedl, & Tashner, 2006;Dalgarno & Lee, 2010;Dede, 2009)