Diving Into Digital on a Small Scale: Digital Curricula and Technology-Based Education at the New College of Florida

John Naisbitt briefly introduced the concept of “high tech/high touch” in his book, Megatrends (1982), but later concretized the terminology in his subsequent work, High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning (Naisbitt, Naisbitt, & Philips, 2001). High tech/high touch refers to the conscious choices we make to employ technology to add value to our lives. It calls for a reflective and careful approach to integrating technology, favoring care over haphazard adoption. Naisbitt’s work surfaced at a time of great positivism with respect to technology, a period that has only intensified as iteration after iteration of technology alter and shape our lives. Indeed, it seems like every day there is an emerging technology that has the potential of revolutionizing the way that we do things. Naisbitt’s work, and the work of others, stress the importance of taking a measured step backwards for a brief moment of reflection.

In this article, we adopt the framework of high tech/high touch in our discussion of digital technology integration in liberal arts colleges (LAC) in the United States, focusing on the New College of Florida (NCF). An important aspect of high tech/ high touch is “recognizing that technology, a creative product of human imagination is an integral part of the evolution of culture,” while at the same time “knowing when to push back technology, in our work and our lives, to affirm our humanity. It is recognizing that at its best, technology supports and improves human life; at its worst, it alienates, isolates, distorts, and destroys” (Naisbitt et al., 2001, p. xvi). While Naisbitt did not touch on higher education in his work, Green (2019) addressed high tech/high touch in higher education. In his keynote speech, “Innovation, Infrastructure, and Digital Learning,” Green described high tech versus high touch as a “false choice,” and paraphrased Naisbitt (1982): “the more high tech, the more high touch.” Green (2019) elaborated on the requirements of a successful campus digital learning plan, including “faculty recognition and reward, training and user support, and sustained support for infrastructure, including information technology” (p. 10). Human interaction (high touch) is critical to high tech.

We believe that high tech/high touch is a useful framework with which to discuss the current changes in the higher education landscape in the United States. In so doing, we consider technological integration not for its own sake, but for the sake of the communities that we integrate them for: students and faculty. Technology is at once an integral part of the evolution of higher education and a potentially isolating force. Technology is affecting not only the way we deliver instruction, but the very medium upon which our inquiry-based curricula is built.

Jack D. Kulchitsky concretized Naisbitt’s theoretical high-tech/high-touch dichotomy in the context of education. Kulchitsky defines “high-touch” delivery as “Constrained to fixed classroom locations, high-touch delivery tends to be professor-centered, utilizing two-way, face-to-face communication” (2008, p. 155). Moreover, “Students interact with peers and faculty in real time and have access to their instructors in the classroom and during scheduled office hours” (p. 155). In contrast, Kulchitsky associated high-tech delivery with distance and online education. “Originally limited to mail correspondence, distance education has evolved to include television, video, teleconferencing,” he writes, “and more recently, the Internet” (p. 155). Ultimately, high-tech education is “enabled by the Internet, is student-oriented, asynchronous communication, with the instructor acting as a guide” (p. 155). These definitions are acceptable if focused solely on educational delivery within the in-class/online paradigm. However, Kulchitsky’s work fails to account for two important aspects of modern ed-tech practices: learning that occurs outside of classrooms but within the walls of the university, and high-touch practices through technological infrastructure. Using initiatives at the NCF as a case study, this chapter argues in favor of using the high-tech/high-touch approach to assessing the use and value of educational technology integration.

NCF was established in the mid-1960s as a private, experimental, LAC. The original educational program emphasized student independence and exploration. The key components of this program included:

• written evaluations rather than letter grades;

• contracts setting learning goals for the semester;

• opportunities to design courses (tutorials);

• areas of study in collaboration with faculty; and

• undergraduate research culminating in a thesis or project.

In mid-1975, NCF became part of the Florida state university system, autonomous with regard to the educational program, yet under the administrative auspices of the University of South Florida (Arthur, 1995). In 2001, NCF became fully independent within the state system, serving as “the residential liberal arts honor college of the State of Florida” (Florida Legislature, Florida Statute 1004.32).

Throughout these administrative shifts, NCF stayed true to its emphasis on student independence and exploration. The current mission statement includes these elements:

• “a liberal arts education of the highest quality”;

• “develops student’s intellectual and personal potential”;

• “encourages discovery of new knowledge and values”; and

• fosters “the individual’s effective relationship with society” (New College of Florida, 2019, Mission Statement, para. 1).

