Media Scholarship in the Liberal Arts

A NITLE Instructional Innovation Fund Project

Hamilton, Colgate, Juniata College and St. Lawrence received an Instructional Innovation Fund grant from NITLE <http://www.nitle.org/index.php/> to explore the potential of moving images to form interdisciplinary connections on liberal arts campuses. Liberal arts schools have a long history of illustrating culture, place, time, and ideas with moving images. With the exception of art and film/communication studies courses, pedagogical use has primarily been instructional, focused on analytical assignments in which students illustrate themes with existing footage. In the past five years, with the advent of user friendly economical digital technologies, liberal arts campuses have increasingly explored assignments in which students create new assemblages of existing work or their own original footage to support research and as expressive communication. These assignments cover a range of aptitudes, require considerable design effort to integrate a critical understanding of visual representation within existing course content, and need specialized resources and services. The processes involved are usually not understood by students even if they "know" the technology. Most importantly, with regard to widespread adoption, faculty often express concern over how to evaluate the outcomes of these learning experiences.
The goals of this project are to

• Explore methods connecting disciplines through pedagogical approaches that enhance or sustain instruction and assignments integrating moving images.
• Research and share current expertise in teaching and learning with moving images.
• Develop models that connect critical and creative learning through interdisciplinary moving image assignments.
• Develop methods to evaluate a variety of moving image assignments with standards similar to those for written and oral communication.
• Identify resources to sustain diversity of moving image assignment models on liberal arts campuses.