How to Design a Digitally-Inf(l)ected Course
Publication Date
Fall 9-8-2016
Description
The workshop is designed to introduce the foundations of the pedagogy behind combining backwards design with digital infusion. Once the groundwork is laid, the participants are paired up with a facilitator to work through the Digital Infusion Protocol for one of their own courses. Participants get to experience both facilitating and thinking critically about how they can use this in their own teaching. Participants are encouraged to adapt the materials to their own campuses as needed.
The idea of the “digitally-inflected” course comes with a sense of modularity, superficiality. Digital “inflection” suggests that the research methods we’re working through/with can be add-ons, plug-ins for existing pedagogical andresearch enterprises. As an alternative, digital “infection” implies a wholesale integration of these methods (and, importantly, the rationale for their adoption) into our teaching. Digital methods can and should be deliberately integrated into a course. In fact they already have: your students’ research practices are already digital, though the processes are hidden.
What we propose here is not necessarily a guidebook for the individual teacher wanting a way in, but for the local champion of digital methods and research to lead a workshop that helps faculty think through these issues. It’s a guide for the guides.