An important part of NCF’s mission from the beginning was the small faculty-student ratio (currently 10:1), and the codifying of high touch as a critical part of educating high ability/high academically achieving students. Whenever any change is considered, the impact on this value is evaluated. An early barrier to incorporating technology at NCF was the fear that high tech would replace high touch.

In addition, the traditional interpretation of LAC can be limiting if the criteria for academic endeavors is narrowly defined. Specifically, faculty may differentiate between academic pursuits and skill acquisition. Some faculty view liberal arts education as “education for its own sake, not for job preparation” (Cresswell, 2018). Implementing digital technology on a small scale means being mindful of this potential tension, while identifying and leveraging opportunities.

The LAC can be a positive climate for interdisciplinary and discovery-based learning. This climate, and the close-knit relationships between faculty and students, create a supportive environment to introduce technology as part of the teaching and learning experience. One of the goals at NCF is to “immerse students in curricula that inspires” (New College of Florida, 2018). To this end, the college is developing new academic programs, establishing an organizational structure that formalizes interdisciplinary relationships, encouraging innovative pedagogy, and engaging students in high impact practices (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2019), such as collaborative projects and student research. All of these aspects of our current education landscape lay the groundwork for successfully pairing high tech and high touch.

Over the past decade, NCF has continued to build digital infrastructure, including:

• implementing a learning management system (LMS);

• renovating the library to include a media lab with powerful computers and software to develop creative projects;

• establishing a digital repository for student theses, archival materials, and campus scholarship; and

• piloting student-initiated virtual reality study space and 3D printing.

As we move forward, there are three main avenues by which we are successfully integrating high tech into our high touch environment. For faculty, one avenue is to teach how to leverage technology for assessment and feedback, while focusing on outcomes rather than grades. For students, we are teaching ways to embed digital tools into the curriculum and creating new virtual and physical spaces for exploration and experiential learning, incorporating technology in our high-impact practices.

Lee and Steer (2019) modified Johnson’s graphic to better illustrate which categories of Bloom’s taxonomy shared an affinity with high-touch or high-tech principles (Figure 1). In this view, high-tech practices are more applicable with preliminary learning processes, such as understanding and remembering. Advances in adaptive learning technologies, for example, are particularly useful in helping students proceed through “tracks,” slowing or speeding up the content, or increasing or decreasing difficulty according to the student’s abilities and time. The remaining processes (application, analysis, evaluation, and creation) are best supported through high-touch environments. While we generally agree with Lee and Steer, and Johnson’s premise, we would like to offer an alternative model that attempts to illustrate the potential of high-tech and high-touch practices at every level of Bloom’s taxonomy (Figure 2). By emphasizing that high tech and high touch can exist at every level of the Taxonomy, we try to bring some parity to the two principles and make the explicit case that both are complementary.

The model we offer overlays high-tech/ high-touch practices in a slightly different way than Johnson’s model. Figure 2 tries to represent the blending of these supposed disparate processes throughout Bloom’s taxonomy. High-tech practices radiate throughout the illustration of learning objectives in iterative circles, in the process blending colors to suggest a meshing of practices. Whereas Johnson’s model subscribes high-tech practices only to the preliminary learning outcomes (remembering and understanding), our model suggests that high-tech practices can exist and complement high-touch practices at each level of educational attainment.

The remainder of this chapter discusses three New College initiatives that attempt to blur the boundaries between high-touch and high-tech practices. We show how high-tech practices can work in concert with the principle of high touch at several levels of Bloom’s hierarchy. Section I points to strategies to leverage the LMS in each of Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive complexity levels to support the adoption of high touch/high tech. Section II focuses on examples of high-tech/high-touch campus-based initiatives that elevate the LAC curriculum. These initiatives, including a digital humanities program and a makerspace, equip students with in-demand information and communication technology skills through experiential learning and experimentation.

