Digital Storytelling Archive in Chronicle of Higher Education Article

In an article reporting on the meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning held last weekend, the CCT- and CNDLS-sponsored Digital Storytelling Multimedia Archive was mentioned as an example of a new, 'middle-space' of digital scholarship. The Archive is based on a multi-classroom and multi-campus study of faculty and student uses of multimedia narratives in local history, gender studies, American Studies, and latina feminisms classrooms. CCT Alumni Aly Hurt, Kathy Bayer, Gosia Rymsza-Pawlowska, and Mingo Roberts were all interviewed for the project.The Archive's authors are Prof. Michael Coventry (CCT faculty and Research Fellow CNDLS) and Prof. Matthias Oppermann (Bielefeld University/Humbolt University).

The relevant passage of the article is below:
"How should scholars of teaching and learning disseminate their findings—through campus workshops, through online networks, or in peer-reviewed but sometimes little-read pedagogical journals?

"We need to create 'middle spaces' for the scholarship of teaching and learning," said Randall Bass, assistant provost for teaching and learning initiatives at Georgetown University, during a conference session on Friday.

By that, Mr. Bass meant that that kind of work is too often concentrated at two poles of a continuum: at one pole, individual classroom studies that no one ever learns about, and at the other, formal peer-reviewed research that sometimes takes years to appear.

Mr. Bass and Toru Iiyoshi, a senior strategist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's office of educational innovation and technology, pointed to an emerging crop of online multimedia projects where college instructors can share findings about their teaching. Those sites include Merlot and the Digital Storytelling Multimedia Archive ."

from "Scholars Assess Their Progress on Improving Student Learning" by David Glenn, dateline October 25, 2009, The Chroncicle of Higher Education online, http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Assess-Their-Progress/48933/