The paper suggests that a pedagogical advance in universities could be to set up university courses where the digital is integrated more organically into courses and not seen as a separate thing. Drawing on work in postdigital education we suggest that higher education is still trapped in a binary where online courses are seen as analogues, and copies of an original face-to-face course. This vision is historically connected to the early days of the internet where online communities were seen as separate from face-to-face communities in the literature on the internet. The world has moved on, as technology has advanced, to see that every aspect of our lives involves a digital component and the simple separation of online and offline no longer fits with the entangled reality that people live. Many scholars refer to this moment as postdigital. And they are careful to say that postdigital does not mean that we are past the digital, but rather that the digital is part of all life. It is somewhat ironic that universities, in their practice, have not kept up with these changes though the scholars have. This means moving beyond learning management systems (LMS) and integrating numerous forms of digital technology. The LMS can still be part of a university course, but it is one digital tool among many. And the binary between online and offline would be challenged and the hybrid might be a more useful term than online. This could lead to an entangled education where space and time are transformed, as well as creating new forms of interaction and new avenues for communication in the learning process. In such a context, university students could engage actively in their own learning and be provided with spaces to integrate their ideas into the process. The paper shares some examples of these courses referring to them as experimenting communities. In these examples we show how the new forms of interaction and the transformed spaces in which these interactions occur increase opportunities for students to make sense out of the material they are learning and to see learning connected to real world problems and solutions.

This work in progress research paper describes preliminary results of a survey-based study with the goal of answering the research question: Are students in underrepresented race/ethnic groups more interested in and motivated by humanitarian applications of computing rather than non-humanitarian applications? The survey explores student interest and motivation by asking them to choose between humanitarian and non-humanitarian computing applications. The study builds on theories and prior studies that indicate that student learning is improved by providing context to learning in the form of authentic, collaborative engagement with the subject matter. The study also builds on prior research that indicates humanitarian applications may have special appeal to some student groups that are underrepresented in computing education. This prior work includes ad hoc observation by the authors and several small scale surveys that were administered to upper level computing students. Part of the motivation for this study was to see if the same preference for humanitarian applications was apparent with students taking introductory computing courses. Introductory computing students at four institutions completed the survey and the responses of 340 students were analyzed based upon their self-reported races/ethnicities. Students in all race/ethnic groups indicated a higher interest in and motivation by humanitarian applications over non-humanitarian options. In fact, all race/ethnic groups preferred humanitarian over non-humanitarian computing applications at the p<.001 level. In considering differences across race/ethnicities, results indicate that humanitarian applications of computing are particularly appealing to Black and Latinx students. In combination these results indicate that all student groups might be better engaged by course materials that provide a humanitarian context, and underrepresented Black and Latinx students might find the humanitarian connection particularly compelling. Based on these findings, instructors might consider framing programming examples and assignments with a humanitarian focus in order to engage students and potentially increase the number of underrepresented students studying computing.

Modern version control tools and workflow practices are required skills for nearly all production software development, making them essential for students and in high demand among employers. Since these tools and processes were created for distributed, asynchronous collaboration on large scale projects, teaching them in an authentic context that makes clear their utility and design presents myriad challenges for both faculty and students. The GitKit is a snapshot of the FarmData2 Humanitarian Free and Open Source (HFOSS) project's artifacts (code, issues, documentation, etc.) frozen at a particular point in time and packaged with learning activities, an instructor guide, and a choice of containerized development environments. The GitKit thus provides students with the authentic context of a real-world project in which to learn and practice key Git and GitHub skills and workflows, while mitigating many of the challenges of doing so in an educational setting. The GitKit, including its learning activities and development environments are described in sufficient detail to encourage instructor adoption and feedback. A pilot study of student experiences with the GitKit is promising, suggesting that students gained an understanding of FOSS concepts and key skills, noticed automated guidance and feedback built into the development environment, and found it helpful in their learning. Future plans for the GitKit based on these surveys and instructor experiences with pilot uses are described along with plans for the development of HFOSS Kits for teaching and learning of other software development and aligned skills in authentic contexts.

