Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Mar 22, 2009, 09:03 PM

Making Invisible Learning Visible

A HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum with
Randy Bass and Bret Eynon, co-Project Directors of the Visible
Knowledge
Project
Open now at www.hastac.org/scholars/forum/03-23-09Making-Invisible-Learning-Visible

How do students learn? What
types of learning take place in the
classroom? How do pedagogical and technological tools impact learning?

The Visible Knowledge Project,
a five-year
collaborative effort to study the impact of technology on learning,
began as an
effort to make visible the hidden intermediate processes students
undergo on
the path to learning. The project, co-directed by Randy Bass and Bret
Eynon, involved more than 70 faculty from 22 institutions who not only
experimented with incorporating new media technologies into their
classrooms,
but also drew on the scholarship of teaching and learning in order to
document
and reflect on their findings. Many of these insights are synthesized in the January 2009 issue of Academic
Commons. One of the project?s key findings has been the
importance of digital media in helping instructors to make visible the
modes
and aspects of learning - intermediate learning processes, the
importance of
affective learning, the roles of community or creativity - too often
made
secondary to outputs and accountability.

We encounter questions of
digital media and learning in contexts both
prosaic and designed, from institutional policies to individual
experiments to
collaborative efforts. Teachers and learners of all varieties enter
academic contexts with different levels of technological exposure and
skill,
some of which are immediately productive and others of which need to be
nurtured in order to advance the learning process. This HASTAC
Scholars
Discussion Forum, hosted by Daniel Chamberlain and Chalet Siedel, will
focus on
the questions raised by the efforts of the Visible Knowledge Project
and the
similar projects instigated by members of the HASTAC community and
beyond:

• How are classroom uses of new digital media transforming the nature of learning
  at your
  home institutions?
• What
  new forms
  of evidence of student learning could we be paying more attention to?
  Do new
  forms of learning yield new kinds of readable artifacts of student work?
• What
  kind of
  learning communities should institutions form in order to allow
  imaginative
  pedagogies to be locally shared? How can we leverage social tools to
  make
  these innovations broadly sharable?
• How
  might we
  better link classroom learning to integrative activities outside the
  formal
  curriculum, like undergraduate research, study abroad, internships, and
  service
  learning?
• How
  can emergent
  media technologies be used to encourage creativity in faculty and
  student
  discipline-related work?
• How
  much of the
  challenge of incorporating digital media into the classroom is about
  technological affinity, and how much is it about the uncertainty and
  loss of
  control that accompanies learner-centered pedagogies?

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Mar 04, 2009, 01:16 PM

Digital Textuality and Tools

A HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum, starting Monday, March 9 at www.hastac.org

The Global Middle Ages Project (GMAP), spearheaded by Geraldine Heng and Susan Noakes, is an effort to bring together scholars from many disciplines to see what insights and visions of the medieval world appear when collaboration and interconnection become key. One important facet of GMAP is the search to develop revolutionary tools to provide scholars, teachers, and students better access to artifacts such as digitized manuscripts. In this respect, it is one of many current efforts to make classical, medieval and other rare manuscripts available to a wider audience. These efforts confront multiple challenges, such as securing funding, finding effective and helpful ways to deploy new technologies, and publicizing their work widely, among others.

Given that scholars of all levels regularly must deal with texts of all sorts, the next generation of database interfaces--tools that enable advanced cross-referencing, collaborative research, and sophisticated visualizations of data--can apply to digital manuscripts as well as less insistently physical works like contemporary academic journals. Further, the questions raised by GMAP are relevant to any similarly interdisciplinary, interconnected work in other periods.

This HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum, hosted by Angela Kinney and Michael Widner, will focus on the questions raised by the efforts of GMAP and similar projects:

• How can we handle the sheer amount of data produced by digitization projects?
• How can we advocate for the continual upkeep of (now stagnated) digital resources, which are in danger of becoming so obsolete as to be useless?
• How can we stimulate funding for high-quality digitization of manuscripts and digital scholarly editions in an environment where palaeography and textual criticism is not esteemed as ?original? scholarly work?
• Is it worth investigating the implications of digitization on a sociological level?
• To what extent are we ignoring the significant gap between a digital image of a manuscript and the manuscript itself?
• Will widespread digitization efforts change the way we do research? How?
• What sorts of tools and initiatives do we need to improve the ways we research and learn?

