Upcoming Events - Encouraging Student Scholarship: Learning to Write in the Digital Age

January 16 - 18, 2009 , 6:00 p.m. (F) - 12:00 p.m. (Su)
Wheaton College

Brief Introduction

For faculty members, instructional technologists, librarians, and directors and staff members of writing centers at participating colleges who are interested in exploring the intersection of student writing and research within liberal education contexts in the digital age. Those who participated in NITLE’s "Learning to Write in the Digital Age: Writing Across the Curriculum" and "Scholarly Collaboration and Small Colleges in the Digital Age" will be interested in this conference; however, previous participation in these earlier NITLE conferences is not required. (7 program units. Registration deadline: Friday, November 21, 2008)

Description

Effective research and communication have long been important parts of the liberal arts curriculum, but in the information age, the means by which these essential skills are practiced have changed. Digital technologies have enabled new forms of research, faculty-student collaborative scholarship, and publication. In addition to learning discipline-specific research and writing conventions, students may now access a wider range of resources for research, including primary sources, and explore alternative presentation and publication formats such as digital narrative and multimedia projects. Institutional repositories now guarantee the survival of student research, while online publication finds a broader audience for this work. These new opportunities bring new challenges for teaching, learning, and institutional policy. This conference will explore the impact of these issues on the practice and publication of student scholarship in liberal education. Participants will engage such topics as

How have digital technologies changed research and writing, and how do we prepare students to be scholars in the 21st century?
How can technology help develop research with/of primary sources?
How can digital technologies aid in the development of student scholars?
How can we preserve the rigor of research methods while integrating online research?
Can technology help teach discipline-specific writing conventions? How do we move students beyond the writing skills developed in the freshman seminar to sophisticated scholarly writing?
How does technology fit into the development of larger research projects such as the senior capstone course or senior thesis?
How do we best take advantage of the new opportunities for publishing student scholarship that digital technologies offer?
How much technological literacy do students need in this area?
How can larger projects help students develop skills that will be used beyond the liberal arts college?

How to Participate

Interested faculty and staff from participating colleges: To participate in this program, please contact your liaison, who will let you know whether your institution has program units available to support your participation. If so, your liaison will contact NITLE to register you to participate. (Note that campus policies on the use of program units vary. Liaisons, please register participants by e-mailing participate@nitle.org.)

If no units are currently available, your liaison--following campus policy--may purchase them on your behalf or may recommend that you or your department purchase them. If you or your department chooses to purchase program units for your use, please make the purchase and register for this program by sending an e-mail message to participate@nitle.org, including the program title and your name, job title, and e-mail address. NITLE will send you an invoice and confirmation of your registration.

Deadline

Please register by Friday, November 21, 2008. Registration is currently open and is managed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Contact (program)

For more information about this conference's program/content, please contact Rebecca Davis.

Contact (logistics)

For logistical questions, please contact Julie Lancaster at julie.lancaster@nitle.org.