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Who We Are

Indiana University is a public, research intensive institution in the midwest rooted in liberal arts and sciences. A multicampus institution with a renowned business school (Kelley), Law School (Mauer at IUB; McKinney at IUPUI), School of Medicine (IUPUI and IUB), Dental and Optometry schools, IU draws students from all over the United States and has a sizable international student population. In 2021, Dr. Pamela Whitten became the 19th President of Indiana University, IU's first female President.

  • Multiicampus Institute: Seven Campuses and 2 Regional Centers
  • Student body: 110,000 Students University-Wide
  • Academic Staff: nearly 9,000 Academic Staff University-Wide

The IU/Adobe Journey

The Problem(s)

  • ROI issue: no unified plan for integrating digital literacy/digital creativity into the IU culture.
  • Digital skills: Indiana (K-20 and adult labor force) are behind neighboring states in digital literacy (Brookings).
  • Institutional Silos: pockets of digital literacy, but limited cross campus / cross institution collaboration
The development of digital skills, with equal investments in digital literacy and employee upskilling, were key to jump-starting Indiana state’s economic recovery (Brookings 76).

Digital Transformation is Cultural Transformation

Our Transformation Approach: DGI@IU

The Digital Gardener Initiative is a faculty-driven, university-wide digital literacy, digital creativity, and digital learning initiative launched with support from the University Information Technology Services, Division of Learning Technologies. The initiative is designed to cultivate digital ways of knowing, doing, and making across the curriculum.

People

Who are your champions? How will they be supported? Existing structures? New funding lines/grants? Reallocation of funds?

Julie Johnston was Director of LS & Interim AVP when our initiative began. She has since taken a position with Avaya.

Places

Where are your grounding points? What locations, physical or digital, enable the work? What infrastructure is in place and how it enable access (for faculty and students alike)?

Programs

What are programs exist to serve as a pathway into transforming campus culture? What avenues need to exist? Where are high traffic or high touch opportunities?

DIGITAL GARDENER INTIATIVE

DGI includes three orientations designed to foster programs committed to improving digital competencies and technological fluencies across IU as well as making an impact state-wide:

  • Phase 1: Faculty Development Program (DGFF launched in 2022)
  • Phase 2: Student Success Initiatives (DG Signature Series - slated to pilot fall 2023)
  • Phase 3: K-12 Outreach (DG Lite Summer Program - slated to pilot summer 2024)

Promotions

Our promotion strategy leverages several of the IT Communications outputs (IT Monitor, Connected Professor, etc.) and our internal communications with Faculty Fellows utilizes Microsoft Teams. As we are also faculty-led and feature a faculty created program, we rely heavily on peer-to-peer communication: faculty sharing success in the program with their colleagues. For storytelling and more frequent types of exposure, we craft messages, posts, snippets, etc. for our social media stream, primarily LinkedIn, and are in progress of making videos for internal promotions.

DG Faculty Fellows Program

Starting Spring 2022, we launched the Digital Gardener Faculty Fellows program. This professional development engagement features 35 faculty representing all ranks, all IU's campuses, and a wide-range of disciplines (from Dentistry to English, Art Curation to Education Leadership). The program operates around three core commitments: skill development, curriculum integration, and cultivation of community.

Faculty Fellows

  • 6 required virtual events (attend at least 5),
  • 10-15 optional virtual events (attend as desired),
  • 1 in-person optional event each semester (attend as desired),
  • produce at least one curriculum asset,
  • participate in at least one cultivator group: i.e., collaborations to integrate digital literacy more broadly
  • complete a professional development reflection.
  • receive a small stipend for completing requirements
  • have an opportunity to apply for seed/support funding for Cultivator Group Projects.

Programming

Impact

Success Stories

For our success stories today we wanted to take a kind of Adobe-adjacent approach. That is, DGI has lots of great examples of activities, assets, and assignments that feature Adobe CC as the primary output or end goal, but we want to feature stories that situate Adobe as supportive or complimentary to wider range of digital literacy practices, in both public and professional frames.

Faculty Story | Collaboration & Afrofuturism Wikipedia Editathon

Student Story | Immersive Storytelling (Minecraft EDU + Adobe)

Faculty Story | Promotion & Review

Miranda Rodak used several Adobe tools to prepare her promotion materials for Clinical Associate Professor. Below are three examples from the fuller range of materials submitted in her promotion dossier.

Projects in Digital Literacy & Composition (ENG-W171)

This new course in the IU curriculum was co-created by Justin Hodgson and DGFF Miranda Rodak (IU Bloomington) -- a course design inspired by Mia Freeman's success in ENG-R209. This new course at IU fulfills the First Year Writing Gen Ed requirement, brings together active learning and digital literacy, and features a mentor / apprentice co-instructional model. For more information, click the button below.

Created By
Justin Hodgson
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