Developing new pedagogical models for curricula targeting industry and government collaborations

Educational spaces within a university campus have traditionally been seen as a lecture theatre with an area set aside for tutorials. In the case of a computer-based teaching programme, this has been a computer lab, with projector, screen and lecturer at the front of the room. All teaching has usually been in semi-darkness and, as the work is computer-based, there is nothing stimulating within the walled environment: just rows of desks and computers. Perhaps for purely pragmatic reasons this has basically been accepted by educators as the way things were done. However, it has always meant that it limited the possibility of more diverse pedagogical approaches to learning and knowledge gathering. Within a computer-based environment, how is a more student-centered approach to knowledge being advanced? What type of changes need to happen or be developed to allow different types of classrooms or processes for learning to be adopted in higher education within the very fast moving and changing field of digital moving image production and post-production. How does a university campus need to change to accommodate new environments which allow for different models of student-centered approaches to learning, as well as the increasing requirement for an industry collaborative model for projects being the norm. What needs to be developed to better enable tertiary/industry collaborative teaching and research models being pursued to be taught both inside and outside the university environment? Within the digital moving image field, students are increasingly being able to really push the research boundaries and actually inform the industry. How do we enhance and enable this reality and enmesh it into future pedagogical models? This paper investigates this changing environment with reference to how it may be achieved specifically with some key case studies within the animation subject area which includes motion capture in it's pipeline.