Library News

November 1, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

This NITLE seminar will explore ways to foster creativity and risk-taking in the classroom. Note that this event will not be recorded, so registering and attending in real-time is your only option!

Summary: Although we know that creativity requires the ability to take risks and learn from failures, our students typically are risk-averse and seek to avoid failure at all costs. How then can we foster risk-taking and creativity in our students? In this seminar, Edward B. Burger, Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, will explore the ultimate goals of education, how are we engineering our curriculum and classes to deliver on the promise of those lofty goals, lead a discussion to answer both questions, and celebrate the notion of “failing to succeed.”

Information about the speaker: Edward Burger is the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, an educational and business consultant, and most recently served as vice provost for strategic educational initiatives at Baylor University. He is the author of over 60 research articles, books, and video series (starring in over 3,000 on-line videos). Dr. Burger has won numerous awards, including the 2000 Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2001 MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo National Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, 2003 Residence Life Teaching Award from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Mathematical Association of America’s Chauvenet Prize (2004), Lester R. Ford Prize (2006), and Williams College’s Nelson Bushnell Prize for Scholarship and Teaching (2007). He also received the 2010 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching: the largest and most prestigious prize in higher education teaching across all disciplines in the English-speaking world. He was named 2001-2003 Polya Lecturer by the MAA, and in 2007, 2008, and 2011, he received awards for his video work.

View the Full Program

Register online by Tuesday, October 30, 2012.

If you prefer a more social setting, you can also join a small group of viewers in Smullin 6. If you choose to join us there, you do not need to register.

Related Content

• Recommended reading: “The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking” by E.B. Burger and M. Starbird (Princeton University Press, 2012)
• Star math teacher applies the power of failure, squared
• Teaching to Fail (by Edward Burger)

FemTechNet: Networked Course on Feminism and Technology

October 4, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Online recording available:
Recording
Presentation Slides

FemTechNet is a network of international scholars and artists activated by Alexandra Juhasz and Anne Balsamo to design, implement, and teach the first DOCC (Distributed Online Collaborative Course), a feminist rethinking of the MOOC. The course, Feminist Dialogues on Technology, will be offered in fifteen classrooms, at least one in every continent, in the Fall of 2013. This project uses technology to enable interdisciplinary and international conversation while privileging situated diversity and networked agency. Building the course on a shared set of recorded dialogues with the world’s preeminent thinkers and artists who consider technology through a feminist lens, the rest of the course will be built, and customized for the network’s local classrooms and communities, by network members who submit and evaluate Boundary Objects that Learn—the course’s basic pedagogic instruments.

FemTechNet invites interested scholars and artists to join this project and help build this course. In this seminar, Alexandra Juhasz and Anne Balsamo discuss how this innovative project got started, explore the model of distributed online collaborative courses, and lead a discussion of how FemTechNet or similar courses might fit within the liberal arts curriculum.

Full program description.

Stories of the Susquehanna: : Digital Humanities, Spatial Thinking, and Telling the historia of the Environment

October 9, 11:00am – 12:00pm

Online recording available: Stories of the Susquehanna

Collaborative student-faculty research projects centered in the locale of residential liberal arts colleges let students engage in a variety of learning experiences and high impact practices including undergraduate research, civic engagement, and multidisciplinary approaches to complex problems. Students at Bucknell University, as part of the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley Project, gathered stories from the Marcellus Shale region in the Susquehanna watershed of how the boom in natural gas drilling is transforming communities and cultural landscapes. This seminar will explore the possibilities digital humanities offers students to incorporate technologies such as ArcGIS and Google Earth into storytelling of their environment. Focusing on the full length of the Susquehanna River, Katherine Faull, Professor of German and Humanities and Alf Siewers, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, will provide examples and lead discussion of how students’ digital learning may foster cooperation between universities, public agencies (local, regional and national) and NGOs in successful efforts to raise environmental awareness.

Full program description.

