Digital Technologies and Communication across the Curriculum at LSU: The Rationale

Note to CxC Staff: For references and footnotes, see post on CxC Blackboard Site.

Collaboration 2.0: Digital Technologies and Communication across the Curriculum
“Today’s typical college classroom, excluding perhaps its décor and architecture, does not look or function much differently from the way that it did in the 1920s. Can you imagine any other crucial pillar of culture, or sector of economy, that has not changed much in eighty years?” Carl A. Raschke

As the authors of the best-selling Wikinomics argue, “The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down.” Higher education, in general, is not keeping up with these changes. HASTAC reports, “No school of higher education in the country today has tested in a comprehensive way new methods of learning based on peer-to-peer distributed systems of collaborative work characteristic of the new Internet Age.” We propose just such an inquiry into uses of Web 2.0 for teaching-enhanced communication skills at a major university.

Despite some remarkable projects (e.g., MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and OpenCourseWare, DukeCast, Stanford on iTunes U), many students and faculty see Web 2.0 tools as unproven for serious research or as instructional tools, using them instead almost exclusively for social networking purposes. Also troubling are Internet usage “gaps” of concern in Louisiana, e.g., gender, color, poverty.

Nevertheless, Web 2.0’s enhanced collaboration tools are crucial to 21st century communication and to our Communication across the Curriculum (CxC) Program. Using external funding, in three years we have built a strong program—across every college, with 135 Communication-Intensive (C-I) courses and 168 students enrolled in LSU’s unique “Distinguished Communicator” (D-Comm) certification. CxC is part of LSU’s “Flagship Agenda,” which promotes scholarly and research collaboration among faculty, increased undergraduate research opportunities, and LSU’s national standing. Currently, the Flagship Agenda is sponsoring a “Multi-Disciplinary Hiring Initiative,” funding new faculty positions for collaborative Gulf Coast, national, and international initiatives.

We need collaborative research and pedagogy to solve complex scientific and social problems and for artistic expression and design, but collaboration costs time and money. LSU is historically among the most under-funded universities, dependent upon one of the poorest states. Because existing technologies (e.g., accounting systems, enterprise solutions) are outdated, LSU rarely invests in new technologies without solid evidence that they produce; on the other hand, we must be on the cutting edge of research. We need external funding like that offered by this MacArthur Competition to investigate the potential for collaborative technologies.

Wikinomics suggests another explanation for skepticism about Web 2.0 among faculty: “credentialed knowledge producers share the stage with ‘amateur’ creators who are disrupting every activity they touch.” The notion of “peer production,” applied at a university, threatens many who have dispensed “privileged” knowledge and credentials for professionals. Even those who believe that collaboration must replace competitive models can be daunted by the relentless rate of technological change. Others see “virtual spaces,” and digital “communities” as threats to “real” communities built in classrooms, person-to-person.

Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen, UK higher education consultants, catalog other issues related to collaborative technologies:
• IPR for material created and modified by university members and external contributors;
• appropriate pedagogies for use with Web 2.0 (and equally which pedagogic approaches are enhanced by the use of Web 2.0);
• how to assess material that may be collectively created and that is often open to ongoing change;
• how to roll out Web 2.0 services across a university;
• whether it is best to host the services within the university or make use of externally hosted services elsewhere;
• integration with institutional systems;
• accessibility; visibility and privacy;
• data ownership;
• data preservation;
• information literacy;
• staff and student training

Because feedback and revision are required components in C-I courses, hundreds of students and faculty can potentially use Web 2.0 for collaboration on written, video, and oral communication projects; for this reason, we must emphasize intellectual property and privacy: should we “publish” final projects on the web and who should view feedback a student receives on a project? According to the 2007 Horizon Report, other trends that should receive priority in 2008 include how increased globalization is changing how we work, collaborate, and communicate; the status of digital literacy among students; and the divergence of views between students and faculty about what is technology.

This project will not be able to address every issue, but we will engage in serious inquiry with faculty, students, and Information Technology staff, remaining open to negative as well as positive findings in our investigations. CxC will be a nexus for collaborative, university-wide inquiry, studying faculty and students who are using Web 2.0 technologies specifically as tools for better communication and pedagogies in three modes: written, oral, and visual. We have four innovative Communication Studios (Art + Design, Arts & Sciences, Basic Sciences, and Engineering). We must employ Web 2.0 in physical spaces—Studios, technology-enhanced classrooms, labs—and in virtual spaces. We will extend our program’s history of building so much so quickly using the philosophy of analogy—people working in a range of disciplines adapting ideas for teaching communication skills from one field to others—to Web 2.0 applications.

The combination of physical and virtual spaces that we have at LSU can move us to “a more ‘open’ idea of learning,” far beyond the current paradigm of “keeping learning local.” Embracing this philosophy, our Communication Studios serve as sites for intense face-to-face collaboration beyond the classroom, serving students enrolled in C-I courses in every major at LSU. They also support students working independently for the D-Comm Certification, a distinction recognizing outstanding communication in courses, leadership, and community service, all of which are displayed in Digital Portfolios.


CxC is not localized within the four walls of a classroom as a transaction between one professor and one set of students. Students, faculty, and staff use our web-based materials and Studios to enhance traditional instruction. Our program’s mission—to improve communication skills across the University—gives us the perfect infrastructure for such a university-wide inquiry into appropriate uses of Web 2.0.