Those who attended the 2010 Summit
of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE)
will recognize the theme of this issue of Academic Commons: "Advancing
towards Liberal Arts 3.0." Conceived by the planners
of that event, the theme gestures toward the great change we are seeing
in technologies and the information environment. As the planners of the
NITLE Summit observed, "...technology is decentralized, virtualized
capital. It is accessible and ownable by individuals, not just
institutions. Social media and collective intelligence have changed how
we interact with technology, information, and each other, and the cloud
and mobility make information and the tools to use it ubiquitous."
As
we "advance towards liberal arts 3.0" within this changed and changing
environment, how are we to understand how liberal education functions,
what it means, and what it will become? One Summit planner, Michael
Spalti, associate university librarian for systems at Willamette
University, offered this: "The challenge I see is not defining the future conceptually but promoting the kind of risky behavior that will create it."
With
this challenge in mind, this issue of
Academic Commons presents case
studies of four projects that are seeking to create the future of
liberal education. Each of these projects received a
NITLE Community
Contribution Award in December 2009. Notably, each connects integrally
with the student experience: students' actual engagement with research,
with texts, with learning partners. Students actively engaged with the
learning process, we understand, learn better. Yet even as they return
to principles at the core of liberal education, these projects re-frame
those principles by making use of and accounting for the impact of the
technologies that surround us.
We invite you to read these studies, offer comments, ask questions, and share them with colleagues.
Librarians and faculty often think they know how students conduct research, but when a group of five college and university libraries used anthropologists to observe and interview students at work, there were some interesting observations about what happens in the course of an assignment. In this article, the authors discuss the project rationale, the scope of the research and the instructive findings that will guide efforts on their campuses to strengthen students' information literacy skills and facility with academic research tools.
Does simulated reality help students think more deeply about their work? That's the question at the center of a fascinating experiment by Jack Green Musselman, who teaches philosophy. Working with technologist Jason Rosenblum, he has created Plato's Cave in Second Life. In addition to the classroom discussion of the allegory, some students in his ethics course will also participate in the Second Life experience. Will this virtual experience generate deeper understanding of the text?
To facilitate real time language exchange with native speakers, language technologist Todd Bryant and Japanese instructor Akiko Meguro developed the Mixxer. What began as a simple project connecting American college students with native Japanese speakers is now a significant conversational network with more than 40,000 users. Bryant explains how his project grew and how tools like Drupal and Skype made it possible.
Convinced of the importance of international experiences, faculty at Champlain College in Vermont set out to provide every student with international educational experiences throughout their undergraduate years. Study abroad can only go so far, and in most cases only brings students to one new place. So Champlain College developed the Global Modules project that integrates international study in multiple courses and allows students to learn from and with university students in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
How to cite this work
. "May 2010." Academic Commons Issue Name (Spring 2008): 12 February 2012. <http://www.academiccommons.org/>.
