The Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ) recently launched the Defense Against the Digital Dark Arts (DADDA) initiative. Our first DADDA conversation will show you how websites are collecting your personal information, and will show you some simple strategies for understanding and managing the information that is being collected about you. This introductory session is open to all. Learn more about the session and sign-up to attend at go.middlebury.edu/dlinqevents
We are pleased to announce the Middlebury College 26th Annual
Public Service Leadership Awards. Public service takes shape in many
different ways—through volunteering, activism, scholarship, social innovation, and
advocacy—and these awards recognize our student body’s contributions to
Middlebury College, the surrounding community, and beyond. We appreciate your collaborations
with students to problem-solve, research, and strive to build stronger
communities.
We hope you will consider nominating a Middlebury College student for an award. For more information and to nominate a student, please click here. The deadline for nominations is April 11, 2019.
Questions? Please contact Ashley Laux, Program Director, Center for
Community Engagement at (802) 443-3099 or alaux@middlebury.edu.
The Friends of the Middlebury College Museum of Art invite you to nominate a current Middlebury College Student whose contribution to the visual arts in the community merits distinction. The Friends have made an annual award to a college student for approximately two decades. Recipients have included sculptors, filmmakers, painters, critics for The Campus, Museum volunteers, and founders of the M Gallery. Anyone [barring a relative of the nominee] can make a nomination. The award will be presented on Sunday, May 5, at Kirk House, at the Friends’ Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner. The nominator and winner will be guests of the Museum.
Nominations are due Wednesday, April 3, 2019
For information and nomination forms, go to: museum.middlebury.edu/news/awards or call Mikki Lane: (802) 443-2309
Sherre Kruft, Admissions Office III at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, recently passed her 25-year mark of employment. Over the years, Sherre has been the bedrock of the Admissions Office for many years and was awarded the Institute’s Above & Beyond Award in 2009 for her many contributions to the Institute. Sherre took a few minutes to share her thoughts on “Life at the Institute” over the past two and a half decades.
What
did you do prior to coming to work at the Middlebury Institute and where were
you located?
I was in customer service in southern California and
Monterey for about twenty years before joining Middlebury.
What
job titles have you held while working at the Middlebury Institute?
Custom Language Services/Summer Intensive Language
Program Administrative Assistant, Admissions Assistant, Admissions Officer.
Many
people change jobs/careers multiple times in their working life. Something must
have kept you here for 25 years. Is it anything that you can put into words?
I really enjoy the constant learning aspect of
international credential evaluation. The Admissions Office is ever evolving and
changing in order to try to meet the needs of prospective students.
If
you could give one piece of advice to a new employee at MIIS, what would it be?
Use active listening skills and be kind.
Is
there anything else that you would like to share about your time at MIIS?
I have had a wonderful experience here. There are too many people I have worked with
and admire for different reasons to name.
Our prospective students are amazing and awe inspiring. I love how they plan to make a difference in
so many diverse ways.
The Middlebury College Community Chorus announces a new season as its singers prepare for their annual spring concert, with an intriguing mix of pieces about time, seasons, and places. Regular rehearsals take place on Sunday and Tuesday evenings from 7:00-8:30 p.m. on the college campus, beginning January 27.
Students, alumni, community members enjoy rehearsal before last fall’s concert (photo: Silvia Cantu)
Rehearsals from January 27 through February 12 take place at the Mahaney Arts Center (room 221). As of February 17, rehearsals move to Mead Chapel. Historic, traditional, and contemporary music from across the globe will fill the hour-long program slated for performance the first weekend in May.
On this spring’s program, the choir will sing Gropen, a lively traditional Norwegian tune arranged for chorus with fiddle. Young Tradition Vermont award-winning high school student Romy Munkres from Cornwall VT will play with us. We also will perform Sunshine, an upbeat tune about blue sky and summer time, set by Irish composer Michael McGlynn. Also by McGlynn, we will offer Aisling, a quiet Celtic tune. Aisling means ‘dream’ or ‘vision’ and the work features a solo instrumental part that Romy will play.
