The Practice-Research-Pedagogy Cycle: A Student-Centered Model for Digital Art Education

This paper proposes and evaluates a student-centered “practice-research-pedagogy” cycle as a robust and necessary model for contemporary digital art education. Traditional pedagogical methods, such as research-led learning or practice-based research, often operate in linear, educator-centered modes that struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and cultural shifts. This paper argues for an integrated, cyclical model where an educator's critical artistic practice informs practice-based research, which in turn provides the foundational insights for designing student-centered pedagogical frameworks. These frameworks are then implemented and validated in research-led learning environments where students conduct their own practice and research, completing the cycle. This proposition is substantiated through a detailed, three-part case study. Part I documents a critical, practice-based art research project, Carousel, which utilized AI-based 3D reconstruction to explore themes of memory and digital decay, revealing key insights into the artist-algorithm relationship. Part II details how these research insights were distilled and translated into a new curriculum for a “Computational Art” module, changing the focus from software proficiency to project-based, problem-solving, foundational, and transferable skills in teaching. Part III presents the implementation and validation of this pedagogical model, first through a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project and then at scale through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of student outcomes. The evidence demonstrates significant growth in students’ technical fluency, creative confidence, and critical aesthetic engagement, confirming the model’s efficacy in fostering a dynamic, adaptive, and student-centered learning environment in higher education.