Last Friday, staff in the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University (DCU) joined together for a whole of team collaborative professional development activity. Notably, this experience was purposefully different with a creative twist. In two teams, combining over 20 people across all three NIDL units, the challenge for the morning was to produce a large piece of urban art (i.e., graffiti) based on two randomly assigned themes.
As hopefully you can tell from the selected images the two themes were Pirates and Western. At first this was a rather daunting task for people in the face of two large blank canvasses (walls). However, after a brief 101 tutorial on the basics of drawing and painting graffiti from our two expert mentors, each team set about their task by brainstorming possible concepts, sketching out initial designs and learning how to hold and spray a paint can.
Some people took to this task naturally whereas others slowly warmed to the experience, especially given the doors were left open most of the time to avoid paint fumes.
It’s also fair to say that dividing up tasks, learning new artistic skills and working in a team to produce the intended design was not easy. Notably, the two groups responded quite differently to the challenge under the guidance of their respective team leaders.
There was a lot of good banter and healthy competition, nevertheless, between the two teams as the large walls gradually filled and increasingly became alive with colourful imagery.
Over the course of the morning a number of hidden talents emerged and by the end of the experience both teams were rather pleased with their efforts. We believe the final results depicted in the photos immediately above and below illustrate the creative flair, collective problem-solving abilities and collaborative across unit potential of the NIDL team–that is, irrespective of whether you seek treasure or just prefer to have a quiet drink in the saloon.
Of course, the challenge for us in the New Year is to build on this innovative professional development experience to more fully harness our combined talents. We hope through this non digital experience (apart from the photos) that we have set a new benchmark for discovering more creative, distinctive and transformative ways of realising our vision of designing, implementing and researching new Blended, Online and Digitally-enhanced (BOLD) models of education.
In the meantime, the words of Einstein spring to mind and go some way to encapsulating the real spirit and essence of last week’s purposefully different professional development challenge, as we strive in the NIDL to promote talent, creativity, and consistent excellence:
“Creativity is intelligence having fun”
(Albert Einstein)
Megan Gaffney has been an online distance learning tutor, in psychology, in Dublin City University since 2007, and has also lectured in Trinity College Dublin and Hibernia College. Megan developed the Abnormal Psychology and Psychological Counselling module. Megan is a Registered Counselling Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland, working with adolescents and adults in primary care and with secondary school students in the Kildare/Wicklow ETB. She is Chair of the Psychological Society of Ireland’s Division of Counselling Psychology and also a member of the PSI Council. Megan has published in the area of suicide prevention and postvention. She is currently completing a PhD in TCD, which is funded in part by the Irish Research Council, looking at risk factors and resilience in adolescents. 
Adrian Redmond is a Central Statistics Office statistician who 
John is known for the way that he facilitates student learning with enthusiasm, dedication, creativity and considerable flair. He
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