What is the university’s responsibility to the public? How can it reach new populations? How can it participate in, influence, and learn from social and political movements happening outside of its boundaries? These are age old questions that are being asked and answered in new ways with the advent of digital humanities and online platforms of learning. In unprecedented ways, universities today have new avenues to reach and converse with populations, practitioners, activists, and leaders once outside its reach.
However, these new possibilities also open wider questions of access and reach. In what ways do online and digital educational technologies allow for new pedagogical possibilities reaching ever new students and participants? But also, we must ask, in what ways do new technologies limit our imaginations and conversations? Are universities also limiting their conversations through this emphasis on digital media? In other words, do these new possibilities both broaden and limit the academy’s reach and conversations with the public, and if so, what are the benefits and costs of the classroom’s new engagement with technology?
This panel asks these questions in the context of specific educational technologies: twitter, multi-modal dissertations, Massive Open Online Courses, and concept mapping. With each technology, we ask about the possibilities of new conversation partners, new students and populations reached by the academy. But we are also attuned by the limitations of the conversations. What boundaries do we redraw? How can we broaden access? How can we continue to be mindful of our limitations in the face of technology, and seek ever new ways of inclusion?