Concerns about the dehumanization of education by technology are beginning to shift as faculty integrate practices to leverage the high-touch educational experience with technology. In 2016, the Canvas LMS was adopted by NCF, replacing the earlier Moodle LMS. Faculty intentionally integrate digital technologies with the goals of increasing higher-learning classroom time, creating more time to spend with students, and individualizing instruction. Learning activities are designed in alignment with the flipped classroom model, described by Katz, and Council of Independent Colleges (2016) as the expectation for students to “acquire subject content outside of class meetings while in-class time is spent on deepening understanding through discussions, problem-solving, and interactive engagement with the subject content” (p. 2). By extending the learning outside of the face-to-face time, learners are not bound to accomplish the majority of their learning during the class meeting time. Instead, students have more time necessary to construct knowledge. Meyer (2003) notes increased time has “several known advantages, including improved retention of learned material and better learning capability on the part of the student” (p. 57).

Currently, the largest use of the LMS targets the lower Bloom’s cognitive complexity levels of remembering and understanding. In his book, A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview, Krathwohl (2002) defined the cognitive-complexity level “remember” as retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory and “understanding” as constructing meaning through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.

The quiz tool is the primary LMS feature used by faculty to create learning activities for Remembering and Understanding. The quiz tool offers a variety of question types (multiple choice, true–false, cloze, matching) that can be configured to provide automatic feedback. Faculty design assessments using the quiz tool with feedback for both correct and incorrect answers. Students complete the quizzes and receive feedback on their content mastery. The quiz tool provides functionality for students to practice their learning and receive timely feedback. The quiz learning activities serve as a cognitive entry level increment in the instructional sequence of concept mastery.

Adaptive learning is another technology used at NCF generally targeting the “remembering” and “understanding” cognitive complexity levels. According to Katz & Council of Independent Colleges (2016), adaptive learning is described as the ability for systems to “modify the level and sequencing of instructional objects in response to student performance on tasks and quizzes, providing a more personalized learning experience” (p. 2). The Canvas LMS can be configured to create an adaptive learning experience through several methods. At NCF, select LMS courses are configured with deep integration to publisher adaptive learning resources. The deep integration allows students to seam-lessly access the adaptive learning activities through the LMS. The deep integration syncs the analytics to the Canvas LMS to allow instructors to view their students’ progress from the LMS grade-book. A second adaptive learning method used by faculty in the Canvas LMS is to configure modules with prerequisites, requirements, and a locked sequence. Students who meet the requirements, such as a score on an assessment, can access the next module, while students who have not earned a particular score will need to continue through a series of learning activities to complete the requirements.

While the discussion tool in the Canvas LMS can be designed to assess all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, at NCF the LMS discussion tool is predominantly used for preparation for face-to-face discussions or other face-to-face learning activities. The LMS discussions are structured to allow initial engagement of concept exploration and provide several benefits for learners. Students have more processing time and an asynchronous platform to exchange ideas, articulate and analyze points of view, and share resources to build the conversation. All students are accountable for the quality of their participation. The preliminary online discussion creates a framework for the subsequent face-to-face discussion to reach higher levels of complexity and achieve a greater percentage of student participation. Therefore, by using high tech at lower levels of cognitive complexity, faculty are able to increase high touch at higher levels of cognitive complexity. Students are able to benefit from the extended time necessary to construct meaning in the LMS discussion, the energy and immediacy of the face-to-face discussion, and the faculty’s expertise as the discussion designer and facilitator in both modalities.

Currently, the LMS tools have much less application at NCF in learning activities at higher cognitive complexity levels of Bloom’s (application, analysis, evaluation, and creation). However, many faculty use the Canvas rubric tool to communicate expectations and feedback for the higher level learning activities. “Writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum” are identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as high-impact practices. The use of holistic and analytical rubrics for writing assignments help support the development of the students’ writing skills. By using the interactive rubric tool with tabular functionality, faculty have noted they are able to spend less time on grading while increasing their individualized, criteria-based feedback. Faculty have found the rubric tool in Canvas to increase the high touch of their courses and help achieve transparency in their teaching.

One of the challenges of assessment at NCF is providing students with formative assessment data without the use of grades. While grades are not essential to learning, feedback is essential. The Canvas rubric tool has the option to remove points yet record the mastery ratings for each criterion as well as additional comments. The use of rubrics allows faculty to efficiently communicate the individualized mastery level of outcomes to students without the use of grades. The mastery data can then be used as a tool to inform instruction at the course and student level. Faculty using the rubric tool have expressed they are assessing more consistently by evaluating using evidence for each criterion. At the end of the term, the rubric data can be used to write individual student narrative evaluations.