Kanaval, a festive, fun work by Sydney Guillaume (born in Haiti, now living in the U.S.) depicts mardi gras in Haiti with a mix of tunes and rhythms influenced by traditional Haitian culture. Hands are Knockin’ includes words in both English and Arabic, a song by Kyle Pederson (who earned a master of fine arts degree in Vermont), written for an international school in Muscat, the capital of Oman, that asks if we will open our doors to all people.
In differing musical styles, we will prepare three newly composed songs with poetry by Sara Teasdale and Christina Rosetti, including Refuge, a radiant piece completed in 2015 by long-time Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker; Grace Before Sleep, a sensitive setting by Missouri-based composer Susan LaBarr; and The Rose,. a gentle tune with flowing piano accompaniment, by Norwegian-American composer Ola Gjeilo that portrays the picturesque beauty of this flower as it blossoms.
The program includes splendid historic choruses from a little known work by George Frederic Handel entitled The Triumph of Time and Truth, including a “Hallelujah” chorus (though not the one that many people know from “The Messiah”!) We will also sing one of Handel’s most beautiful choruses, Music Spread Thy Voice Around.
The choir invites new members to join us as we enjoy making music together. Participants should plan to attend at least one rehearsal each week. Numbering nearly 100 singers, the group welcomes without audition all who can follow a musical score and carry a tune accurately. Its members travel from throughout the region to participate in this 150-year-old community tradition, hosted by Middlebury College.
Jeff Rehbach continues in his nineteenth consecutive season as director of the College Community Chorus, and Timothy Guiles returns as the choir’s virtuoso accompanist.
For additional information, check on the web at go.middlebury.edu/communitychorus or send an inquiry to rehbach@middlebury.edu or 989-7355.
Important Benefit Reminders
Trouble-free employee benefit plan administration requires a strong partnership between employees and Human Resources. The Human Resources Department works diligently each year-end to accurately process the thousands of required or requested benefit record changes and then to check and double-check our work. However, in the end, we also must rely on you, the employee, to do your part in managing your benefits by confirming that you are enrolled in the benefits you intended to elect. Please carefully review your first several paychecks and let us know if you have questions or if anything seems amiss.
Medical/Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Flexible Spending Accounts
Voluntary Life and Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) Insurance
Retirement
If you have questions or concerns about your benefits, please contact the benefits department: Nancy Lindberg (nlindberg@middlebury.edu / 802-443-3372).
Greetings! DLINQ staff and interns wish you a happy, reflective and restorative holiday season. This is the final 2018 installment of the weekly “DIRT” from the Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry. In January 2019, the DIRT will transition from a weekly blog post to a monthly e-mail newsletter with DLINQ updates, inspiration, and information about events.
Mark your calendars! We are excited to be hosting and co-hosting a number of events as we kick off the new year.
January 7th Digital Detox 2019 launches. DLINQ’s second detox series will focus on bias and inclusion in digital spaces. Learn more about the series and consider subscribing to join the conversation with us.
The following events are co-sponsored by DLINQ and the Center for Teaching, Learning & Research (CTLR) January Pedagogy Series. Registration for on-ground participation will be open soon.
January 17th Join us in-person or via Zoom for a Digital Detox session on Mindfulness & Radical Listening in Digital Spaces.
January 22nd We will be hosting Dr. Robin DeRosa, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State University for a conversation titled “Teaching and Learning in the open.” The session will invite participants to join an open “annotation storm” using the digital annotation platform Hypothes.is
January 24th Join us for another Digital Detox inspired conversation on the topic of digital exclusion and inclusion titled “Who is Welcome Online?”
