Academic Commons is a community of faculty, academic technologists, librarians, administrators, and other academic professionals who are creating a comprehensive web resource focused on liberal arts education. Academic Commons aims to share knowledge, develop collaborations, and evaluate and disseminate digital tools and innovative practices for teaching and learning with technology. If successful, this site will advance opportunities for collaborative design, open development, and rigorous peer critique of such resources.
Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College, Academic Commons shares several principles with the Center of Inquiry’s method of exploring liberal arts education. These include:
1. Free exchange - open source technology and the free and open exchange of ideas and intellectual and creative work
2. Heterogeneity - an understanding of, and sensitivity to, different modes of inquiry and their value for the larger academic enterprise
3. Rational evaluation - a respect for evaluative processes that are anchored within professional expertise and are based on practices of open and rational deliberation
Academic Commons arose from meetings sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in 2003 about the place of technology in liberal arts education. Participants wrestled with the complex and evolving relationships among technology, new media, and liberal arts education and articulated a gap in the resources available to the community concerned with these issues. Sharing the Center of Inquiry’s desire to be a "catalyst for reshaping liberal arts education in the 21st century," Academic Commons also assumes that definitions of liberal arts education are changing. Technology, in particular, challenges higher education professionals to think beyond conventional notions of the liberal arts and to broaden their understanding of what it means to be "liberally educated."
Academic Commons is organized into five major sections, each with its own editor.
• The Commons
The Commons contains reviews, essays, interviews, a showcase of interesting projects, and announcements about technology.
• The Center for Teaching and Learning
This section focuses on publishing stories that examine uses of technology by liberal arts faculty and how these uses improve (or not) the achievement not only of disciplinary outcomes but also of liberal arts outcomes.
• Developer’s Kit
This is a place to share works-in-progress in technology, connect with others working on similar projects, and discover solutions to technical problems.
• The Library
The Library is an archive of all content ever posted to Academic Commons, as well as a guide to journals, mailing lists, blogs, and organizations linked to technology that might interest liberal arts faculty.
• LoLa Exchange
LoLa (Learning objects, Learning activities) is a location to share and evaluate high quality, peer-reviewed learning objects for use in undergraduate liberal arts education.
Academic Commons intends to be both a publication with an audience, and also a community with a shared set of interests and concerns. They are interested in drawing in people and projects from all sorts of institutions (public, private, large, small) that grapple with how technology and networked information might improve and/or transform the practice of liberal arts education. One goal is to create a space that allows for meaningful dialogue and exchange among all of the various parties: faculty, librarians, technologists, administrators, and others.
You can get involved with Academic Commons in a variety of ways:
• Contribute links to the Library
• Send an essay, interview, or review to the editors
• Use the Developer’s Kit to organize a collaborative project
• Contribute a learning object to the LoLa Exchange
• Help a faculty member analyze and document his or her use of technology in the Center for Teaching and Learning
The editors of Academic Commons welcome your feedback on this project. They believe that, if successful, Academic Commons will fill a niche that is presently not being served very well. Visit the Academic Commons website to submit feedback.