Rubrics are often associated only with assessment and grading. However, rubrics provided in the instructions of a learning activity communicate the criteria of quality and provide guidance on the learning task. In the 2013 article, “Transparency in teaching: faculty share data and improve students’ learning,” Winkhelmes states, “students’ learning outcomes improved when they understood how and why instructors had structured their learning experiences in particular ways” (p. 48). In their book, Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes, Bowen and Watson (2016) describe using rubrics as a strategy to create a transparent course. In the student view, the Canvas LMS displays an assignment rubric on the same page as the directions to the assignment. Faculty use the rubric tool to communicate the alignment of the rubric criteria to the course learning objectives and the expectations of high quality. Students have a clear understanding of the criteria for success. Bowen and Watson (2016) describe how an effective rubric will transition grading from an “unstated personal analysis” to “explicit criteria” a student and teacher can articulate together (p. 4). As a result, faculty using rubrics often find they spend less time clarifying instructions and answering questions on assignment expectations. Students can use the rubric to self-assess and increase learner independence and self-efficacy. Through the process of students self-assessing and revising before submission, faculty report higher levels of quality of students’ work.

The LAC has anchored itself in the principle of high-touch education. Low faculty-to-student ratios, undergraduate seminar classes, and flexible curricula that encourage intellectual exploration are the hallmarks of LACs. From this perspective, the LAC curriculum overlays nicely with Kulchitsky’s notion of a high-touch delivery. In many ways, the principle behind high-tech education, mainly using emerging technology to deliver education to more students, is anathematic to the goals and objectives of LAC curricula. The challenge is finding sustainable ways of integrating high tech into an environment that embraces and celebrates the high touch. However, as LAC enrollment numbers decline, identifying strategies of integrating high tech into a traditionally high-touch environment should no longer be seen as a fantasy but rather as a strategic priority. As the president of the University of Maine at Farmington, Kathryn Foster, rightly states, public liberal arts colleges offer “better learning environments with better student outcomes at a lower price. The challenge to us now is to prove it” (Marcus, 2018, para. 9). Establishing ways for students to gain functional literacies in information and communication technologies is, we think, a step in the right direction (Irvin, 2007; Katz, 2005; Tadesse, Gillies, & Campbell, 2018; Wilson, Scalise, & Gochyyev, 2015).

Here we focus on two ways that the NCF, in concert with other LACs across the United States, is integrating high tech with high touch: (a) embedding digital tools into curricula while keeping the appealing high-touch aspects of LAC education; (b) creating new virtual and physical spaces for exploration and experiential learning with technology based on student-driven demand. Ultimately, this section suggests that high-tech practices can bolster more than the lower categories of Bloom’s taxonomy. In particular, high-tech practices can have a tremendous impact on how students analyze, evaluate, and create new forms of knowledge, especially when paired with high-touch approaches.

Emerging open and accessible tools for digital scholarship are being developed at an incessant pace. Digital scholarship is a process that attempts to leverage these digital tools to create works of born-digital scholarship. This process can manifest itself in different forms. For example, digital scholarship includes digitization projects, whereby analog resources are scanned and made available in digital formats. Digital scholarship also includes completely born-digital projects, such as web applications, or the use of open source or proprietary tools to analyze large corpora using computational techniques (cf. Gardiner & Musto, 2015, pp. 183–217). As a result of continued development, a high level of expertise is no longer required to begin experimenting with this type of research or pedagogy (Gibbs & Owens, 2012).

The advantages of digital scholarship for students and faculty are clear. While we are critical of those who use the term “digital native” without ascribing levels of nuance to students technological abilities, we acknowledge the utility of the term when discussing the overall context in which students are growing and learning (Alvi, 2011). As studies have shown, “Students’ academic use of technology is widespread but not deep. They are particularly interested in expanding the use of a few specific technologies” (Dahlstrom & Bichsel, 2014, p. 10). Whether students have a deep understanding of the technological systems driving their mobile phones and laptop computers is insignificant; students enter higher education with experience in using digital technologies in almost every aspect of their lives, and students expect school campus to have networking infrastructures, computer resources, and other digital technologies (Galanek, Gierdowski, & Brooks, 2018). Digital scholarship is more than simply enabling greater use of technological tools, however. The purpose of digital scholarship is to introduce students to the high tech while encouraging them to develop technological literacies that enable them to operate in a highly technical world.

