The Occidental Scholarship Technology group provides instruction, information resources, digital technologies and consultative services to support faculty and students working in a 21st century teaching, learning, and research environment. Scholarship Technology is responsible for OxyScholar, the College's scholarly publishing platform, Moodle, Oxy's online course management system, and a wide range of classroom technologies and learning spaces. Based in the Academic Commons, Scholarship Technology features both the core Instruction + Research Support (I+R) team as well as the Center for Digital Learning + Research (CDLR).
Our Instruction + Research professional staff, with broad disciplinary expertise in the Arts and Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences, work with faculty and students on the scholarly application of academic technologies and developing research skills. Our I&RS consultants assist faculty with course and research design as well as the use of various classroom instructional technologies. In addition, they conduct one-on-one research consultations to help students make the transition from recreational to academic and critical uses of technology, as well as improve knowledge of scholarly resources and research strategies necessary for their academic work. Our instructional technologist supports faculty teaching with stable academic systems (like Moodle and OxyConnect), using audio-visual tools, and experimenting with the Brown LearnLab.
Operating as a research and design team within the Scholarship Technology group, the Center for Digital Learning + Research enhances teaching, learning, research, and scholarly work at Occidental by helping faculty and students integrate these activities with emergent technologies and services. As an R&D team, the CDLR is committed to staying abreast of emergent developments in digital scholarship and scholarly communication, and sharing this information with the Occidental community. This sharing takes place in the context of a formal speaker series, casual High-Tech Happy Hours, Faculty Learning Communities (co-sponsored with the Center for Teaching Excellence), annual Mellon Digital Scholarship Institutes, and everyday collegial conversation. The CDLR's Mellon Postdoctoral fellows lead and partner with faculty on research projects that incorporate advanced technologies, especially on projects that require technological engagements beyond those services regularly supported by Occidental's ITS or I+R groups. The CDLR currently focuses on projects and practices that experiment with forms of public scholarship, model more open forms of scholarly communication, or take advantage of new learning spaces.
