Key ideas for a new Hyper Island

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

June 17, 2007 [1397 views]

Almost twelve years ago Nick Oates, David Erixon, Lars Lundh and I opened a school for new media design in Karlskrona,Sweden funded as part of a new Swedish public vocational university initiative.

At the heart of Hyper Island were principles that included the following:

Active learning based around real projects
Blending technology, business and creative design
Involving international lecturers from the industry around the world
Giving students general principles rather than simply teaching them the tools

Hyper Island has been phenomenally successful both in sticking to these principles and in creating graduates who have gone all over the world to help build the digital media industry.

Coming to Stockholm

At the start of this year, I helped Christian Olsson and the rest of the team at Hyper Island put in a new application to open a second branch of the school in Stockholm. In March we heard we had been successful and the plans are now in full swing to open in September.

My role is limited to helping with the curriculum and the new location poses some significant challenges:

How do we run the two locations Karlskrona and Stockholm together at the same time?
How do we maintain (and raise) the pedagogic standards that have been set in Karlskrona?
How do we make sure that both courses are fresh and relevant for the next wave of developments in the Digital Media industries in Europe and further afield?

New courses need new models

The principles outlined above remain in place but over the last few months we have been discussing changes to the courses that will strengthen Hyper Island’s position and address the challenges described.

Hyper Island will make increased use of the technology to deliver learning from live streaming video to podcasts
More of the School’s activities will involve an online component with disussion and research encouraged between students and with the industry
Lectures will be better documented with all documentation published on a forthcoming Hyper Island learning site
Students will be encouraged to help develop learning materials from their own projects
Core “mental modelling” activities will be run throughout the courses to help students develop independent thinking about the technical, business and creative issues
The network of graduates will be revitalised with current students encouraged to engage with those already in professional life
Hyper Island will be looking to collaborate and exchange materials and ideas with other similar courses around the world bullding up a learning network for those in Digital Media and looking to provide new educational paths for those in the industry

I am extremely excited by the challenges of a new Hyper Island and will be actively involved as the courses start in late August. I will be using this section of my site to communicate with the current and past graduates from the school and to enable parts of the discussion.