Despite the clear educational and research benefits of digital scholarship, there is significant tension and apprehension in adopting the digital at LACs. A contributing factor to this tension is the perceived incompatibility of the LAC with digital scholarship methods (Alexander & Davis, 2012). Nevertheless, full-sized universities and LACs across the United States have started to bolster their digital scholarship programs in an effort to integrate these new approaches into curricular offerings under the banner of the “digital liberal arts” (Alvaro, 2013). The hope is that as digital methodologies become more commonplace the “digital” qualifier will be dropped, signaling a shift in the way the liberal arts curriculum is created and presented.

As is the case at institutions such as Grinnell, Macalester, Whittier, Carleton, Middlebury, Ursinus, Albion, among others, New College is integrating the digital liberal arts in iterative steps beginning with small pedagogical changes leading to larger curricular and research shifts. Over the past 5 years, there has been growing faculty interest in incorporating digital technology into the liberal arts curricula at NCF. This interest has focused on using specific tools and platforms (GIS Story Maps, Omeka, wikis) in teaching, and more broadly on digital humanities as a field of study. Within the past year, NCF has a hired a faculty librarian focusing on leading these initiatives and supporting these interests.

The integration of digital scholarship tools and methods at New College revolve around three main areas: critical technological and data literacy, skill acquisition, and broader public communication and engagement. A cornerstone of a liberal arts education is the ability to engage critically with information in a variety of media to develop a nuanced opinion on a problem. The Digital Liberal Arts curriculum adopts that philosophy while directing attention to the technological and data infrastructures at play in our world. As a result, students learn not only how to find information using online systems, but how those systems are built, including the innate biases embedded within them.

Currently, at New College digital scholarship is being integrated in several steps, all of which are spearheaded by the Jane Bancroft Cook Library. With its close relationship with faculty, the educational technology services, and the information technology unit, as well as its more nimble position within the campus, the library is perfectly positioned to offer support for this type of curricular change. Unique workshops featuring new and emerging digital scholarship tools, many of which are chosen from TAPoR3 (http://tapor.ca/) list of research tools, in addition to in-class sessions and a new full-credit tutorial in digital humanities, all work to amplify the importance and visibility of digital scholarship on campus. All of these efforts introduce technological subjects with an emphasis on analysis and digital creation. However, the success of these programs is predicated on a high-touch approach to high-tech resources. Library faculty at New College work closely with teaching faculty to scaffold digital scholarship projects in a way that is accessible and applicable for students with little in the way of experience with technology (Showers, 2012). Moreover, librarians are available for one-on-one consultations that allow for a particularly focused exchange of skills and information.

At NCF, we value high-impact practices such as collaborative learning and student research. We also value creativity and innovation. In a study of academic spaces, Bieraugel and Neill (2017) describe most current spaces as supporting the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy: remembering information, gaining understanding, analyzing information, and evaluating information, rather than creating new knowledge. “Most library spaces rated higher in the exploiting existing ideas over exploring new ideas, so learning adheres to existing paths rather than moving in entirely new directions” (p. 45). Creating new knowledge, the pinnacle of Bloom’s taxonomy, requires creating new kinds of spaces, especially spaces that can support both “exploitation” and “exploration.” Makerspaces support both kinds of activities.

“A makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build” (Educause Learning Initiative, 2013, p. 1). Makerspace at NCF is an evolving concept where digital technology and digital literacy intersect, encompassed by digital scholarship services. The Jane Bancroft Cook Library currently provides desktop computers with Microsoft Office and campus software, and houses an academic resources center (writing resource center, quantitative resource center, educational technology services, and a creative software-rich media lab). These areas were created in recognition that students will be learning and creating content in many different ways, and will need human and technological resources to do so.

Introducing makerspace technology and learning how to use those tools to create new knowledge establishes a contemporary means for implementing liberal arts curricula. Cresswell (2018) writes that linking the LAC to life through experiential learning paves the way for high impact practices. Doing is in fact a “pathway to learning.” Traditional liberal arts curricula already recognize such pathways—via labs in the sciences, fieldwork, performance, and created projects in the arts (Cresswell, 2018). Technologies such as those learned in makerspaces and digital scholarship are current examples of experiential learning in the liberal arts.

