Teesside University Becomes First Adobe Creative Campus in Europe

Today, Adobe has announced that Teesside University (@TeessideUni) has become the first European higher education institution to become an Adobe Creative Campus in recognition of its commitment to promoting digital literacy across all courses and areas of study.  As an Adobe Creative Campus, Teesside University joins a global network of over 40 higher education institutions including Boston University, Arizona State University, University of Utah, University of Miami and Swinburne University, and will be able to collaborate and share best practice to advance the teaching of digital literacy.

More than 16,000 students and staff at Teesside University will have access to Adobe Creative Cloud, and faculty will also benefit from a close relationship with Adobe’s pedagogical experts to effectively integrate Creative Cloud into the curriculum to help develop the communication, creativity and digital literacy skills that will set students up for success in the workplace and society.

A recent Adobe study analysed more than 50,000 EMEA job postings across 18 career fields and found the most sought-after skills to be “communication” (listed in 63% of job postings), “creativity” (54%) and “collaboration” (48%).  Despite being in high demand, the same study also analysed over 50,000 CVs and found these skills to be in extremely short supply among the current workforce.  “Communication” was listed as a skill in only 12% of CVs, “creativity” featured in 13%, and “collaboration” was referred to in just 6% of CVs, highlighting the need for the education system to do more to arm students with the skills that employers are clearly calling out for. 

Championing Digital Literacy

Becoming an Adobe Creative Campus is the latest step in Teesside University’s Future Facing Learning initiative, which aims to build vital digital literacy capabilities in all students across all curriculum areas and courses, by developing a pedagogical model that integrates digital literacy into core subject teaching and assessment.  

As Europe’s first Adobe Creative Campus, Teesside University will not only provide access to Adobe’s industry-leading creative and design tools and digital learning resources, it will also benefit from dedicated activities to help faculty embed the tools into their curricula. Students will have access to all the creative cloud apps and services from all their devices enabling learners to produce, collaborate and share their work from anywhere, anytime.  Faculty members will also benefit from having access to a rich set of tools from which they can develop new forms of learning and assessment experiences that are built on top of Adobe’s industry leading platforms.

Teesside University Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) Professor Mark Simpson, said:

“We are absolutely delighted to become the first Adobe Creative Campus in Europe Adobe is rightly recognised as an industry leader and its software is used worldwide across multiple industries. By giving all of our students access to its suite of apps, as well as providing them with support and training, we are ensuring that Teesside graduates are fully equipped to make a real difference in the 21^st century workplace. Our award-winning Future Facing Learning strategy places digital literacy at its heart. This is  further evidence of our ambition to be the forefront of the higher education sector when it comes to engaging with new ways of learning and driving innovation and creativity through digital technology.”

Mark Andrews, Pedagogical Evangelist at Adobe EMEA, said:

“Teesside University’s Future Facing Learning programme demonstrates its longstanding commitment to thoughtfully integrating technology into their curriculum so students gain the vital digital literacy and creative skills they need to succeed in the future. Becoming an Adobe Creative Campus marks the next phase of this programme, enabling Teesside to develop new educational delivery methods at an institutional scale that will benefit faculty and students.”