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The Digital Studio employs many talented tutors who teach students both inside and out of the Digital Studio’s tutoring space. One way that tutors educate outside of the Studio space is through workshops. The Digital Studio also collaborates with various clubs and organizations on campus, such as the Archimedes Initiative and the semi-annual EGR120 poster competition.
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CTLE Support
With the support of CTLE, the Digital Studio has supported faculty in a number of ways. During the Digital Studio’s pilot stage, a 1/2 day workshop introduced faculty to the Digital Studio concept and the various digital genres that the space supported. In addition, Associate Directors were able to consult individually with faculty to create assignment sheets, rubrics, and other materials. Interim Director Lori Mumpower gave Digital Studio orientations to students and met individually with faculty to finalize assignments and rubrics for these assignments.
This initial pilot program has been expanded each semester, since it’s inception in 2015. In the 2017-2018 school year, CTLE and the Digital Studio supported two faculty grant programs aimed at enhancing digital literacies across the campus, and participating faculty members (Rachel Silverman, Alex Watkins, Diane Howard, Eduardo Rojas, Keshav Acharya, Andy Oler, and Emad Hamdeh) redesigned student projects to allow students to create multimedia compositions nd/or redesigned their own instructional materials to make use of the affordances of multimedia.
Dr. Jay Pembridge has worked closely with the Digital Studio since its inception in 2015
Faculty were provided with a modest stipend for their contributions to this prototype project. To understand faculty perceptions of the value of CTLE’s Digital Literacy Workshop, CTLE collected data in an online survey from 20 pilot faculty from both Fall 15 and Spring 16 semesters. With 18 faculty responding, 100% of faculty found the workshop and its materials valuable. Faculty provided excellent advice for improving future workshops.
To encourage faculty to develop digital literacy assignments in their courses, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence developed a Digital Literacy Grant. During Summer 2015, CTLE offered Digital Literacy Grants to seven faculty (Aaron Clevenger, Emily Faulconer, Andy Ludu, Andy Oler, James Pembridge, Dawna Rhoades, and Matt Sharp). Adapting and implementing a digital literacies model from the University of Southern California, faculty spent the summer developing materials and creating rubrics for these assignments. This initial pilot program has been expanded with each semester.
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Testimonials
Aaron Clevenger
Dan Maronde
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“The Digital Studio has been tremendously helpful for my students,” Oler said. “Several of them visited this semester and got help on several stages of their presentations, ranging from pre-planning to technical assistance. Overall, my students’ presentations were better than they were in the past.”
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“Participating in the Digital Literacies Student Project Redesign allowed students to gain digital composition skills that will transfer to their other coursework and, eventually, to their careers. Students were engaged and interested in the process, and gained key digital literacy skills that will help them to be active participants in our digital culture. I am thankful that CTLE and the Digital Studio provide these kinds of opportunities for me as an instructor, and for my students, to help them succeed and excel in their coursework and their future composition outside of the university.”
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“My physics lab students have had the creation of a conference-style poster, as well as preparation of an audio/visual presentation, as part of the report assignment for several semesters. Since last Spring, the assignment has included a meeting with the Digital Studio staff to help plan the structure and layout of both projects. I have noticed a marked improvement in the quality of the materials produced by my students once we started making use of the Digital Studio resources.”
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“The Digital Studio allows my students to develop skills in contemporary forms of dissemination (posters, infographics, podcasts) that is becoming increasingly important to the communication of engineering designs and research. The space provides not only the technological tools they need to develop their expertise in digital literacies, but supports them with the personnel with practical experience that can allow my students to overcome common issues to applying digital literacies. I have seen that through the use of digital literacies in my courses, my students have a deeper knowledge of the content and more thorough justification of their solutions to design problems.”