Clicker technology, often used in large-enrollment science courses, works well when every question has a single right answer. Lynne Adrian wanted to find out whether clickers could be used in disciplines which raise more questions than answers, and how illuminating the gray areas between “right” and “wrong” could help her students think critically about American studies. She found that the technology allowed her to preserve traces of the otherwise ephemeral class discussions, enabling her to analyze the types of questions she was asking in class and to track their effects on students’ written work throughout the semester.

This is a portrait of the new shape of learning with digital media, drawn around three core concepts: adaptive expertise, embodied learning, and socially situated pedagogies. These findings emerge from the classroom case studies of the Visible Knowledge Project, a six-year project engaging almost 70 faculty from 21 different institutions across higher education. Examining the scholarly work of VKP faculty across practices and technologies, it highlights key conceptual findings and their implications for pedagogical design.  Where any single classroom case study yields a snapshot of practice and insight, collectively these studies present a framework that bridges from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 technologies, building on many dimensions of learning that have previously been undervalued if not invisible in higher education.

What endures about the work from the Visible Knowledge Project are the insights about teaching and learning that bridge from Web 1.0 technologies to Web 2.0. These insights emerged from the work in VKP by looking across practices and beyond specific technologies and sometimes the technology itself. These insights include findings that are conceptual and bear on pedagogical designs. Where any one of the classroom case studies yields a snapshot of practice and insight, collectively these studies present a picture of new learning, building on many dimensions of learning that have previously been invisible or undervalued in higher education.  (Part II of III)

What endures about the work from the Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) are the insights about teaching and learning that bridge from Web 1.0 technologies to Web 2.0. These insights emerged from the work in VKP by looking across practices and beyond specific technologies and sometimes the technology itself. These insights include findings that are conceptual and bear on pedagogical designs. Where any single classroom case study yields a snapshot of practice and insight, collectively these studies present a picture of new learning, building on many dimensions of learning that have previously been invisible or undervalued in higher education. (Part III of III)

“This is a social revolution, not a technological one,” says Michael Wesch, “and its most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in an almost limitless variety of ways.” Looking at higher education as a whole, as well as his own teaching, Michael Wesch argues that we have had our "why's," "what's" and "how's" of teaching and learning turned upside down, and that the most compelling consequence of this moment is that it has sent us into a new "question-asking, bias-busting, assumption-exposing environment." 

It was a logical step for Cathy Davidson to move from a commitment to the public Humanities, in the tradition of John Hope Franklin (after whom the Center for the Humanities she directs is named) to a fascination with the potential of the new Web to transform the very nature of work we do in the Humanities. Intrigued by the success of participatory projects like Wikipedia, Cathy Davidson wonders “why this isn’t the most exciting time for all of us in our profession. Why aren’t we figuring out ways that we can use this exciting intellectual moment to bolster our mission in the world, our methods in the world, our reach in the world, our understanding of what we do and what we have to offer our students in the world?”