petri dish

prototyping participation over presentation: "the children's darwin" & "undergrads at the collections"

As my academic department considers how to widen our outreach to undergrads with the proposed introduction in 2011 of a major in the history of science, technology, and medicine, I've been trying to work out ways to open up connections on our campus between the world we study and students from any background. I want to downplay bureaucratic brochureware in our online presence in favor of highlighting ways that anyone can enter the conversation about the constellation of ideas, issues, events, people, and consequences that make up hsci/med/tech -- entry points that could end up in direct connections with our department, but that could also foster other, user-directed connections just as easily. In thinking this through I'm working with a web 2.0 ethic in prototyping a set of loosely joined projects with digital components: think of it as roughing in the outlines of a dept. 2.0 identity, which opens up the possibility of changed relationships among those who make a learning community a learning community.

A web 2.0 attitude entails a shift from relying on default communication norms on our dept. website that focus on presentation (of "us" faculty and the dept. we have made -- "our" degrees, "our" research, "our" teaching, "our" priorities -- with pix of students sprinkled throughout, to be sure, to show we are student-friendly) to communication norms that facilitate participation: enabling our departmental digital presence to serve as a conduit for students themselves to experiment with defining what it means to engage in "exploring science : technology : medicine : past to present" in terms of their own experiences, their own connections, and their own pathways -- whether as majors, as minors, as individuals who might take a class or two with us, or just as someone who is curious enough about the area to find us on the internet. (Previous posts in this series can be found here and here.) This digital presence would also enable engagement by students with a wide array of others, both similar to and different than themselves, both on-campus and from beyond our hallowed prairie-ivy walls. How to start?

My primary effort has been aimed at creating an Undergraduate Portal for hsci/med/tech that will have its foothold on our department website, but will effectively be its own "start" page: a launch point for visitors to "do" things, rather than be told things. At the Undergrad Portal -- which will begin being phased in this fall, once our newly designed main website is functional -- the doing can run from obvious housekeeping matters such as finding out what next semester's classes will be or how you can declare a minor, to more expansive activities such as engaging in undergraduate humanities research (particularly by making use of digital resources -- in fact, the topic of digital hsci/med/tech research for undergrads will branch off into a companion website, hosted off the university server, because it is meant to be more than an institution-bound effort). A related, similar offshoot that I began piecing together first is "Undergrads at the Collections," which introduces possibilities for undergrad research using rotating themes, set up both as physical exhibits at OU's History of Science Collections at Bizzell Library and in a digital format via blog entries and supporting pages at the Undergrads at the Collections weblog site. The idea is that each version of the exhibit can stand alone, allowing for different forms of outreach, but that they can also be melded together, as discussed below. Our first exhibit is "The Children's Darwin," a display of children's picture books on the 19th-century naturalist, many of them published in 2009 with the peg of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species on which to hang their own appearance. The books are interesting artifacts for looking at how history of science is portrayed to a culture's youngest members.

The Curators of OU's History of Science Collections are genuinely welcoming of the public and all members of the university community, including students -- see their blog, for example -- but the Collections' space itself is nevertheless somewhat intimidating, what with visitors having to be buzzed in at the front doors, and with the books shelved away in stacks that need to be accessed by staff members, and with the items that are out front in the display cases being rare, fragile, and treated with reverence. On the other hand, the physical version of the Undergrad Exhibit, for which we've been allowed to homestead a small portion of the Collections' public reading room, is purposefully casual: the books aren't so valuable that they need to be housed behind glass, precisely so anyone can walk over, pick them up and literally hold them and browse through them, just as you would at your local library or bookstore. There is comfortable seating and tables that you can use to spend whatever time you'd like -- long or short -- with the books. There's an info sheet describing the exhibit, along with a discussion of how this kind of topic lends itself to research questions that connect up with real world issues, and suggests how the topic -- and offshoots from it -- offers useful starting points for user-generated content, if you will.

By adding a digital version of the exhibit, we can multiply its presence in several ways: by providing the ability for users to offer comments at the blog (our goal is to have an available laptop with the books so that visitors can add comments then and there via wifi) -- comments that live on the open web as contributions that make them more than a mere academic exercise (as with a typical class assignment one turns in to the instructor). Being on the open web, comments and queries from others anywhere at all with an interest in the topic or approach can also weigh in, adding to the interactive possibilities; and a digital version can also help to give members of the general public the same opportunity as the students to see what historical research can look like, demystified -- and comment themselves, if they'd like, and join the conversation, or use it to think with for their own purposes. Digitizing the exhibit also allows us to provide further links to research resources appropriate for undergrads or others interested in starting out on exploring the topic; and with digital versions, each successive exhibit can be layered on to the previous ones in an incremental fashion, creating a multi-dimensional archive that highlights the possibilities of humanities research by students, available to anyone brainstorming instructional projects.

