The editors at Academic Commons have released their second edition. A full table of contents is available. The essays and interviews in the latest release include:
Technology as Epistemology by Peter Schilling, Amherst College
Peter Schilling acknowledges that "To say 'new
technology is changing the way we think' is as obvious as it is
ambiguous." But he also probes the
point and challenges our thinking: "Not only do our students possess
skills and experiences that previous generations do not, but the very
neurological structures and pathways they have developed as part of
their learning are based on the technologies they use to create, store,
and disseminate information." It's not just about skills
and experiences but "categories, taxonomies, and other tools they use
for thinking" that are "different from those used by their teachers."
Interactive Reading, Early Modern Texts and Hypertext: A Lesson from the Past by Tatjana Chorney, St. Mary's University (Nova Scotia)
We hear a lot these
days about the empowering shifts in readers' abilities to construct
meaning and to change the "original" text made possible by new
technology. But the phenomenon is at least as old as the early modern
period, when it was used to good effect by writers like John Donne.
Tatjana Chorney argues that "studying the dynamic of interactive
reading is. . .not only a look back on past practice but also a model
for studying integrative teaching and learning in a global world."
Taking Culture Seriously: Educating and Inspiring the Technological Imagination by Anne Balsamo, Annenburg Center for Communication, University of Southern California
"Ignorance costs. Cultural ignorance -- of language, of
history, and of geo-political contexts -- costs real money." So Anne
Balsamo begins her wide-ranging inquiry into the "technological
imagination"--"a character of mind and creative practice of those who
use, analyze, design and develop technologies." Excerpted from Chapter 1 of her forthcoming Duke UP book, The Technological Imagination Revisited; Designing Culture: A Work of the Technological Imagination, Balsamo's
essay pleads for interdisciplinary collaboration informed by "new
skills, new analytical frameworks, new methods, and new practices"
built on a liberal-arts framework of "personal commitment to life-long
learning."
Faculty as Authors of Online Courses: Support and Mentoring by Gail Matthews-DeNatale, Simmons College, and Deborah Cotler, Monmouth University
Echoing Balsamo and Schilling, Gail Matthews-DeNatale and Deborah Cotler argue that online course authorship requires faculty to develop a new skill set. "Our current challenge is to ensure the development of online learning that engages learners in the open-ended, inquiry-based learning that we believe is at the heart of a liberal arts education. We are finding that excellent professors whose face-to-face teaching is grounded in a liberal arts approach to learning may sometimes encounter difficulties when they take their teaching into the digital realm."
Open Access to Scholarship: An Interview with Ray English by Michael Roy, Wesleyan University
Oberlin's Library Director talks about the importance of the Open Access movement to higher education in general, and liberal arts education in particular, and talks about what we can do to help this important movement succeed.
