Based on a suggestion by Jay Cook, we propose a session focused on the question of connecting with the greater worlds/universes we all move in.

• For technology staffers: how do we reach faculty who are reluctant to engage digital strategies?  If we build it, will they come?
• For faculty: how do we spin a successful narrative (thanks Fred Johnson) which both justifies our existence but more importantly convinces the larger faculty and the larger research/collaboration sphere that this direction is not only useful but vital.
• For students: how do we use the ubiquitous tools of technology in harmony with the academic environment which at times is intimidating and difficult to engage.  How do we honor the backgrounds of other students who are less digitally fluent than us, for whatever reason?

All of the great posts so far are making me quite excited for the weekend’s sessions. I am really looking forward to conversations about multimodal scholarship and adding lab sections to non-science courses, but I hope we will also have time to talk about the role of programmers and developers in digital scholarship projects. I am all for a pedagogy of critical making and am always working to burnish my own skills at building scholarly projects, but I also recognize the value of partnering with others who might have far more advanced skills when it comes to actually coding and designing projects.

That said, I think a number if the threads so far have reminded us that LACs (and others, to be sure), have significant constraints that often make it difficult to have a seasoned digital scholarship developer available on campus. So how cam we address thus? Working with sympathetic and capable IT pros is a start. Continual learning on our own will help a bit. We could always look for grants that would fund small amounts of support. But is there anything more systematic we can do? Can we share developers across institutions? What might that look like? Would the hassle of networked development be worth the benefit of working with ever-more experienced developers?

EDIT: The session is over, and was a great conversation.  Some sketchy notes on the proceedings are found here: bit.ly/l3C0yk

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It seems at least three campers are currently students at a SLAC, though I’ll be the first to admit I fit this definition somewhat marginally.

At any rate, I propose a simple Q&A panel with the current students up front and the rest (almost all SLAC educators) peppering us for frank feedback on what has worked and not worked in our experiences with classroom/course technology.  Maybe we’ll find some really obvious no-brainers that no one ever seems to talk about (e.g. the ubiquity of SMS texting as a communication method for the 17-22 set).

I’m hoping the spirit of the weekend (and the fact that no one is assigning grades) will encourage some tough but fair pragmatic conversation.

Possible starter questions:

• When do course / facilitation software (Moodle et al) packages become cumbersome rather than enabling?
• Digital syllabi: if we had to define a college-wide policy on delivery format, what would it be?
• Students often think of multi-modal / multi-media projects as somehow easier than a traditional paper.  Why is that?  What are the consequences?