Bio

Dave
Keynoting st the Wikimania conference

I’ve worked at the intersection of teaching, research and digital for over 20 years. This has taken me from hand-coding websites for the BBC Natural History unit through to my current job of helping to run the largest Creative Arts university in Europe as Head of Digital Education and Academic Practice. I am also the President of the Association of Learning Technology and worked at the University of Oxford, co-managing an online distance learning unit. 

I’m not a technologist in that I’m more interested in the implications and opportunities of digital for learning, work and society than I am in procuring the latest shiny tech. A large aspect of my role at the University of the Arts London is focused on enhancing teaching and learning by encouraging emerging aspects of digital practice –  a good example of this work being the Digital Creative Attributes Framework

Heated debate with Marc Prensky, the originator of the contentious ‘Digital Natives’ idea

Beyond UAL I’m probably best known for the Digital Visitors and Residents continuum (V&R), an approach to understanding how we relate to the digital environment. The V&R mapping activity is used globally in many courses and staff development sessions and has been central to numerous research studies.

Seeking connections between enhancing teaching and learning and open, online modes of engagement earnt me Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Alongside this I have led a number of national studies which explore the potential of digital in higher education contexts and have supported institutions in the strategic development of teaching practice.

Looking at some V&R research at the ELIA conference in Stuttgart

I’m regularly invited to speak, keynote and run workshops around various aspects of my work. This ranges from running V&R workshops (face-to-face and online) to giving more scholarly talks on subjects such as ‘Trust and Digital Politics’.  I’ve worked a lot with library organizations, with a recent favourite of mine being a keynote entitled ‘Posthuman literacies: reframing the relationships between information, technology and identity’ for the LILAC library conference. I’m always looking to grow my connections across higher education and enjoy contributing to work across the sector. 

You can contact me via @daveowhite, david@daveowhite.com or david.white@arts.ac.uk

Reviewing responses to an activity at the UAL ‘Critical Creative Digital’ Platform event.

Why ‘daveowhite’? – David White is a spectacularly common name which means its always been taken as a profile in any platform by the time I try to sign-up. Daveowhite is my solution for this. The ‘o’ was inspired by the main character in North by Northwest and was Hitchcock taking a swipe at his producer David O. Selznik.

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