Abstract In this paper, we ask what is the university for? Currently, universities worldwide are facing a legitimacy crisis, contesting and threatening what the purpose of the university is. Higher education institutions are under pressure to serve economical goals both nationally and globally, hindering a more robust sense of purpose. We explore how a focus on ‘value’ could help to re-establish a vision of a university with purpose by looking at what has influenced our thinking on value, what it is, whose values are valued and what values are ignored. Furthermore, we suggest that a shared public interest in what the university is for has been lost to the agendas (and values) of instrumentalism and neoliberalism. We argue for a need to balance the instrumental with other forms of reason to support what we call, a pluralistic public, that allows for diversity and heterogeneity. This means embracing other-centered publics within the university that are ethically grounded in equity and equality, both in the world and within our own communities. While this dual focus may be difficult at times to maintain, it is a dual focus that, as members of university community and communities, we must strive for.

This study investigated whether humanitarian applications of computing are more interesting and motivating to students than non-humanitarian options and whether there are differences across race/ethnic groups. A survey was developed to measure students' interest by asking them to choose between two applications, one humanitarian and one non-humanitarian. Students were also asked to rate how motivating they would find working on a collection of humanitarian and non-humanitarian applications. 376 introductory computing students at four institutions completed the survey and 340 student responses were analyzed based upon their self-reported races/ethnicities. Students in all race/ethnic groups were more interested in and motivated by humanitarian applications over non-humanitarian options. Black, Latinx and White students chose humanitarian applications more often than Asian students, indicating a higher level of interest in computing for social good. All four groups rated humanitarian applications statistically higher than non-humanitarian at the p<.001 level.

Producing and Consuming the Craft Beer Movement is an ethnographic analysis of the craft beer movement and its rapid development as an industry that articulated a different set of values: celebrating, quality, community, and good taste. This book will provide an excellent foundation for considering craft beer and an entrepreneurial practice that produces other forms of value beyond monetary value. The craft beer movement has been an important movement for thinking about contemporary consumer culture, and how that consumer culture might develop a very different set of values and priorities from those of the dominant consumer culture that is created by large-scale industries focused on the instrumental values of profit and efficiency. Located in one site, the ethnography is situated within the larger context of the rise of digital media, the evolution of cities, and the latest stage of the capitalist marketplace. The book is distinctive as it is ethnographic in its methodology. It is focused on one locale, the metropolitan area around Philadelphia. Philadelphia, along with Boston, Denver, San Diego, and a few other cities, was a central location for the early development of the craft beer industry. With its interdisciplinary approach, individuals with interests in digital and social media, consumer culture, political economy, ethnography, and contemporary cultural theory will find this an interesting case study of an important industry that developed from the homebrewing movement to become an important craft industry that is now a global phenomenon. This book is directed to a broad range of readers interested in new media, consumer culture, craft, and contemporary capitalist culture. The book embeds the local in the larger historical and political economic context. Readers would include faculty members in communication, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology. Students at a graduate and upper level undergraduate level would be interested as well.

Undergraduate courses in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are predominantly taught via traditional lecture, despite evidence that student-centered instruction is more effective at supporting student learning. To improve STEM instruction, we developed a professional development course promoting use of student-centered pedagogies in large STEM classes. Through semi-structured interviews analyzed by modified grounded theory approach, we found that all participants communicated changes in their thinking and practice post-course. A majority were focused on student-centered pedagogies, while a few remained focused on traditional lecture-based teaching. Observed differences may be due to varied understanding about how people learn or receptivity to effective pedagogies. Outcomes suggest important considerations in STEM professional development.Keywords: Faculty professional developmentlarge classroomSTEMstudent-centered learningundergraduate AcknowledgementsThe authors thank Alisa Morss Clyne and Mary Jo Grdina for initial ideas in creating the course; the course participants; Alistar Erikson-Ludwig for supporting the initial course offering; the CASTLE community for providing support for participants; and the Drexel administration for their support allowing this course to be offered.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported in part by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute under HHMI Grant #52008094, and start-up funds from Drexel University to JSS. The research described here was reviewed and approved by the Drexel University Institutional Review Board (IRB).

The university is moving on uncertain terrain. As we are writing this introduction, we are coming close to completing the first year of the pandemic (but possibly not the last). As a consequence, and due to the massive changes and restrictions, the last year has seen a disruption of some of the recent global drivers within higher education, such as student (and staff) mobility, internationalization, and professionalization of higher education. On the other hand, we have seen a major increase in, and push for, the digitalization of the university as many courses, conferences, and projects have had to move either partly or entirely online. Further, habitual research practices have been influenced as well. Collecting empirical data, field work, and the use of university facilities such as laboratories, media labs, office facilities, and libraries have, for periods of time, been either closed off altogether or have been open with restrictions to physical access and on numbers of people allowed.