Tomorrow I am traveling to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Annual State of Higher Education Conference in Washington, DC to present some of my research on “Redefining Tenure and Promotion Standards for Multimedia and Digital Arts Faculty”.The presentation is based off of an article that I will be submitting for publication. This is a topic of importance many of the current new media professors teaching within higher education, And in the spirit of full disclosure, it is a topic of great importance to me as an non tenured college professor. I will post the video from the conference when I return. I am taking two of the Kodak Zi8 mini HD cameras to the conference to film the event. This is the little camera that I have fallen in love with recently. But again I digress. The full session description for the presentation
is as follows:
Digital Arts and Technology educators are teaching many of the cutting edge web innovations that are impacting the global economy. The convergence of established time-honored media outlets and new methods of hi-tech communications have made it possible for anyone with the proper training to develop a music demo, shoot a video, market and sell and an original video game or mobile application, or start and promote a business all by utilizing a standard home computer. With software and hardware advances in personal computing, as well as the rise of social networks and ecommerce sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Ebay, our ability to communicate and conduct business has been radically enhanced. If America intends to maintain a technical advantage over our neighbors in the future it will be necessary that our institutions of higher education attract and retain competent faculty to instruct the next generation of digital professionals.
The relative newness of web and multimedia technology has created an unexpected quandary for Digital Arts professionals teaching in academia. In many cases these digital arts instructors are the vanguard for the movement to educate students, and faculty in other disciplines, in how to best utilize new technology in the academic, artistic, and economic sectors of society. However many of the people that have the direct responsibility for setting and enforcing the standards under which tenure track digital educators are judged remain predominantly unaware of the distinctive skills and tasks required to effectively teach in this new field of study. More to the point, how can those tasked with setting these standards create fair and impartial rubrics to assess faculty quality if they do not adequately understand the technology and the industry from which these professionals have originated?
This presentation will make a case for specific strategies and standards which universities could implement to accurately and fairly assess the academic quality of faculty instructing in the areas of multimedia and digital arts.
As I previously stated, the presentation is based on an article that I will be submitting for publication.
- Presentation slides for the event can be found here in pdf format.
- The conference program can be found here in pdf format.