Digital Pedagogy Fellowships
Innovations in Digital Pedagogy Fellowships fund and manage pilot course-based projects that have the potential to contribute to Hamilton’s goal of building a campus-wide digital learning community. The fellowships assist faculty in creating digitally focused assignments and in developing pedagogical strategies in any curricular area. The projects:
- innovate with technology-enabled pedagogies
- infuse digital competencies into new and existing courses or
- explore the impact of technology through classroom instruction, assignments, and co-curricular experiences.
Faculty fellows work with LITS colleagues to develop or refine specific course assignment(s) that include digital learning approaches. The structure of the funded projects and related activities can take many forms, but bold initiatives and collaboration are especially valued. The fellowships are sponsored jointly by the Dean of Faculty and Library and Information Technology Services.
2021 Awards
- Lacey Carpenter, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology
- Alex Manning, Assistant Professor of Sociology
- Mike McCormick, Associate Professor of Biology
Lacey Carpenter
Description
Professor Carpenter plans to increase collaboration between Hamilton students and her community collaborators in Oaxaca through the creation of a website that allows for information from excavations in Oaxaca and coursework at Hamilton to be broadly shared with the campus and research community. The information students learn in Ancient Mesoamerica course comes from years of hard work and collaboration between archaeologists and indigenous people. As scholars and learners, the website will allow students to engage in conversation with the communities who generate new knowledge. The site would also be a place where students can post artwork, letters, and other assignments to make them accessible to the community, so they can engage with students throughout the learning process, and see how their Oaxacan history and archaeology changes throughout the semester.
LITS Consultants
Reid Larson, Doug Higgins, Lisa McFall, Bret Olsen, Nhora Serrano
Alex Manning
Description
Over the academic year, Professor Manning will develop assignments that utilize podcasting and virtual reality technology. He is excited to work with these innovative forms of technology because of their increased and substantive popularity in a variety of arenas. Through this fellowship he will learn about, workshop, and incorporate podcasting and virtual reality to support the learning goals for two sociology courses: Sports & Society, and Racism & Race in the United States. This support will provide opportunities for students to implement their creativity, develop critical analytical skills, and effectively synthesize and communicate sophisticated sociological ideas about society in ways that can are accessible and inviting to a wider public.
LITS Consultants
Sacharja Cunningham, Reid Larson
Mike McCormick
Description
Professor McCormick's project will use a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) fitted with cameras to collect underwater imagery in Green Lake. These images will be used to construct 3-D models of the biofilms and to produce a 360-degree virtual reality immersive tour allowing the viewer to experience a virtual dive through the lake’s layers. These models and images will permit students to visualize the dramatic changes that occur in the water column and will help test a hypothesis that the biofilm locations show specific correlations to the geologic formations in which the lake basin is situated. The VR tour will also be shared with the Environmental Education Center at Green Lake’s State Park to help better educate the public about the fascinating microbial processes occurring in this rare and highly valuable ecosystem.
Green Lake, in Fayetteville, NY, is world renowned for its beauty but also for its scientific value as a rare example of meromixis (a lake that does not experience annual mixing). This condition has produced two layers in the lake that have dramatically different chemical and physical properties. Essentially, Green Lake is like two lakes stacked one on top of the other. These separate water bodies host very different microbial communities and for this reason, the lake has been the focus of research in the McCormick geomicrobiology lab since 2004.
LITS Consultants
Doug Higgins, Glynis Asu