This first display -- "The Children's Darwin" -- along with the next one or two Undergrad Exhibits, are occurring during what might be called the "silent phase" of our "academic department as web 2.0 campaign" -- rather like the early non-publicized period in a fundraising effort that quietly solicits donations so that the goals are already half-way met by the time that the endowment campaign is formally announced to the public. We hope to build up awareness bit by bit as we prototype, display, refine, and improvise on our way to providing working examples of how an interactive presence with undergrads and others can work -- so that when our department gets its window of greater visibility that will come with rolling out the major in a year or so we can already be experimenting in interactive terms, offering participatory possibilities in many forms, rethinking the variability and lability of what "open courseware" can be when the faculty, students, and members of the public create it together.

In dedicating a physical space specifically for undergrads at the Collections -- which is our department's "humanities laboratory" -- we want to literally demonstrate that, yes, you belong here; in choosing books that can be placed out for handling and interactive use, that are meant as starting points that can tell multiple stories simultaneously, depending on the individual pathways one chooses, we want to emphasize that humanities are for everybody; and by offering examples of research topics that demonstrate you don't have to be a faculty member to do history, we hope to make our discipline, and our research home itself, less intimidating to students, creating a space that facilitates the use of all kinds of media as social media. We often have our students visit the Collections and bring out treasures to show them, and some of us have even devised exercises that allow our students to use Collections' volumes as part of our class projects. But it is very rare that students come back on their own, or feel confident that they truly can be part of the research community, no matter how heartily we invite them to do so. Thinking in web 2.0 terms can change this, because our invitations will be more believable, visualizable, and doable, for students from any major. There's no reason not to think that in the near future we can have undergrads curating their own exhibits, sending their own queries and examples out onto the web, cultivating conversations among a diverse array of participants, and being members of a shape-shifting collective that helps us think of history as public history, belonging to all.

So that's some of the rationale as to the "why" of our Undergrad Exhibits prototype, "The Children's Darwin." There'll be a new exhibit for Fall 2010, so more on that to come; but how about the "what" of "The Children's Darwin" itself? You didn't think I could leave that topic before making an observation or two of my own, did you? That's coming!

departmental websites: hacking the academy by living on the open web

I'll admit, as a slogan, "hacking the academy one department website at a time!" doesn't have great prospects as a rallying cry. Websites for academic departments are typically one of the most uninspiring formats that exist on the internet: the components are pretty standardized, from the digitized brochure boilerplate, to the perfunctory faculty listings, cursory course descriptions reproduced from the university catalog, and occasionally some newsletter-type info bites. Visit a sample of departmental homepages and it would be hard to guess that there's a whole world wild web of 2.0 functionalities out there . . .

I've just begun a series of posts on how I've been trying to reconceptualize communication with our department's undergrads under the stimulus of web 2.0 capabilities, using our departmental pages as our jumping-off point. This has caused some head-scratching -- not least because getting our basic revised departmental website up and running has been a nightmare, as in I'm still waiting waiting waiting w a i t i n g on that, so doesn't that prove the folly of trying anything new digital-wise with such a bureaucratic form? A compelling point! -- but mainly because everyone knows that, really, in all honesty, hardly anybody visits a departmental website, and especially not undergrads. Since the departmental website is like a digital deadzone, better to put one's ingenuity into online classroom technology or one's own blog or debating, developing, and divining what the latest techno-cool tools are with others who share an early adopter mindset.

But it's deceptive: even though departmental websites seem to be buried deep inside the layers of a university website's architecture and therefore exist way off the grid in a grayish netherworld, they're not, of course. They live on the open web by virtue of a url just like any other website. And if we can experiment with reconfiguring the lines of communication and participation with our undergrads via a departmental website rethought in 2.0 terms, there's no reason not to extend that line of thinking one step further: to the departmental website as a crossroads between professionals and the public, reconstituting what professional and public means in the process. 

