Digital Detox aimed to 1) introduce our new unified organization, Digital Learning & Inquiry; 2) promote a diff conversation about the digital w/ faculty, staff, & students; 3)highlight many dimensions of “critical digital fluency,” which is a focus of Middlebury’s strategic plan
We also wanted to show that these topics (presented as newsletters) are issues that we are grappling with ourselves. No matter what we mean when we say digital fluency, we want to signal that it is an ongoing & developing process. It’s never complete. We’re still/always learning.
It is a pilot. We hope to learn a lot by engaging people in these topics. We are not trying to provide an exhaustive program. See also: It is a pilot. And we don’t pretend that this is groundbreaking work. We are recognizing and uplifting the good work of others.
We issued one invitation to Middlebury faculty, staff, & students to join the Detox. It was rolled into a more generic email about the new unified organization for digital learning at Middlebury, the office of Digital Learning & Inquiry. From that one email, we had ~140 sign-ups
An additional 20 people signed up through personal invitations some of our staff sent to people they thought might be interested in the Detox.
So, of our total sign-ups (159), 14% are Middlebury faculty; 45% are Middlebury staff; 26% are Middlebury students; and 15% are “other” (alumni, friends, etc.). We skewed to the staff side, which makes sense.
It’s a good number of sign-ups. I don’t think it has anything to do with the strength of our new organization. We’re new—& just announced. The draw seems to be people’s concerns about the toxicity of the digital. We are all experiencing it. People are looking for actions to take
Through 4 Digital Detox newsletters, we’ve seen an average open rate of 99 opens. About 25% of readers clicked at least one link in the newsletter. The most clicked link was an article that listed tools to help you to limit social media time: medium.com/@kyleebateman/…
The second most-clicked link was It’s Time to Log Off’s Digital Diet, which tied for 2nd with an article on a mindfulness activity for social media: itstimetologoff.com/5-2-digital-di… and mindful.org/before-you-scr…
The fourth most clicked link was the Have I Been Pwned? website haveibeenpwned.com
5th most clicked link was added last minute to DD#2 on safer social media practices. The morning that DD2 was scheduled, I saw @actualham tweet about using Greasemonkey to delete old FB posts. I had written a task to “Deep clean your FB account” & hastily added Robin's link
(my message there is that I am so thankful for colleagues who continually teach me--and by extension, my Middlebury colleagues--about critical digital fluency)
We have four more Digital Detox newsletters to send and I am excited to see what happens next.
Some healthy unexpected-but-not-really-unexpected side effects of doing the Detox: 1) It’s helped our teams to come together, given us something to work on together that crosses boundaries of how we typically define our work. It has been a unifying force in this unification.
2) It has deepened our own understandings of the worlds in which we work every day. It has deepened our conversations about digital dangers, inequities, exploitation, etc. but it has also forced us to look at how we can make small and big changes to what we see.
For a group focused on the intersections of criticality and hope (see Paulo Freire), it’s a good start.
I’ll end with a question. If you could share one essential Digital Detox reading for faculty, staff, and students at a higher education institution, what would you share and why?
p.s., I’ll come back at you when we have completed the Digital Detox. Will continue to share what we’re learning.
