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Minutes of Lighting Education Meeting

2nd April 2014, at Light+Building in Frankfurt

1) Richard Taylor (Erco) and Malcolm Innes (Edinburgh Napier University) welcomed all attendees. Sixty educators from 20 different countries had registered for the meeting. Attention was drawn to the Lighting Educators and Researchers group on LinkedIn, which currently has 410 members and has been growing at the rate of around 100 new members every year. This set-up allows sub-groups to be formed. Those who are not yet LinkedIn were advised to apply to join the group. 2) The main points resulting from the pre-convention meeting for Lighting Design Educators and Researchers at PLDC 2013 in Copenhagen were listed: General points: should universities contribute to professional education? lighting education should be independent of any one manufacturer, but allow and encourage input and support (content and funding) common academic standards are required a platform for sharing knowledge and good practice a central resource for industry-based research would be of benefit a central resource for graduate job recruitment would be of benefit educators should liaise and coordinate efforts with professional organisations involved in education Raising awareness of lighting design: lighting education should be employed to widen the knowledge and awareness of architectural lighting design existing lighting design programmes need support and the establishment of new programmes should be encouraged (raise awareness of lighting amongst school leavers and teachers) the industry needs to work together to raise the visibility of high-quality lighting education industry, educators and researchers should collaborate to publicise the potential health benefits of good lighting MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) could provide taster courses in lighting Networks for education: a task force should be set up lighting manufacturers can offer to share web-based resources to create an open access repository of educational materials. Summary of the Copenhagen meeting: The meeting saw the main priorities for the immediate future as follows: 1. Define our mission for an association. 2. Create specialist networks for education issues. 3. Work with existing associations to improve access to high quality lighting education. 4. Create a task force to share pedagogical good practice. 5. Create a global wiki of educational information from manufacturers and others. 6. Explore MOOCs as taster courses to raise the awareness of lighting design. 7. Plan an education summit or conference. 8. Carry on the conversation using the Lighting Educators LinkedIn page.

Input from Derek Porter (Parsons, New York City) previous to the meeting: Who are the members or a coordinated group: - educators/researchers with full or part-time academic positions - practitioners who teach part-time in academies or continuing education Actions involved: - advocating for academic interests - sharing curricular content and research materials - formalizing curricular standards - student / faculty exchanges - interdisciplinary interests (research, science, engineering, design) Critical points from PLDC meeting! - focus on "education" not "educators" - global reach across cultures - define what is missing from current organizations Including the above comments from Derek, Malcolm presented a possible mission statement for a coordinated group of educators: The association/group/network seeks to promote, advocate and advance lighting design education on a global basis. This will be achieved through the assembly of those involved in lighting education, through the dissemination of educational materials, through sharing good practice and through active lobbying to raise awareness of lighting design education. Forming an association for Lighting Design Educators and Researchers. Following recent news about the demise of the Professional Lighting Designers Association, there was some reluctance at the meeting to use the term association, hence the alternative terms group or formal network. Some felt that network might be too loose a term. How could a network be funded? An association is more structured and would require coordination. It was agreed that voluntary work would not be sufficient to achieve the defined goals. Richard Taylor (Erco) commented that PLDAs disappearance had killed interest in the industry and that the time was right for a new and meaningful move. It was noted that existing lighting designers associations tend to focus on their professional members and educators do not a vote in some associations. Any new organisation should aim to be inclusive. It was suggested that the American Society for Engineering Education could be an interesting model to look at: www.asee.org Or the Society of Building Science Educators www.sbse.org It was discussed that previous meetings had been described as lighting educator meetings whereas we now saw this as being seen as prescriptive of a full time educator. We therefore now try to use the term lighting education meetings. Ignacio Valero suggested that the focus be shifted from education to knowledge as this is the outcome of education. Whatever name or goals the educators have, their work and efforts must be coordinated, connected, communicated. Those involved need to be committed. The goals and achievements need to be seen in context, i.e. as a crucial part of qualifying lighting designers and thus gaining recognition for the profession.

3) The meeting then addressed the following points: A possible structure and organisation: it was agreed that the first step needs to be to set up a task force to define the goals and explore the feasibility of a structure to improve Lighting Education/Knowledge on all levels worldwide. Key issues and what to address first: a business plan is required; funding could be through industry sponsorship, university membership, individual members fees and academic funding applications attention must be paid to providing value for money. Key questions to ask potential members: What do I expect of such a structure? What am I prepared to contribute in terms of time and money? Stakeholders involved: The network/organisation should be all-inclusive with individual members from manufacturing given equal rights to full time designers and educators. Each institute/school could hold a conference or workshop on a specific topic, e.g. a sharing teaching experiences workshop Timeframe: Work needs to begin right away. 4) Malcolm put out a call for volunteers to form an advisory/planning committee (task force) plus a series of other work groups (list attached). This call is to be repeated on the Linkedin group. 5) Final thoughts from the meeting: Conferences or workshops on a specific topic and similar activities could also be attached to an existing event to maximise the chance of a good cross section of members being able to attend. Educators need to communicate better amongst themselves. Lighting programmes need to enhance designers lighting skills and competences. A summer academy could be held for students each year. Virtual conferencing should also be explored to maximise the reach of events. A workshop on teaching/learning techniques would be of benefit. A two-day summit should be held to share good practice. A meeting/summit could be held immediately before the Light Symposium which is to be held at KTH in Stockholm on 9. to 10. October, 2014. A task group is to be set up after the meeting to begin to organise meeting/summit alongside the Light Symposium.

The meeting was kindly supported by Erco (Richard Taylor), Fagerhult (Henrik Clausen) and Xicato (Roger Sexton not present). Meeting Minutes by Alison Ritter and Malcolm Innes 7/4/14

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