DAHL is open to all members of the Faculty (students and staff), and aims to develop much more sophisticated digital capabilities and practices, collaboratively and sustainably. We believe that this works best when we bring together mixed groups of people (students, staff, external partners, from all disciplines) to develop their interests and capabilities collaboratively and consistently.

We currently have these strands of activity:

1. DAHL Shorts – 2 x 30-minute presentations every Wednesday 12.30 in term time, aiming to inspire and educate about the use of tech in research, teaching, and outreach.
2. DAHL Longs – occasional longer sessions.
3. DAHL Certificate – for any Faculty member (students and staff), get a certificate for participating in 6 shorts and doing a reflection on the use of technology in practice.
4. DAHL Showcase – competition for creative digital practice by students.
5. DAHL Framework – developing a framework for describing and supporting the use of technology in the Arts and Humanities (four aspects: patterns in big data; close-up stories of real people in real situations; experimenting with tech and being human; transferable technology skills).
6. VR Club – an open, friendly, university-wide forum for developing immersive technology use at Warwick.
   1. VR Club Monday open sessions in FAB 1.63 – anyone can come along and use our 8 Quest Pro headsets for anything they want to try, and discuss what they want to do with immersive tech.
   2. Immersive Showcase – presentations of chosen Arts and Humanities related VR experiences every Wednesday 2pm in term time.
   3. Immersive Tech Summit – full-day event bringing together interested parties from across the Uni, industry partners, and international universities (Shanghai, Monash) to consider the future of immersive Tech.
   4. VR outreach – lots of festivals and school visits, done in collaboration with our industry partners MBD and Limina.
   5. VR research, with WMG, WMS, WBS, Engineering, Psychology, and our international partners – we have recently applied for funding to do a project on VR and neurodiversity.

• Developing a technology support and training model and resources for the Arts Faculty (working with IT and the Library) – the adoption of LinkedIn Learning (coming end of June 24), and the creation of a Faculty tech hub are key to this. There’s also work being done to establish a more substantial and sustained relationship with creative tech industry (this is central to the Arts Faculty strategy, being developed by Faculty Chair Rachel Mosely).
• Design Studies – we have been running modules on this for 6 years, out of which the Design Studies courses and mini-department has developed. The interdisciplinary modules will now stop, with focus shifting to supporting the new degree, and aiming to develop designerly capability embedded across the Faculty.
• There is an emerging strand related to Museum Studies, this could be very significant, and we are incorporating more of it into the DAHL activities – for example, physical computing in exhibitions, and augmented reality exhibitions.

Some of the technologies we are currently focussing on are:

• Python
• Jupyter notebooks with Python (currently using GitHub Codespaces, investigating Noteable) for data-focussed research.
• Raspberry Pi with Python for physical computing (we have just ordered 6 Pi 400, 6 Pico W, screens, and kits of sensors, motors, robotics etc. to go into the Mobile Design Studio).
• Omeka S for online exhibitions – see this great example from the History Dept https://www.mappingwomenssuffrage.org.uk
• Meta Quest Pro headsets (we have 8) with a wide range of apps. The Figmin XR augmented reality design app is the most important, used in creating AR exhibitions.
• ArcGIS – we have a specialist who supports this.
• Web design and development in HTML, CSS etc. – I do a lot of this using the university’s Sitebuilder platform, but also Wordpress.
• RapidMOOC – three studios on campus equipped for creating video presentations and podcasting.