NITLE > Events > Encouraging Student Scholarship

Encouraging Student Scholarship: Learning to Write in the Digital Age

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Date: January 16 - 18, 2009 (6:00 PM, Friday - 12:00 PM, Sunday, EDT).
Location: Wheaton College, Norton, MA
Price: 7 program units per participant

Who should participate

For faculty members, instructional technologists, librarians, and directors and staff members of writing centers at participating institutions 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.

Program 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?

Program agenda

Check-in and Registration

This NITLE event begins Friday, January 16, with check-in and registration in the Mary Lyon front hall at 4 p.m, followed by a reception at 6 PM. Dinner follows in the faculty dining room in Emerson Hall at 7 p.m. Temperatures at Wheaton are not expected to rise above the teens for most of the weekend so please wear layers to stay warm outside and still be comfortable inside.

Sessions begin Saturday, January 17 with coffee and announcements at 8:30 a.m. in the Mary Lyon May Room. Opening remarks begin at 9 a.m. in the Woolley Room.  See the final agenda linked below for more details.

Mary Lyon is building 16 and Emerson Hall is building 29 on the Wheaton College campus map.

The final agenda is now available for this event.  As with all NITLE conferences, we invite participants to give their input on the agenda and topics that interest them. 

NITLE invites faculty members, directors and staff members of writing centers, instructional technologists, and librarians at participating colleges to submit proposals for presentations that explore how they have encouraged student scholarship. Please see the call for proposals (.pdf, 31.4 KB).

We especially seek presentations that present techniques used, as well as lessons learned (both successes and failures) in a variety of disciplines. We also invite those who are interested in contributing to the planning of the program, e.g., by reviewing proposals, to submit their names.

Proposals should be submitted electronically and are due by Friday, November 7, 2008. Respondents to the call will receive notification by November 15.

Lodging Recommendations

For your convenience, NITLE has arranged a special rate for program participants at:

• Holiday Inn Mansfield (31 Hampshire Street, Mansfield, MA 02048 | Phone: 508-339-2200)

To secure the special NITLE rate of $109 per night (plus sales & occupancy taxes) please make your reservations by December 26, 2008. 

This special rate is available to conference participants for the nights of January 16-18, 2009.

Travel Recommendations

If traveling to this event, please note that Wheaton College is served by both Logan Int'l Airport and TF Green Int'l Airport.

Directions to Wheaton College:

You may use the following Google directions link to map your way to Wheaton College: Driving Directions

Visitor parking at Wheaton is in parking lot #2 shown on the Wheaton College map. There is a crosswalk from the parking lot to campus but there is no light at the crosswalk. Caution is advised.

Other information

See related resources on delicious and diigo.

Questions?

For more information about this event, including its agenda and what to expect from participation, please contact Rebecca Davis at . For logistical questions, please contact Julie Lancaster at .