Fall 2015

The Academic Roundtable for Fall 2015 has the following events scheduled so far. Please check back in the coming weeks for additional events.

 

Monday, October 5, 2015

4:30 PM, Library 201 

Do we need a revolution? Open Access and the future of Scholarship

Peter Suber, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University

The current model of scholarly communication is broken. The costs of journals and monographs continue to outpace inflation. As university presses fail, faculty have fewer and fewer venues for their work, and their work reaches fewer readers. Open Access is a model that turns the current system on its head. In this highly interactive session, join a conversation with Peter Suber, one of the leading figures in the Open Access movement, to learn what Open Access is (and isn’t), why it should matter to you, and what we might do about the changes taking place in how scholarship is produced and shared.

Cider and cookies will be served.

You can learn more about Peter Suber’s work at his home page which is at <http://bit.ly/petersuber>. His seminal book on Open Access can be found at <http://bit.ly/oa-book>. Middlebury’s Open Access working group’s website is at <http://go.middlebury.edu/openaccess/>

Monday, October 19, 2015

CTLR Lounge, 12:15 PM

Digital Literacies

Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California

Join us for an informal discussion about digital literacies with Henry Jenkins. He will lead us in a conversation about how high school graduates are arriving for college with transformed literacies fostered in both formal and informal educational experiences, and consider how a liberal education might best address our current and future students.

Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, is one of the world’s most influential and prolific scholars of media and culture. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture,Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP here.

Professor Henry Jenkins will also be giving a public lecture later in the afternoon, titled “By Any Media Necessary: The New Activism of American Youth.”

 

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

CTLR Lounge, 12:15 PM

Microaggressions, Trigger Warnings, Campus Climate, and the Classroom

How do recent debates and discussions on campus and in the national press around the topics of microaggressions and trigger warnings impact what happens in our classroom? How do we identify microaggressions that may have made their way into our speech patterns? How do we decide whether or not to issue ‘trigger warnings’ in advance of dealing with potentially difficult topics in our classrooms? Join us for discussion of these important topics and much more.

Miguel Fernandez of the Spanish & Portuguese Department and Acting Chief Diversity Officer and Allison Stanger of the Political Science Department will offer some preliminary perspectives to help frame our discussion. You are encouraged to read in advance the following articles that help illuminate the contours of the national debate on these subjects.

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt &

What Is the Point of College? By Kwame Anthony Appiah

Lunch will be provided. RSVP to Doreen Bernier via email at dbernier@middlebury.edu .

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Library 105B, 12:15 PM

Faculty Online Identities

A curriculum vitae is one of many options for sharing your scholarly and teaching work. In the age of digital connections, it is now possible to have a professional website or digital portfolio that allows you to share work with new audiences. How do our colleagues share themselves and their work online? What kinds of digital environments blur the lines between our work, the work students do in our classes, and public spheres? Join us for a roundtable discussion highlighting how some faculty have chosen to share their work digitally. Our discussion will be led by Professor Mark Sample, Associate Professor of Digital Studies, and Kristen Eshleman, Director of Digital Learning Research & Design, both from Davidson College. 
 
Mark and Kristen will share their experiences of launching Davidson Domains, a pilot program “what gives faculty, staff, and students a ‘domain of one’s own’—and online space for blogs, exhibits, research, creative work, portfolios, web development, programming, and more” (Sample, 2015). One goal of the Davidson Domains project is to help Davidson community members to “forge a digital identity through online publishing.” Mark and Kristen will share their perspectives on the pilot and how it has impacted the sharing of faculty and student work to broader audiences. 
 

As time allows, we’ll turn to a discussion of how Middlebury faculty share their digital presences and discuss what questions and decisions drove their choices for creating a digital presence.

 

Learn more about the Davidson Domains project here: https://domains.davidson.edu/

Lunch will be provided. RSVP to Doreen Bernier via email at dbernier@middlebury.edu .

 

Additional Readings:

Here is Andrew Rikard’s take on that question of agency and domains: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-08-10-do-i-own-my-domain-if-you-grade-it Further, his deeper dive into student agency and the role of the educator and student (the relationships) in liberal arts colleges that enable that, much of this being the ethos behind Domain of One’s Own: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-10-16-student-agency-is-not-something-you-give-or-take

Mark Sample’s post on bottlenecks: http://www.samplereality.com/2015/09/13/what-are-the-bottlenecks-of-davidson-domains/

Gardner Campbell on a personal cyberinfrastructure: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2009/9/a-personal-cyberinfrastructure

The results of our design session on the Domains community portal: http://dlrd.davidson.edu/dlrd-blog/davidson-domains-portal-sprint/ (we can share the final prototype in January –  the feedback needed to be pushed back a month for faculty/student schedules)

Amber Case: The Templated Self: http://cyborganthropology.com/Templated_Self and Audrey Watter’s musings on this and Domains: http://hackeducation.com/2014/07/22/reclaim-your-domain-hackathon/