Document Curricular Innovations

Goal Statement

Document innovations in the curriculum, with a particular focus on innovations that involve “emerging” technologies in order to educate the Middlebury community about “best practices.”  We should also be sure to document curricular innovations that make use of resources unique to Library and Information Services (LIS) such as Special Collections.

Deliverable

The result of this documentation will be a collection of “case studies” or “stories” that faculty, students and staff can refer to in order to understand best practices and/or get a sense of what is possible.

Outcome

Documenting curricular innovations is important because it is aligned with the LIS strategic choices to focus on “emerging technologies,” “administrative efficiency” and “training and education.”  A valuable outcome of this process should be producing a more proactive liaison relationship with faculty that generates, at best, a “team” approach to the curriculum between faculty and LIS

Delivery

This goal can be considered to have been met when we have documented “case studies” that represent “best practices” for most common curricular objectives.  A goal of twelve stories within the next 2010-11 Academic year (or, if initiated during J-Term, could be split between Spring and Fall 2010, and perhaps SLS 2010)

Resources

Members of ACS will need to discover curricular innovation through surveys, interviews, analysis and review of existing curricular resources.  ACS staff will also need to become thoroughly acquainted with the current curriculum in their ACS areas and perhaps propose joint curricular projects to faculty.

Viability

This is achievable.  Possible barriers to achieving this goal would be lack of commitment by liaisons to shepherding the project through to success and/or faculty resistance to and/or apathy for the project.

2 thoughts on “Document Curricular Innovations

  1. Arabella Holzapfel

    This is a great idea. It’s not crystal clear to me what form the “documentation” will take. Am I correct in assuming that the “document” of case studies, etc., will be Web-based? Is this in addition to the CT site that the CT team is working on? Or a part of it?

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  2. Alex Chapin Post author

    Whatever documentation of curricular innovations we come up with will definitely be posted to the web. Indeed the web will likely be the primary publishing platform for this sort of documentation. For a prototype, see:
    Teaching with Technology Blog

    Curricular Innovations (CI) site would likely be closely linked to the Curricular Technology (CT) site and well as the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research (CTLR) site so that for a given “case study” there would be links to the technologies (CT) and pedagogies (CTLR) referred to.

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