Bethlehem, Pa., March 19, 2015— Instructional Technologist Rebecca Frost Davis will visit Moravian College on Friday, March 20, for a discussion with faculty and technology staff about “Liberal Education in the Emerging Digital Ecosystem.” The talk will be held at 8:35 a.m. in the Priscilla Payne Hurd Academic Complex, Room 117. It will be followed by a 10:30 a.m. workshop on blended learning.
Davis is the director of instructional and emerging technology at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas where she provides leadership in the development of institutional vision with respect to the use of technology.
“We are creating life-long learners, so we must prepare them to learn in the environment in which they will live, work, and solve problems,” Davis said. “This means preparing them for a global, digital world of constant change. Our vision for the learning ecosystem is not just a set of technologies. It is also a framework for technology use and application and an approach to learning."
"Creation of the 21st century learning ecosystem requires both the creation and constant reinvention of a technology infrastructure as well as a change in culture of the university," Davis noted. "It means breaking down the boundaries between the classroom, the university, and the world. In the 21st century learning ecosystem, learning is networked, ubiquitous (cloud-based), digital and face-to-face, formal and informal, heterogeneous, hybrid, high-touch, authentic, and accessible.”
The talk will present a vision for implementing liberal education in the emerging digital ecosystem through a curriculum that scaffolds digital engagement from introductory to capstone level courses.Instructional Technology helps faculty transform and adapt new digital methods in teaching and research to advance the essential learning outcomes of liberal education.
Davis is one of four co-editors of Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Models, Concepts, and Experiments, a collaborative project in development and under contract with the MLA which explores how changes wrought by new digital methods on scholarship are impacting the humanities classroom. She has taught numerous workshops on teaching with technology for faculty, technologists, and librarians at liberal arts colleges, planned conferences, and consulted on digital teaching, the teaching of writing with technology, classical studies, inter campus teaching, and virtual collaboration.
Moravian College is a private coeducational liberal arts college, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to 1742, Moravian is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college and the first to educate women. The College emphasizes the deliberate integration of a broad-based liberal arts curriculum with hands-on learning experiences to prepare its 1,600 students, not just for jobs, but for successful careers. Moravian College excels at transforming good students into highly competent graduates who are ready to enter the workplace with confidence or shine in graduate school. Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.