A two day symposium titled “Shifting (the) Boundaries: Blended Learning, Digital Humanities and the Liberal Arts” was held on April 5th and 6th, sponsored by the Mellon-funded Blended Learning Initiative at the College. Evelina Guzauskyte from the Spanish Department and David O’Steen  from Library and Technology Services co-directed the initiative which is in its fourth year. They did a superb job putting together the program, which was well attended by not just the faculty, students and staff from Wellesley, but members from several other nearby institutions.

The faculty and students from Wellesley who spoke at the symposium were illustrating a range of ways in which they have blended technology into their courses. The most striking thing for me was that in all the presentations technology itself took the backseat and the discussions were about how it improved or enhanced pedagogy. And the passion that the faculty exhibited by devoting a lot of their time to experiment with blended methodologies to improve student learning was evident in all presentations. They could have easily turned away from it all and gone about advancing their scholarly activities! (more…)