Bringing dynamic elements into a departmental website can be as simple as starting with an rss feed or two that brings the outside world across the university's walls and into the heart of where a community of researchers currently (digitally) resides: at the department's website. If the rss feed speaks in everyday language rather than in a specialized vocabulary, then an interesting juxtaposition is struck immediately in and of itself, as with, say, a science news feed on a science department's site. By its presence, the feed instantiates an ongoing invitation for responses by members of the departmental community to speak to current events, and/or a challenge to individuals to adopt the common tongue in a like manner in communicating via the website about what goes on in research and teaching, and/or a prompt to take an item and use it as focal point to link to other resources that are available to anyone near or far who may find them of use and who come across them via the website.

And it's a relatively simple matter to make that happen, by adding in a blog component that professors can post to that has a comment function and the ability to share posts across multiple social networks -- and if so, the departmental website begins to rejuvenate from the deadzone and the departmental community begins to live out on the open web together, where it is much more likely that interaction with various publics can happen than if professors remain walled in, physically or digitally. [And if it seems to hard to revamp the website, a companion space can be activated via typepad or wordpress, for example.]

And, of course, there is so much that can be done, once you get going and improvisation proves not only possible but the way to move forward and evolve.

The aspect of this that I especially like is how decentralized the department as a local node is in representing a discipline, and how it doesn't depend on a scholarly society representing you or me, but you or me representing what our disciplines do, in concrete terms that communicate in the vernacular, allowing for encounters that recast the circulation of knowledge in different terms than how we normally perform when we hew to the various reward structures of our disciplines (as structured by journal editors, and funding agencies, and an institution's administrators). In being located at the departmental level, it makes it easier to bring in those who have been uninterested in computer-mediated communication -- folks who, perhaps, even have disdain for those who know about the specific bells and whistles that exist in the sphere of social media -- and allow for broader participation within our own local sphere, and thus a greater diversity of voices, and a more robust set of dynamics. It also makes communication and interaction with the public not something that is the "job" of a few hardy/gregarious/adventurous individuals, and instead the responsibility of a collectivity.

In my field of History, historian David Thelen (in The Presence of the Past) challenged his colleagues with the following argument about the cramping of the scholarly mind that can come with professionalization:

"the greatest danger from professionalization – a danger that is great because it is often invisible – is that its self-enclosing thrust has made it harder for us professionals to recognize which of our practices resemble ‘common,’ ‘local,’ or ‘everyday’ knowledge and perspective and which have evolved into jargon that makes sense only to other professionals. If we wish to construct serious dialogues about the past with nonprofessionals – who are, after all, our fellow citizens and human beings – we may need to go back and revalue our first languages, the ones we were taught to leave behind when we entered the professional world. By recognizing patterns in our historymaking practices that we share with others, we can more effectively contribute to the larger historical culture we all inhabit."

I believe that, increasingly, how connections will be forged among others outside our professional circles will be mediated by an ability to speak in the "digital vernacular" of web 2.0. By finding meaningful ways to participate in the digital vernacular, we can "more effectively contribute to the larger culture we all inhabit." Using the departmental website -- which is a ready-made representation of our authority as academics -- and drawing on the practices and philosophy of web 2.0, opens up our world to others, and becomes a space in which we can communicate in new ways and interact in unscripted encounters that can allow us to rethink our pedagogical imperatives and traditions.

By entering into the stream of inquiry when it is constituted by small pieces loosely joined -- and by thinking of the internet's capabilities in interactive and participatory terms with the public as potential partners, rather than as an audience who views a static digital display space in which we set out products -- we take on more modest roles as academics, with the potential to hack new forms of community that change ourselves as well as offer possibilities to others.

So, the departmental website as an online learning environment? I know, perhaps a difficult concept to credit. But I bet there are already innovative examples out there that currently exist, ready for us to play with. I'll be looking.

can (should?) an (under-resourced) academic department speak web 2.0 to undergrads?

Our department is in the middle of big changes -- several years of recalibrating the classes we offer and reconfiguring our course structure, finishing up a proposal during the last year for an undergraduate major in the history of science, technology, and medicine to send to the Regents for approval, and an overhaul of our website in which we've encountered one nerve-wracking stumbling block after another for three years (and we're still waiting!) -- all of which entail questions about how best to do outreach to undergrads from the departmental level. 

