Our first Design Sprint of the Fall semester, happening Tuesday, September 20th, from 4-5pm in HCC 407, will build on our discussion at the Digital Liberal Arts and Sciences Town Hall. The broad impact of digital tools on Higher Education has been the topic of much scholarly discussion. Some point to opportunities for different types of student engagement, new research methodologies, and pedagogies. New tools can change our current pedagogies and ways of interacting with students. As technologies continue to change and develop, we must take time to assess how they are impacting our discipline and the concept of disciplinarity as a whole.
We’re excited to bring a variety of viewpoints to this design sprint through our team members, Nigel and Jess. Nigel’s perspective on the digital liberal arts and sciences formed through his training as a quantitative social scientist and his experience supporting the development of several online degree programs ranging from Statistics to Historic Preservation. He has studied firsthand how different approaches toward digital tools and pedagogy in an individual course can have macro-level implications, and vice versa. Because of this, Nigel is particularly interested in how programs and institutions will adapt to the rapidly evolving digital landscape. As a UMW student, Jess took courses that heavily incorporated the digital (e.g. Electronic Literature, Digital History), and she draws on those experiences to help faculty implement different digital models into their courses. She has a unique, and somewhat inside, perspective on what the digital has looked liked at UMW for the last five years, from being a pilot member on Domain of One’s Own, to being a Digital Knowledge Center tutor, and now as a member of DTLT. She understands what the workflow is like when managing and utilizing digital platforms and tools.
Through guided brainstorming and problem solving at this session, we will collectively break down the opportunities and challenges of the digital liberal arts and sciences further to discover what similarities and differences we encounter with the digital across disciplines. Perhaps the tools and the ways in which the digital are implemented into different disciplines differ? Perhaps the overarching goals are the same? By breaking these ideas down into specific items we hope to objectively look at the issues and opportunities faculty are facing at UMW. Ultimately we will attempt to answer: What does the digital do to the concept of disciplinarity?
We look forward to seeing many of you there!
Image by torbakhopper licensed CC-BY 2.0