January 30th We will close out the month with a focus on web literacies to combat the effects of misinformation with a session titled “Beyond Essentials: Digital Fluency & Critical Engagement through Information Environmentalism“
With the help of a number of entrepreneurial students, Bill Koulopoulos, DLINQ Director of Learning Spaces and Technology, has been a key advocate for getting Middlebury’s maker movement off the ground. The space, housed in the Freeman International Center, is referred to by students as “MEME” which stands for Middlebury Environment for Making Everything. MEME offers a friendly community space with a range of fabrication tools from 3-D printers to sewing machines. Early programming like the “Repair Cafe” has been well received and there are plans to expand offerings along with building faculty partnerships to explore meaningful curricular connections.
Dig Deeper:
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse,
and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled
in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Featured image by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash
Written by Sarah Lohnes Watulak
The Office of Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ) is excited to announce our second annual Digital Detox.
In DLINQ, we look holistically at “the digital” in our lives and in our educational environments. This means we examine the promises and the risks of how we use digital tools, how those tools impact various facets of our lives and interactions, and the increasingly blurred edges between physical and digital realms.
Digital Detox is an initiative to reduce the toxicity of our personal digital environments and how we engage with them. The theme of this year’s Detox is Inclusion and Bias in Digital Spaces. When you sign up to participate in the Detox, you’ll receive a twice-weekly email newsletter in January and early February with actionable strategies for reducing exclusion, increasing inclusion, and combating bias in digital spaces. Topics include data and digital redlining, radical listening in digital spaces, critically considering tools, confronting the invisible digital divide in higher ed, and more! By mindfully taking on this detox, you will begin to develop critical and healthy habits in digital spaces.
Digital Detox 2019 is created in partnership with DLINQ’s Inclusive Design studio.
Heather Stafford continues her blog series to dig deeper into some of the small moves that were discussed during her October 25th online workshop ‘Student-Centered Course Design Using Canvas.’ In the series Heather shares activities and design elements that faculty can implement to amplify connectivity of a class.
In the forth edition of the series, Heather features the practice of establishing virtual office hours with a combination of Canvas’ scheduler and Zoom web conferencing tools.
Written by Bob Cole
On Tuesday, December 4th, Amy Collier facilitated a workshop titled “Misinformation & Bots/Sockpuppets” as part of Middlebury’s Digital Fluencies series, co-sponsored by the DLA, CTLR, Davis Family Library, and DLINQ. The session invited participants to explore the following questions: What role do bots (automated fake social media accounts) and sockpuppets (human-operated fake social media accounts) play in our digital information environments? How do you spot a bot or sockpuppet and try understand their influence? How do human, non-human and hybrid actors infiltrate our digital “public” spheres, and how might we combat them?
During the session Amy situated the wicked challenge of dis/misinformation within the context of our current digital information sphere which is heavily consolidated among a few big tech companies (e.g. Facebook, Google, Twitter) and primarily driven by their commercial interests. The work of “bad bots” (BTW they’re not all bad) and the goal of active disinformation campaigns is to hack the public’s attention in order to sow doubt, erode trust, polarize, destabilize, and radicalize. Amy noted that while propaganda is not a new phenomenon in the United States, what’s different about what we are seeing today is the massive reach that these forces can have, especially when they are activated in heavily siloed social media platforms accessed by hundreds of millions of people around the world. The impact of coordinated dis/misinformation is even more pronounced as our information spaces have become equated to our personal identities, what we believe, and how we feel.
The metaphor of environmental pollution guides Amy’s approach to talking about the effects of dis/misinformation in our lives and is foundational to the work of DLINQ’s Information Environmentalism Studio. Through inquiry and exploration we can move beyond a sense of learned helplessness about the toxic state of our information environments. We can work together to develop new critical habits like fact-checking and bot-spotting to raise our awareness of the influence of algorithms in our information spaces. Ultimately, however, Amy suggests that to reclaim the web we are going to have to place more pressure on platforms to change policies. The commercial platforms will not make moves to change until they see an impact on their bottom line.
