I was hired  three years ago to teach Media Studies courses in a Liberal Arts department at a Fine Arts college -- the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. This type of predicament can give a simple person like me a complex (or perhaps --to use an equally dated reference-- an Excedrin Headache).  I needed to make some linguistic adjustments.

 One adjustment involved the use of the word play. I noticed one day that the highest and most serious order of business among the musicians and many others at my school was to play --and somehow they got away with this, with all of their dignity intact! Maybe I was just envious. I wanted a piece of that action. I mean they are constantly playing. Who wouldn't be envious?

They practice their playing, they study, talk, and learn from each other about playing, and they play in front of audiences. Delightful!

I know, I know. Sometimes it is grueling work to learn how to play, or to play better, but at least the end-goal makes the means seem worthwhile. If the reward of hard work is more hard work? I don't know, this just seems less attractive. Cultural-youngers these days seem accustomed to knowledge-play, even, but what about us cultural-elders?  I think it's high time Liberal Artists set playing well as our main goal, so I started using the word.

This sort of linguistic promotion was needed because students seem to expect us to work rather than play. I recalled the candor of a student respondent once who, when asked about how he saw the value of college, said that he thought it was a great place to watch adults work! So it became important for me to directly tell them that I am here to play, and that play was here to stay.

So I howled 'play' at the moon, and experimented with ways to set the world right. Well, okay, I was not really alone in this. There is a pack of us howlers that insist on playing, even playing together, and we have formed a kind of group that we call the MAKE group. We (there are four of us) are even going to co-teach a MAKE elective next year, and invite others to join in the play.

 Another adjustment I've made --closely tied to the first-- is that I have begun to refer to myself, insistently even, as a Liberal Artist.  I mean people who work in the Fine Arts call themselves Artists, so why wouldn't people who work in the Liberal Arts call themselves Artists? Why do we persist in calling ourselves Scholars and that sort of thing? I mean it's okay to come out (sort of) now. Lynn Cheney is thankfully no longer in charge of the National Endowment for the Arts so 'liberal artist' need not be thought of as a slur :)

So, In order to help students understand how I structure my courses, I look for metaphors, and one day it occurred to me that we Liberal Artists simply use language (or, more broadly symbols) as our creative medium.  I found myself saying things like Liberal Artists play language like a musical instrument.

This sets the stage for the story I will tell in my presentation. My presentation slides are available on this site as well as a collection of video-based content (you can find links to these in the left navigation column) but I will also be sharing some stories about the conversations I had with students, some of their own comments about the course, and examples of the digital-stories they told and produced during the second half of the course. All of these constitute the evidence that fuels my excitement about continuing to develop ways of designing and delivering next-gen college courses.