SUPREME HEADQUARTERS LDSC PLANNING COMMITTEE
Educators, Designers, Developers, Technology Specialists, and Instructional Production Specialists of the Pennsylvania State University!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of lifelong learners everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-education on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of ignorance, the elimination of slovenly research over the oppressed peoples of academia, and security for ourselves in a learned world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is the poorly trained, the poorly equipped and the mentally hardened, they will fight stubbornly.
But this is the year 2024! Much has happened since the start of budget recisions in 2021-22. The Learning Design Teams have inflicted upon the doubters of digital learning great defeats, on campus, man-to-man. Our ADDIE offensive has seriously assisted the strength of residential instruction and their capacity to offer hybrid classes. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in application and course design, and placed at our disposal a great catalog of trainings and related services. The tide has turned! The design teams are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in educating. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Robert Gagné upon this great and noble undertaking.
Dictated, but not read. -- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
In a change of pace from previous years, the Learning Design Summer Camp for 2024 and including the foreseeable future, will opt to focus on the lens and aptitudes of the hosting chairs unit. For 2024 we'll be conceptualizing the College of Arts & Architecture.
This does not mean that each of the topics, conversations, and submissions must focus on some element of the Arts. This year will feature elements that are intended to open up creative opportunities and engagements as well as provide some history of the College of Arts & Architecture which is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
The College of Arts and Architecture is composed of a number of schools and academic departments including :
In keeping with some of the core questions that establish those fields of study, as attendees participate through the online and in-person conferences they will be asked to reflect through their questions and presentations the following :
This year is also a partial reflection of a question posed at LDSC23.
The second part of determining how the event would function this year was founded on accepting the limitations of a shared, hybrid event in favor of maximizing the return on investment for both as individual events. This allows us to host an in-person event for our community where we value presence and time for both our participants and our coordinating team.
This also opened up the possibilities of re-imagining what an online conference could and maybe should strive to be. We took to heart some specific truths :
In resolving to have an online conference, separate from the single-day event on campus, we could be inclusive of not only a variety of schedules but also invite a much larger community to participate, both from the University and across higher education in Pennsylvania.
The online conference will span the course of 3 days - mostly asynchronously. We'll host video content via a website with Discord channels embedded on each of the pages to be friendly to screen management. Participants will be able to watch as many submissions as they want and engage with other users on Discord. For a handful of live conversations and presentations, we'll have them scheduled within the Discord app as well to notify interested participants. This allows participants to better handle their own time in relation to the conference and professional responsibilities without having to block hours without reprieve.
Ultimately, what we have striven for through these pursuits is to provide an opportunity to explore and engage democratically and self-interest in an active learning laboratory. We have re-imagined ritual, absurdity, and intention to this long vaunted event and hope the seeds bear fruit.