How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature, John Hermann, New York Times
Congressedits Bot, Wikipedia
Information environmentalism research: Fake accounts and mis/disinformation on Pinterest, Amy Collier, DLINQ’s Information Environmentalism Studio
Russia is gearing up to misinform the U.S. public about Syria. Here’s our cheat sheet to identify Twitter trolls. Jack O. Nassetta and Ethan P. Fecht, Washington Post
Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Oxford University Press
The Digital Fluencies Series investigates what it means to develop more critical facility with digital technologies. Faculty, students, and staff are all welcome to participate regardless of digital skills. Learn more about the series at go/digitalfluencies.
Dig Deeper:
“Under the pavement, the dirt is dreaming of grass.”― Wendell Berry
Featured image Weston Beach by James Ting
Written by Amy Slay
On Monday, December 3rd, DLINQ welcomed Dr. Bonnie Stewart for our forth Teaching Online and Hybrid Conversation Series session, Building a Community of Learners Online. Dr Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Online Pedagogy and Workplace Learning at the University of Windsor, Ontario. In her research, she investigates how knowledge, power, and technology intersect with and impact education. Stewart led an engaging conversation with Middlebury faculty and staff about participatory learning, sharing frameworks and strategies we can use to design and foster online spaces that are true learning communities.
For those unable to join the discussion, we recorded introductory remarks as well as Dr. Stewart’s slideshow that helped to frame the discussion. This video, as well as notes captured from the session (which include links to resources), may be accessed on the Teaching Hybrid & Online Initiative page on the DLINQ website.
As the end of term approaches, stay tuned for announcements of more sessions and other DLINQ events planned for next year. If there is a specific topic about teaching and learning online that you think should be included in the series, let us know!
Heather Stafford continues her blog series to dig deeper into some of the small moves that were discussed during her October 25th online workshop ‘Student-Centered Course Design Using Canvas.’ In the series Heather shares activities and design elements that faculty can implement to amplify connectivity of a class.
In the third edition of the series, Heather features the use of the ungraded survey in Canvas as a tool for collecting learner feedback at different stages of a class to help inform adjustments to teaching. Keep an eye out for future posts in the series in coming weeks.
Written by Bob Cole
On Friday, November 30 a handful of students, staff, faculty and guests met in the College’s Wilson Media Lab and the Institute’s Digital Learning Commons to network, share projects, and exchange ideas on the use of virtual, augmented, mixed and extended reality technologies. DLINQ’s Joe Antonioli in Vermont and Bob Cole in California hosted simultaneous meet-ups at each site to further promote the pilot effort to develop an XR Studio connecting people, resources, and practices that are exploring these emerging media and their transformative potential for teaching and learning.
To create opportunities for cross-institutional connections, the two labs were joined together via Zoom providing glimpses into the spaces and a productive channel for discussion. During the first half of the session guests at each site were able to interact with one another and share examples of explorations they are engaged in. Some highlights included hands-on time with the Geology department’s Augmented Reality Sandbox, a Spanish professor’s use of Google Tilt Brush for students to create representations of literary themes like the apocalypse and power, an environmental policy professor’s prototypes of interactive visualizations of coastal sea-level rise due to climate change, and virtual 3D renderings of North Korean missiles developed by research scholars at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
During the second half of the session, the groups discussed the potential value in working with XR technologies for teaching, research, and creativity. Some of the affordances mentioned were the ability to reach new public audiences through these new media, the potential to create immersive virtual environments that simulate real world situations, visualizing abstract or difficult concepts, exploring issues of digital embodiment, and offering alternative ways to explore and reflect on course content through immersive virtual experiences or real time social VR situations. As a follow-up the groups shared their thoughts on the opportunities and resources we might begin to leverage to support creative development with XR. Some initial next moves that were recommended included establishing some shared collaborative spaces for further idea, knowledge, and partnership opportunity sharing.
More pictures from the session below – if you are interested in learning more about XR resources or joining the conversation get in touch with us at dlinq at middlebury.edu
Dig Deeper:
“Gold’s father is dirt, yet it regards itself as noble.”