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Feb 15, 2009, 09:30 PM

What?s Going On in Digital Humanities?
A HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum, open now at
http://www.hastac.org/scholars/forum/02-16-09Whats-Going-On-in-Digital-Humanities

In the recent HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on ?The Future of the Digital Humanities? featuring Brett Bobley of the NEH's Office of Digital Humanities, Willard McCarty weighed in from King's College London suggesting that instead of trying to categorize the digital humanities as a ?discipline? or an ?attitude,? we should instead ?ask, ?What's going on?? and note how differently humanities computing is playing out across the various digital humanities. In other words, ask not what the practice is, rather where we're going and what sort of institutional arrangements suit that going best.?

And so, as a follow up to our recent forum, and with nods to both Erving Goffman and Marvin Gaye, we raise the question: ?What?s going on in the digital humanities today??  When the forum opens on Monday, February 16, we invite you to report on how the digital humanities are playing out in your institution, organization, or location.  Tell us about the innovative projects you are launching, the groups you are forming, the support you are finding or lacking, the training you are receiving or offering and the courses you are teaching or taking.  We hope you will join this forum facilitated by HASTAC Scholars Staci Shultz and Isabel Millan and help us see ?what?s going on in the digital humanities? today!

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Jan 05, 2009, 03:21 PM

Collaboration 2.0

A HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum, starting Wednesday, January 14 at
www.hastac.org

What makes for successful collaborations, and how can the Web facilitate these?

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Oct 29, 2008, 10:33 PM

Our current HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on Fair
Use and the Future of the Commons is still up and active. I
invite you to visit it--and contribute--if you haven't already.
Hosted by Scholar Veronica Paredes and featuring Critical Commons, the
forum not only addresses many important topics in this thorny area, but
also provides a number of very helpful resources. With this week's
Google Books settlement, it's very timely stuff!

Please also mark your calendars and help us spread the word about our
upcoming forum on "Academic Publishing in the Digital Age" which will
start this coming Monday, November 3. Led by Scholars Chris Hanson and
Julie Levin Russo, this forum will build on many of the topics that
have surfaced in the Fair Use forum.

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Oct 21, 2008, 09:33 PM

Veronica Paredes, a HASTAC Scholar from the University of Southern California, has just launched the latest HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on "Fair Use and the Future of the Commons," featuring USC Professor Steve Anderson and the non-profit advocacy coalition Critical Commons.

Please come join the discussion!

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Oct 17, 2008, 03:54 PM
Fair Use and the Future of the Commons

 

Please join us for the next HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on "Fair Use and the Future of the Commons," led by Scholar Veronica Paredes from USC and featuring the non-profit advocacy coalition Critical Commons. The forum will open for discussion Wednesday, October 22nd at www.hastac.org.

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Oct 05, 2008, 08:30 PM

How do you conceptualize the history of media?  What can media history teach us?  What kinds of cultural negotiations are involved in refashioning the past with new media? How does our own technological present affect the ways we define, interpret or even appropriate the past?

HASTAC Scholar Whitney Trettien had opened up the next HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on "Doing Media History."  Come join the conversation!

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Sep 30, 2008, 11:20 AM
The HASTAC Scholars Program invites you to participate in our next HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum, titled "Doing Media History: Archives, Ages, and the Accretion of the Past."  The discussion forum will be led by Whitney Trettien, a graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and will open at www.hastac.org  on Monday, October 6.  Please come share your thoughts at www.hastac.org!

Submitted by Erin Gentry Lamb on Sep 21, 2008, 10:07 PM

Have you had experiences using metaverses like Second Life in the classroom, or for collaborative research projects?  What do you think?  Are they brilliant, or are they bunk?  Come join the our newest HASTAC Scholars Discussion Forum on "Metaverses & Scholarly Collaboration" led by HASTAC Scholar Ana Boa-Ventura!

As with our last forum with Howard Rheingold and Joshua McVeigh-Schultz on "Participatory Learning,"  we'll be running the discussion both "vertically" in a traditional text-based forum, and "horizontally" in a vlog format using the online video service Seesmic embedded in a widget by Sproutbuilder.  Come speak your mind!