Other LACs have implemented maker-spaces, with varied goals including creating and enhancing interdisciplinary opportunities, building student expertise with new technology, extending community relationships, and exploring what knowledge creation can be in the 21st century. Examples include the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, our sister institutions, such as:

• University of Mary Washington (http://umwthinklab.com/);

• University of Maine at Farmington (http://umf.maine.libguides.com/maker-space);

• University of North Carolina Asheville (http://library.unca.edu/craftstudio); and

• Sonoma State University (https://library.sonoma.edu/makerspace).

These colleges recognize that makerspaces demonstrate the possibilities for incorporating technology into the liberal arts curriculum, and are doing so in ways that amplify high-touch learning experiences. Makerspaces, as spaces that are open to all members of a campus community, encourage cross-disciplinary problem-solving, support “informal project-driven learning” (Educause Learning Initiative, 2013, p. 1), are “highly collaborative” (Educause Learning Initiative, 2013, p. 2) and “allow students to take control of their own learning” (Educause Learning Initiative, 2013, p. 2). This last statement resonates at NCF, where a foundational piece of our original mission is to acknowledge and support students’ responsibility for their own education.

NCF students are self-directed, creative, independent learners. In addition, students and faculty have interests in sustainability and entrepreneurship, values that are part of makerspace culture. The Jane Bancroft Cook Library is in the process of revisiting its mission, and our emphasis is on values that are embodied in maker-spaces—inclusion, creation, exploration, collaboration, and contributions to new knowledge (Jane Bancroft Library Strategic Planning Committee, 2019). To date, the library has laid the groundwork for a maker culture in different ways. Legos and origami supplies are available for use in the library, and students can borrow table-top games. The library hosts events such as games night, origami club, computer games meet ups, and crafting activities during orientation, finals week, and other special events. In addition, existing spaces and services such as the collaborative study space, writing resource center, and quantitative resource center, emphasize information and skill sharing and collaborative creation.

Increasingly, students at NCF are expressing interests in new technology and maker culture and opportunities. These interests have resulted in two specific partnerships between the library, students, and faculty: the creation of a virtual reality study room and a student-initiated tutorial focused on makerspaces. Both of these projects created opportunities for the library to explore how we can best develop, support, and extend students’ interest in new technologies, especially in the context of liberal arts curricula and high impact practices.

In 2016, New College hosted a student-led TEDx, “The Art of Technology” (https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/17142). One of the outcomes of the event was that our student government purchased an HTC VIVE virtual reality system and computer for student use, and donated that equipment to the library. To date, students have used the VR study room as a small laboratory for student research and development, for interdisciplinary and collaborative assignments and senior theses. Going forward, in response to student need and faculty requests, the library will be expanding the lab space and equipment so that more students can participate. Another goal, shared with faculty, is to encourage students from all disciplines to engage in exploration and project-based learning by making the lab more visible.

In 2019, students worked with a librarian to develop a tutorial focused on maker-spaces. This class, taught in cooperation with a makerspace librarian at the public library, included directed readings, visits to the public library makerspace, inventories of “makerspace elements” within the library and an other parts of campus, and teaching a how-to class to peers. This tutorial is an example of how a high-touch environment can be leveraged to help students connect with technology. Students engaged in small-group discussion, were more involved in the community, explored, and created new knowledge in order to teach others. The class discussions, including the inventories, envisioning components for the ideal makerspace, and each student’s maker manifesto will be included in a planning document for the library—a student contribution to future community.

Ultimately, despite concerns of the incompatibility between digital scholarship and the traditional liberal arts curriculum, digital scholarship at NCF maintains the tradition of deeply rigorous intellectual engagement and complements that tradition with powerful new forms of digital, cross-disciplinary collaborations that prepare students for professional life beyond college. The fundamental philosophy driving this initiative is recognizing that for high-tech to succeed it must be bolstered by high-touch delivery and support.

A high-tech/high-touch approach to digital technology integration at LACs reveals that the liberal arts curriculum offers opportunities for profound experiential digital learning. While the New College curriculum in particular lends itself perfectly for experimental pedagogy, we argue here that LAC “educational breadth” must expand to account for digital literacies. Indeed, this includes literacies for faculty working with LMS as well as students being introduced to digital scholarship. This approach is important not simply because LAC enrollments are declining; we must be conscious of our students’ expectations with regard to high-touch educational delivery whilst encouraging high-tech literacy attainment.