Project on Creativity and Innovation in the Liberal Arts

Liaison: Maggie Paine

Stakeholders interviewed: Liz Robinson and Kelsey Eichhorn

Overview

The Project on Creativity on Creativity and Innovation has xx key needs-to showcase, share, and celebrate student work; to fund raise for student projects using a microphilanthropy site; to automate some processes (for example, applying for project approval); to archive projects so that they are accessible; to sell student artwork online; to connect students with alumni; and to share current research, stories, and lectures on creativity and innovation.

Showcasing and Sharing Student Work

The project needs to tell the story of student creativity and innovation at Middlebury, celebrating successes and inspiring others to follow their passions and take creative risks. To that end, the site needs to:

  • Enable students to post their art and other content online. See http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/the-inauguration-at-last/ for an example of how art might be displayed. Have option to post to MiddTube simultaneously.
  • Enable students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others to comment.
  • Embed video, audio slideshows, etc.
  • Offer blogs for individual projects and a template for displaying work
  • Create a seamless connection/integration between the student projects online and the Project on Creativity web site
  • Interactive feature that would enable viewer to see a snapshot of multiple projects and the people who are working on them and then click on one for more information. For example a photo gallery, that when you rolled over a particular photo of a person and you’d get a brief quote. Click on the full story and it delivers the story in a pop-up screen. See www.msnbc.com/id/26903309
  • Enable students to pull their project web sites into Facebook and display them there.
  • Provide an interactive map that would make it easy to find Old Stone Mill and see what is happening there.

Fund Raising for Student Projects

The Project envisions a microphilanthropy site that combines concepts from microfinance and social networking and that enables donors to fund specific student projects that are meaningful to them and to connect with students and with others who share their interests. This would be similar to kiva.org and donorschoose.org.

Automation of Processes

  • The project would like to create an online form that students applying for grants or for space in Old Stone Mill could fill out online, including photos, project summary, and lengthier description. Content (photo, summary) could then be automatically pulled into the Project on Creativity Web site (after review by project director).
  • Form that students participating in the Hunt could use to answer questions online and submit the form to the project director for review.

Project Archiving

  • The project needs a way to archive projects, so that they are still accessible after completion, but not competing with current projects for space on top level pages.

Sales of artwork

  • Students would like to be able to sell their artwork online using an e-commerce tool (perhaps using program developed for college store?)

Connection to Alumni

  • Links to the project site in PantherNet
  • Opportunity to comment on student projects (via blogs)
  • Microphilanthropy site

Sharing Current Research

  • The project would like to create an online library of current research on the topics of innovation and creativity, including video and audio, text postings, pdfs, links, and to use other methods LIS might suggest.

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