Longsight built the Academic Commons using the Drupal content management system. Longsight added an editorial workflow system, new content types, and a group system that provides ad-hoc, web-backed email lists.
Introducing Academic CommonsAcademic Commons offers a forum for investigating and defining the role that technology can play in liberal arts education. Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College, Academic Commons publishes essays, reviews, interviews, showcases of innovative uses of technology, and vignettes that critically examine technology uses in the classroom. Academic Commons aims to share knowledge, develop collaborations, and evaluate and disseminate digital tools and innovative practices for teaching and learning with technology. We want this site to advance opportunities for collaborative design, open development, and rigorous peer critique of such resources.
Academic Commons also provides a forum for academic technology projects and groups (the Developer's Kit) and a link to a new learning object referatory (LoLa). Our library archives all materials we have published and also provides links to allied organizations, mailing lists, blogs, and journals through a Professional Development Center.
Highlights of the First Edition
The first edition of Academic Commons features essays by Richard Lanham ("Copyright 101"), Michael Joyce ("Interspace: Our Commonly Valued Unknowing"), Patricia O'Neill and Janet Simons ("Using Technology in Learning to Speak the Language of Film"), and Michelle Glaros ("The Dangers of Just-In-Time Education"), and an interview with Gerald Graff. The issue also includes two teaching and learning "vignettes," a good handful of reviews (websites, hardware, and software) and showcases (exemplary academic web projects), and links to a variety of interesting teaching, learning, and technology projects. We've already formed a number of groups onsite and look forward to more participation. The complete Table of Contents is at http://academiccommons.org/august2005/.
