The Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ) explores and creates digital practices and spaces that advance the transformative potential of education in students’ lives, and advances digital fluency and critical engagement with the digital at Middlebury. We are a cross-institutional group of instructional designers, digital scholars, and teaching and learning professionals who offer consultations and workshops to faculty, staff, and students at Middlebury.

Remote Teaching & Course Continuity

Our “Teach Remotely” hub is a rich resource for evidenced based teaching practices and curricular tech guidance. Scroll down to the bottom to find links to a variety of articles on topics related education continuity:

  • Getting started with remote or online teaching
  • Strategies for building community, engaging students, and designing meaningful interactions and assessments with digital tools and spaces
  • Recommendations for digital tools, practices, and assignments
  • Security and Privacy
  • Discipline specific recommendations

Flexible Course Design

This summer DLINQ ran five 2-week long online course design camps based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model for instructional design and a custom Online Course Design Rubric. The rubric highlights impactful practices on topics ranging from (Structure & Organization, Design & Layout, Flexible Content & Activities, Interaction & Collaboration, Assessment & Feedback, Tools & Tech) that help inform modifications instructors can make based on Fall course delivery modalities (fully online, hybrid blends of in-person and online meetings, in-person). The 6-day Camp Design Online program resource hub carefully guides instructors through the CoI model and design rubric with brief readings and viewings to inform and help prioritize course design decisions.

Remote Student Resources

Our remote student resources include a downloadable “student continuity course planner” and a “remote study guide”. Both were created by DLINQ student interns for a student audience.

Digital Toolshed

Our toolshed and tutorials page provide a quick look at supported curricular technologies at Middlebury including: Course Hub, Canvas LMS, Zoom web conferencing, Panopto video tools, Wordpress, PollEverywhere, MiddCreate, Google Edu Suite, and Linkedin Learning video courses. We also provide a list of LTI tools with integrations in the Canvas LMS.

Contact Us

Have a quick question? Have a project idea you want to talk through? Need a 1:1 consultation? Fill out our brief contact form and we’ll follow up with someone from our office.

Dr. Amy Collier, Associate Provost for Digital Learning acollier@middlebury.edu

Dr. Sarah Lohnes Watulak, Director of Digital Pedagogy & Media sarahlw@middlebury.edu

Bill Koulopolous, Director of Learning Spaces & Technology bkoul@middlebury.edu

Bob Cole, Director of Exploratory Initiatives & Partnerships bcole@middlebury.edu

Notes and Examples

  1. Also see the Experiential Learning website for connections
  2. http://sites.middlebury.edu/cci/arts-media-and-communications/the-news/ 

Bob Cole and Ann Flower from MIIS are creating a similar document for a MIIS guide. One idea is to merge the two, and to find a way to allow users of the guide to filter out those that apply to the campus that they work on.