A Prospectus and Invitation for Participation
Over the past decade, colleges and universities have had to "embrace" technology, at least in the form of massive increases in spending for equipment, infrastructure, and support personnel. Most faculty would also admit to feeling varying degrees of pressure to incorporate technology into their classrooms. A wide range of institutions, organizations, and a host of entrepreneurs have mobilized to provide workshops, tutorials, and resources for those activities. Students, we are told, will increasingly come to college with expertise and expectations about technology, changes that we will ignore at our peril. Claims abound about the "fundamental" changes occurring in education. We hear often that a "knowledge" or "learning" revolution is taking place.
But amidst all the activity, colleges and universities are not often asking some fundamental questions. For those of us concerned with liberal education in the 21st century, it seems especially important that we make inquiries now about directions, definitions, and practice. To that end, The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College proposes to investigate this central question: Does the increasing use of technology in the curriculum have any discernable and particular impact upon the ways in which we envision and practice liberal arts education?
That question, of course, has several pieces embedded in it, including what we mean by "technology"; what might be "discernable," both in terms of "measurable" and understood by practitioners; what might be particular to liberal arts education; and issues of both practice and definition as it concerns liberal arts education. All are important to the inquiry, and all must be addressed at various points in our work as we pursue The Center of Inquiry's primary mission of testing, exploring, and promoting the relevance and efficacy of the liberal arts.
Two branches derive from this central question and will provide the focus to two consultation meetings at the Center of Inquiry:
Teaching, Technology, and Effective Practices in Liberal Arts Education
July 31-August 3, 2003:
Do practicing scholars and teachers have good evidence that the technological innovations they have used actually improve teaching and learning in liberal arts education? What impact do those innovations have on the traditional mission of liberal arts education, on residential communities of learning, and on institutional finances and structures?
Technology, Digital Culture, and the Nature of Liberal Arts Education
September 25-28, 2003
If we are indeed within a technology or knowledge "revolution," must we reconceive our notion of what it is to be "liberally educated"? Have technological innovations made it necessary for us to re-evaluate what students must know and do to achieve knowledge, not just information and training?
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Assumptions and procedures
We seek to gather a national group of teachers and scholars interested in working collaboratively to better understand the appropriate changes (if any) in the nature and aims of liberal arts education enabled by emerging technologies. Our mode is to invite consultation groups of no more than 20 people and to thereby (1)create an unusual combination of people who would not normally work together; (2)focus on discussion rather than paper presentations and formal panels; (3)create community and an atmosphere for "out-of-the-box" thinking; (4)serve as a catalyst to create new alliances among stakeholders in liberal arts education; (5)produce some product or outcome that can extend the discussion beyond the meeting and clarify which additional steps might be appropriate. The consultation groups should develop a sense of collaborative and open-ended exploration; working together to explore, to ask the right questions, and to seek reflective answers will be the focus of our work.
The consultations will occur at the Center of Inquiry at Wabash College, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. We anticipate that each consultation meeting will take place from Thursday night through Sunday morning, allowing ample time for discussion, planning, and informal gatherings. The Center of Inquiry will provide honoraria and cover all travel and conference expenses for those chosen to participate.
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Teaching, Technology, and Effective Practices in Liberal Arts Education
July 31-August 3, 2003:
Participants: We seek to assemble a balanced and creative group of teachers, scholars, and librarians involved with innovative projects using technology for teaching and learning in liberal arts education.
Pre-conference work: Participants will contribute, read, and discuss research materials about teaching and learning with technology, about the scholarship of teaching (with and without technology), assessment, and the on-going debates concerning the definitions of liberal arts education. At the center of this work will be postings about their own involvement with technology projects, informed especially by discussions about "best practices" in liberal arts education. Discussions will focus on:
Course design and scope of the project
Incorporation of technology
Measured results and the underlying assumptions about measurement
Lessons learned and conclusions.