Of course, how best to do outreach depends foremost on what your goals are. The default position is that the goal of outreach is to fill up classes (a bottom line administrative imperative that has become ever more critical as we experience the effects of the Great Recession). How enrollment happens tends to be attributed to an inscrutable amalgam among undergrads of word-of-mouth, conventional wisdom about career paths & relevant coursework drawn from personal networks, the passing along of local lore about departments and classes, the effect of teaching evaluations, and institutional cultural quirks that have a stunningly inertial status, accompanied by, from the other end, individual instructors or departments trying to influence enrollment by the archaic strategy of . . . posting flyers (which now seek out the fickle student eye with colored text and images, however, as opposed to the monochromatic versions of the pre-inkjet era!) or announcements on a department website. Although announcements on the department website recognize that a new communication source exists -- the internet -- most students don't visit department websites. So, broadcasting at -- never mind communicating with -- undergrads along these lines is clunky, at best, and irrelevant at worst.

In chairing the Undergrad Program Committee over the last few years part of my job is to tend to such matters, but -- if the stars align properly -- the track we're on to add a major to our department's portfolio (we currently administer a graduate program and an undergraduate minor) has made me think differently about not just the methods but the goals of undergraduate communication. To be sure, we've worked at making the conventional methods more robust --  for example, I designed an online survey for undergrads that touched on lots of different aspects of our proposed major, our current minor and courses, but also asked some basic questions about traditional and online forms of communication, for example, to see where things stood.

Our newer set of tools includes a facebook group page since the social networking site is popular with our students, and I've been encouraging the posting of relevant departmental announcements by faculty on their CMS class pages as well as utilizing an email list we've cobbled together (our institution can't provide us with accurate and timely information on who has taken more than one class in our department, for example, or who is pursuing a minor -- we have to capture this info on the fly as best we can). So, we've made steps forward that target outreach a touch more effectively accompanied by a toe-in-the-water in terms of social media. . .

. . . Except, these aren't steps that really open up shifts in the communication ecology. For that, the issue isn't how to take our one-to-many broadcast methods and make them louder, but to think in terms of what the emergence of web 2.0 offers (think facebook, blogs, flickr, youtube, social bookmarking, wikipedia for starters): many-to-many, interactive, participatory, and collaborative forms of communication. The point isn't the tools themselves (or their sparkly newness) -- let's twitter because it's trendy! -- but the fact that tools exist that make it possible to consider new goals, to think about communication differently, and therefore to imagine changed relationships: of students as partners, not simply as audiences. What I'm after is not just a discussion of what can happen in the classroom, but at a different location: at the digital interface at which the departmental presence and an individual's attention can meet in ways that enhance the possibilities of mutual engagement, conversation, and innovative improvisations among networks of people that didn't exist before. Not new methods in and of themselves -- instead, new goals, therefore new methods.

But is this reflective exercise even realistic? Or necessary? Or desirable? Academic departments aren't especially good at digital experimentation, and here in our department, like so many, we're under-resourced as it is in terms of money, support, and expertise on campus in regard to the majority of our organizational tasks, let alone computer-mediated communication -- and most faculty consider anything web-related to be synonymous with blackholes. Is there really a compelling interest to be served in screwing around with the current model of departmental webpages as print brochures that have migrated online? Given limited amounts of support and time, isn't thinking of departmental outreach in web 2.0 terms something that's a luxury reserved for those with resources to spare, not for those who live in economies of scarcity?

Over a year or so I've worked through the issues that this proposition presents in as many different ways as I know how, and have come to the conclusion, that, yes, it is necessary to think differently about undergrad communication. I think the departmental-website-as-pixellated-brochure concedes too much to tired ways of thinking about teaching, about research, and about the place of the humanities in the public sphere. That's a lot to pin on a mere departmental website, as opposed to focusing on the more dynamic space of individual professors' classrooms, for example. But how institutions present themselves matters. As the authors of the cluetrain manifesto argued in 1999, in theses 15, 34, and 35:

In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business — the sound of mission statements and brochures — will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

But first, they must belong to a community.

This is even more clearly the case in a web 2.0 sort of world. What would happen if we thought anew about the departmental website, re-imagining it as a newcomer's portal, an open learning environment in and of itself whether or not you are even enrolled in one of our classes? That's what I'm going to walk through in the next few blog entries, as I try and reorient myself to the mix of new threads that I've been working on piece by piece in trying to weave new patterns in our local webworld. (Yes, I'm back digitally, and doubling-down on the bet rather than leaving the table.)

(Know of good examples? I'd love to learn more about what others are trying -- links would be great to have!)

Coming up: Why The Children's Darwin?