Evaluating Digital Scholarship

October 10, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Online recording available:
Recording
Presentation Slides

While a number of professional organizations have produced valuable guidelines for evaluation of digital work, many colleges and universities have yet to establish clear protocols and practices for applying them. Alison Byerly, College Professor and former Provost and Executive Vice President at Middlebury College, who has co-led workshops on evaluating digital scholarship at the MLA convention, will review major issues to be considered in the evaluation of digital work, such as: presentation of medium-specific materials, documentation of multiple roles in collaborative work, changing forms of peer review, and identification of appropriate reviewers. She will then talk briefly about how these issues can best be approached from the perspective of the candidate who wishes to present his or her work effectively to review committees, as well as from the perspective of colleagues who wish to provide a well-informed evaluation of such work.

Full program description.

Participation in NITLE Seminars is open to all active member institutions of the NITLE Network as a benefit of membership and as space allows. No additional registration fee applies.

Thursday, September 20, 1-2pm

Faculty, instructional technologists, librarians, and others from the NITLE Network interested in effective design for blended learning methods and open educational resources at liberal arts colleges are invited to attend this seminar. Attendance by institutional teams is encouraged; individuals are also welcome to participate. (Times EDT)

Online recording available: View Recording.

September 12, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Faculty, instructional technologists, librarians, and others from the NITLE Network who are interested in integrated blended learning methods at liberal arts colleges are invited to attend this seminar. Attendance by institutional teams is encouraged; individuals are also welcome to participate.

Hosted online via NITLE’s videoconferencing platform

Description

Blended learning has been widely adopted at large universities and community colleges, and learning sciences research has shown that this approach can increase student engagement, performance, and persistence in those settings. Liberal arts colleges, however, have been much slower to explore blended learning, in part due to uncertainty about its value and appropriateness in a smaller, more intimate setting.

In 2011–2012 Bryn Mawr College, with funding from a Next Generation Learning Challenge Grant, began studying the impact of blended learning approaches—defined loosely as courses in which students both participate in face-to-face classes and work through computer-based, interactive tutorials and quizzes that provide customized learning and instant feedback—within a liberal arts environment, with a focus on introductory science and mathematics (STEM) courses. In this seminar, Dr. Jennifer Spohrer, Educational Technologist at Bryn Mawr College, will share findings of this study, as well as ongoing and future research of this initiative and lead a discussion of how best to integrate blended learning approaches in a liberal arts context.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Jennifer Spohrer is an instructional technologist in the Provost’s Office at Bryn Mawr College and project coordinator for the Next Generation Learning Challenge grant, “Using Blended Learning in a Liberal Arts Environment to Improve Developmental and Gatekeeper STEM Course Completion, Persistence, and College Completion.” She draws on her previous experience as a faculty member and in technical support to assist faculty in identifying their pedagogical challenges and goals, researching and evaluating technologies that can help address or meet them, and integrating those technologies into their teaching in effective ways.

• Blended Learning in a Liberal Arts Setting: Preliminary Findings (by Jennifer Spohrer and Kimberly Cassidy, Bryn Mawr College)
• Blended Learning and the Open Learning Initiative in a Liberal Arts Context (by Lisa Spiro, NITLE)
• Online Learning and Liberal Arts Colleges (by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed)

Next Generation Learning at Bryn Mawr

• Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University

Online recording available: Recording of Digital Field Scholarship.  

Presentation slides: The mindomo presentation used by the seminar leader is available here: bit.ly/dfsnitle2012

Finally, the CFP to join the Digital Field Scholarship Sandbox is here: call for proposals

NITLE, the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Arts, will host a video conference about Digital Field Scholarship at Lewis and Clark College on August 29th, 1-2pm (PST).

Faculty, instructional technologists, librarians, and others from the NITLE Network who are interested in digital field scholarship, inquiry-guided learning, and undergraduate research in all disciplines are encouraged to attend this seminar in institutional teams. Individuals are also welcome to participate.  Hosted online via NITLE’s videoconferencing platform.

Registration

If you want to attend and cannot join us in Smullin 6, you can register online by Monday, August 27. Participation in NITLE Seminars is open to all active member institutions of the NITLE Network as a benefit of membership and as space allows. No additional registration fee applies.