―
Featured Image by freddie marriage on Unsplash
Written by Alice Wu, Globe Multilingual Services
As we reported in the late June edition of the DIRT the Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry is partnering with Middlebury Institute’s Globe Multilingual Services to internationalize (translate and localize) Mike Caulfield’s open source e-book, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. The target languages include: French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Ukrainian. The final translations will be uploaded to Pressbooks, the site where the current English version of the book is being hosted.
Since the beginning of the fall semester, the Globe team has been busy recruiting volunteer translators from language schools across the U.S. and abroad. The response from universities has been enthusiastic, and the team is planning to ramp up recruitment even further moving into December. The team recently set up an instance of their open source crowdsourcing platform for translation and they are currently testing a multilingual WordPress site using the WPML multilingual plugin to enable content availability in multiple languages.
The team has also secured a grant from Middlebury to host translation nights at the Institute starting November 26. “Translation Night at MIIS” will be a weekly gathering where graduate student translators will contribute translations to the Web Literacy project while enjoying pizza.
Web Literacy’s Globe team includes a diverse group of graduate students in the Translation and Localization Management Program (TLM) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Their roles are as follows:
Alice: Account Manager, Chinese Project Manager
Nika: Marketing Manager, French Project Manager
Jessica: Technical Lead, Italian and Spanish Project Manager
Alina: Terminology Manager, Ukrainian Project Manager
Members are responsible for managing all aspects of the project including logistics and technical issues while the project managers for specific languages recruit talent for their respective languages, domestically and abroad.
For more detailed project updates, see the team’s Facebook page, or get in touch with Marketing Manager, Nika Allahverdi [nallahverdi at miis.edu]
Heather Stafford continues her blog series to dig deeper into some of the small moves that were discussed during her October 25th online workshop ‘Student-Centered Course Design Using Canvas.’ In the series Heather shares activities and design elements that faculty can implement to amplify connectivity of a class.
In the second edition of the series, Heather features the use of multimedia and interactive discussion tools in Canvas to build social capital among and with students. Keep an eye out for future posts in the series in coming weeks.
Written by Kristen Cardoso and Bob Cole
As Middlebury Institute’s User Experience Librarian, Kristen Cardoso is passionate about improving learning experience for graduate students in Monterey. With the Institute moving towards developing more hybrid and online short-term programs, Kristen and her colleagues have begun thinking about how the Institute’s library could best serve students who may be away from campus. She notes, “…my colleagues and I have done a lot to improve the library’s physical spaces for students; however, our user experience work with regards to the library’s digital spaces have been mostly limited to our website and the library catalog.” Library staff help students through email and over the phone (and very rarely, even through their Facebook page). To transform Library services, she adds “…we knew we were going to have to find a way to provide online the warm, welcoming, and personal service that we currently offer in person.”
After discussing the idea and the platform requirement for having librarians embedded into Canvas courses with Bob Cole, Kristen agreed to run a mini-pilot with the two sections of EDUC 8510: Educational Research Methods, currently being taught by Netta Avineri and Deniz Ortactepe. The pilot started about mid-way through the semester, but so far, the results are encouraging. Kristen began by posting an announcement in one section’s Canvas site and posting to the discussion board in the other, and then sending out an email through Canvas to everyone in both sections. Kristen also posted a brief instructional video and created a Library Resources & Tips folder.
Acknowledging the positive response to her virtual presence in the courses, Kristen reports that “several students responded to my presence in Canvas, although most of them chose to come and see me in person for help! I’ve helped several students with APA formatting, using our databases, and writing a literature review.” After checking in with the professors, they decided there would be value to also visit the class in-person. This connection led to good discussions about open access publishing and citing sources using tools like Zotero. In the future, Kristen thinks that embedding librarians into Canvas courses from the beginning of the term could be really beneficial and create opportunities for librarians to connect with students taking classes in Monterey or remotely. Inspired by DLINQ’s recent Teaching Online & Hybrid conversation series event on humanizing online learning, one idea Kristen would recommend to further establish librarian presence would be the addition of a personal, introductory video so students can get to know her.
Dig Deeper:
“If you see a whole thing – it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.”
―
