Techniques and technology: how technology serves learning, and not simply the other way around. From the editorial:

[C]onversations between leaders in technology and educators in the liberal arts are often defined by two key oversights which misleadingly magnify the chasm between liberal arts and STEM-related disciplines. The first oversight concerns the very nature of liberal arts education, and the second a failure to acknowledge vibrant technological advancements in the liberal arts which are well-established and attracting new cohorts of students into humanities fields….

The liberal arts are liberal in the sense that they are also liberating—they are aimed at cultivating free thinkers and innovators, not mere workers….

Liberal arts colleges and their faculty often cannot articulate to prospective students the value of liberal arts education as a pedagogical approach rather than simply a disciplinary focus, which produces graduates who also struggle to relay to prospective employers this value. In turn, those in the field of technology often fail to articulate the benefit of incorporating new technologies into liberal arts curricula beyond their utility for the workforce.

Thus, for tech leaders to help liberal arts educators implement new technologies into the classroom, they have to encourage a curricular means to do so that is not grounded primarily in utilitarianism—the question is not whether to incorporate technology-based skill development into liberal arts education, but instead how to do so and why.

While programs in the liberal arts can and should continue to instill technological literacy in their curricula, repeated urges for rebranding and modernization often minimize or neglect the multifaceted technological innovations already taking place in liberal arts institutions across the country.

H/t Robert Townsend

For other posts on education and technology, see here.