COPLAC Description

From the COPLAC website:

COPLAC MISSION

The Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges advances the aims of its member institutions and drives awareness of the value of high-quality, public liberal arts education in a student-centered, residential environment.

COPLACDIGITAL MISSION

COPLACDigital will produce student work that is collaborative and outward-facing and that demonstrates the value of a liberal arts education at a time when it is under attack.  By combining digital fluencies with the research-based, critical thinking approach of public liberal arts institutions, these multi-campus, undergraduate research seminars help advance students who are adaptable and prepared for graduate school and the working world. High-impact experiences like COPLACDigital take them further into the reality of the workplace in the 21st century, a fast-changing professional landscape that requires the team-based habits of mind and practices at the core of the liberal arts experience. This project is scalable both within COPLAC and across the liberal arts college sector, and we look forward to sharing project outcomes with colleagues at liberal arts institutions nationwide.

About Sean and Liz’s COPLAC Digital Distance Learning Course: A Burning Idea

What makes a book “bad”? Examining both sides of a censorship dispute reveals cultural battlegrounds over topics like sex, race, religion, political viewpoints, language and morality. Students working in pairs will examine a censorship challenge in their locality. In exploring both sides of the specific case, students will examine the history of the censorship theme and of the challenged work, placing the case in both local and historical contexts. Themes to explore could include authorial intent, reasoning of adoption, and the basis for challenging and/or banning the book from use.  Among the cases students can choose are: challenges to school reading curriculum, efforts to ban or burn books, or the work of 19th and 20th century anti-vice societies. Students will use primary source materials, newspaper coverage, secondary literature, and oral history interviews to tell their stories. The result will be a web-based presentation on the case, using digital visualization tools such as maps, story maps, timelines or text analysis to add a new dimension to their interpretation.


Citations:

“About.” COPLACDigital. N.p., 08 Feb. 2018. Web. 08 May 2018.

“About the Course.” A Burning Idea: Course Site. N.p., 27 Nov. 2017. Web. 08 May 2018.