The consultation meeting, building on the posted descriptions of successful innovations, will focus on the lessons learned, unintended consequences, and implications for liberal arts education. While participants will contribute to building the agenda of our meeting, one possible organizational filter for our discussion follows:
Focus on technology: What are the most important uses of technology for teaching and learning? What implications do these uses have for networks, organizational structures, budgets, and institutional missions in liberal arts education?
Focus on outcomes: What can we conclude about the effectiveness of these innovations-and about effective measurements? What will it take for us to say we have good evidence that liberal arts education is being enhanced (or threatened) by technological innovations?
Focus on community, collaboration, and active learning: What are the specific effects on these hallmarks of liberal arts education that we can find from the projects discussed?
Focus on the future: What do our innovations suggest about the evolving nature of liberal arts education? What additional research should we pursue? How might this group of participants shape practices and institutional awareness about the place of technology in liberal arts education?
Outcomes: If successful, this first consultation will
Provide a solid foundation for our second consultation about Technology, Digital Culture, and the Nature of Liberal Arts Education;
Gather important resources, including links to literature and the participants' reflections about their innovative uses of technology for teaching and learning, which will comprise the basis of future publications, either print or web-based;
Establish a community of scholars dedicated to further research and discussion about effective practices using technology in liberal arts education--a community that will influence conversations on the subject at both the national level and in each participant's immediate community of practice.
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Technology, Digital Culture, and the Nature of Liberal Arts Education
September 25-28, 2003
Participants: A majority will perhaps be drawn from the first consultation, but experts in communication theory, literacy, and digital culture may find this meeting especially relevant.
Pre-conference work: As with the first consultation meeting, we will rely heavily on pre-conference communication to begin our discussion. Common readings, sharing of resources, and circulation of brief papers will be key components.
The consultation meeting: The ideal shape of the consultation will be a merging of philosophical inquiry with probing into the specifics of liberal arts education and its future. Again, while the participants will contribute to shaping our agenda, possible organizing topics for our consultation sessions follow:
Literacies: What evidence do we see suggesting that our students are coming to college with new, less print-based forms of literacy? What might it mean for our students to have "technological fluency" or to be "digitally literate"? What might it mean for faculty to be "technologically fluent" or "digitally literate"? What curricular or organizational structures might address these issues?
Knowledge: How do new technologies reshape knowledge? To what extent do theoretical descriptions of changes from print to digital culture take tangible shape in our institutions, in our departments, in our classrooms? Can we begin to see patterns or the need for institutional changes?
Learning: What evidence do we have that students today learn in fundamentally different ways from previous generations? In what ways might that evidence change our ideas about what it means to be "liberally educated" and how liberal arts education happens?
The nature of higher education: Can we identify exemplary adaptations to changes brought on by new technologies? What are the dangers, unintended consequences, and challenges we face, particularly in liberal arts education? In what ways do the effects of technology threaten-or complement-the traditional mission of liberal arts education?
Outcomes: If successful, this second consultation will
Complement our first consultation about Teaching, Technology, and Effective Practices in Liberal Arts Education and contribute further to the mission of testing, exploring, and promoting the relevance and efficacy of the liberal arts.
Produce essays, articles, and recommendations concerning the effects of emerging digital culture on liberal arts education;
Establish a community of scholars dedicated to further research and discussion about the implications of emerging digital culture for liberal arts education--a community that will influence conversations on the subject at both the national level and in each participant's immediate community of practice.
For more information about the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College, visit the home page. If interested in participating in our technology consultations, please write before January 15, 2003, to either
John Ottenhoff, Research Fellow
Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
Wabash College
PO Box 352
Crawfordsville, IN 47933-0352
Phone: (765) 361-6493
ottenhoj@wabash.edu / ottenhoff@alma.edu
OR
Charles Blaich, Senior Research Fellow
Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
Wabash College
PO Box 352
Crawfordsville, IN 47933-0352
Phone: (765) 361-6331
blaichc@wabash.edu