this work is published under a CC attribution - non commercial - share alike licence
The Post Industrial Media Project is a collaborative teaching and learning research project undertaken by Adrian Miles, Allan Thomas, David Carlin, Glen Donnar, Paul Ritchard, Rachel Wilson and Seth Keen of the RMIT Media program.
Thick description I take from Geertz and have appropriated it here to simply refer to the methodology of observing and writing out in as much material description as possible the practices that are observed and so contextualising them through their situated practice. This means we have not produced a series of oppositions or structures or predetermined categories that we use for analysis of our practice, or the intent and outcomes of the curriculum, but are just trying to describe what is happening as material practices and from there determine structures.
It is a synchronic description because we are not producing a geneology or history, and neither are we trying to describe or map the pathway of individual subjects in terms of where they have been or why. It is a slice through the curriculum now (late 2007).