"Digital Partnerships for Engaged Learning" is an evolving portfolio of projects managed by the Technology Resource Center (TRC), a collaboration of Wayne State University’s Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL), Computing and Information Technology, and the Digital Projects Initiative of the Wayne State University Library System (WSULS). Partnerships foster purposeful integration of digital media in teaching and learning by bridging faculty and TRC expertise, building faculty learning communities, and collaborating with other institutions in the community. Three major projects illustrate the current variety of innovative activities on campus: the Art History Luna Project, the Digital Media Learning Community, and the Digital Learning and Development Sandbox
The Art History Luna Project is an outgrowth of the 2006 Innovative Technology Grants sponsored by the Office of the Provost and supported by the OTL and TRC. Seeking to digitize their slide library, the Wayne State Art History Department teamed with WSULS staff to purchase image databases and assist with metadata. TRC staff selected Luna Insight software for this project and loaded data. OTL staff are currently designing training for faculty and learning experiences for students. Luna software allows faculty to select images (examples: 1, 2, 3, a collection) from the Art History database and to develop a slide presentation for teaching classes (examples: image comparison, closeup). As the project is further developed, Art History will scan its extensive slide library and load individual images into Luna as well. The project goes beyond conventional uses of Luna, which typically employ the tool as a substitute for the standard art slide carousel in classroom lectures and assignments. Metadata and search-ability are rarely considered. The project's design model for using metadata and controlled vocabulary makes the tool more widely available and usable to the university community at large.
The Digital Media Learning Community develops promising new technologies for teaching and learning. The TRC’s leadership in using the virtual world Second Life began in February 2006, when the Center supported Dr. Steven Shaviro of the English Department in the first campus-wide demonstration of Second Life at a Wayne State conference on “Digital Partnerships in Humanities” (part of the national HASTAC 2006-2007 InFormation Year series). The conference website includes a link to the New Media Consortium write-up of the Second Life event, under the middle column Conference Recap. The experience gained from that event enabled the TRC to support a November 2007 symposium on Virtual Citizenship, a joint effort of the Center for the Study of Citizenship, the OTL, the Honors Program, and the DeRoy Lecture series. Located on-campus and in Second Life, the symposium launched a broader research, teaching, and service initiative aimed at understanding how students, staff, and faculty across campus can work at the intersection of new communication and information technologies in the interests of citizenship, social justice, and civic engagement. OTL staff subsequently designed a faculty workshop on Starting Your Second Life. The staff are also working with the Honors College on use of new technologies, including a service learning requirement with roots in the community, and the recently formed WSU-HASTAC Digital Humanities Collaboratory is building a network of faculty affiliates. In 2008-2009, a monthly Digital Humanities series co-sponsored by OTL and the Humanities Center will feature innovative uses of new technologies across campus, including projects in the arts, art history, media studies, languages, writing, cultural history, and partnerships with area museums and archives. A subgroup of the Collaboratory is also exploring possibilities for a Virtual Detroit project.
The Digital Learning and Development Sandbox (DLDS) aims to foster greater use of three collections in the WSULS Digital Projects Initiative. The collections were created through collaborations of WSULS, Walter P. Reuther Library, Detroit Historical Museum, The Henry Ford [museum], and Meadowbrook Hall (supported by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Library of Michigan). The DLDS will be a digital workspace on the web with images from three Collections: Virtual Motor City (photos from The Detroit News documenting American social history), Digital Dress (items of clothing and accessories spanning 1800 to 2000, example), and the Herman Miller Consortium (furniture and product literature). The workspace will also feature templates for authoring digital learning objects in online assignments supported by social networking technologies (blogs and wikis). By adding text and other materials, users will be able to create integrated presentations, comment on others’ work, engage in collaborative research, and share resources and expertise. In addition, a Teaching and Learning Archive will provide an online resource bank with links to resources in other cultural institutions and guidelines on instructional design, database searching, and interdisciplinary study of American cultural history. The three Collections may previewed on the WSU/HASTAC website by clicking on the Digital Collections Video under Conference Recap. They may also be viewed individually on the WSU Libraries homepage. Scroll down the left-hand side to the News tab, click on Digital Projects, then click on links to individual Collections.
