This panel explores alternative avenues for education in digital poetics and electronic literary studies. The panel pieces together problems with categorical, single discipline approaches to electronic literature, critical, cultural, and technological studies looking at the pedagogical and curricular issues associated with media-based and network forms of meaning-making, storytelling, and communication. The primary questions here are: What are the conditions under which a practitioner or scholar are considered expert in the as yet undefined field of media-based expression? And: What solutions are traditional academic institutions offering? Thinking beyond, or outside the exclusive field of electronic literature the panel examines and offers potential alternatives to traditional disciplinary scholarship and accreditation. Each panelist will offer viewpoints, curricular and structural suggestions. The panel will be divided into two sections; the first will be a performative example of an alternative avenue for media culture education, and the second will be a rigorous discussion of the issues related to teaching digital culture and electronic creative practice in single discipline, and sometimes tangential programs and departments. The panel members have been selected based on their own experience with these issues as well as their pursuit of alternatives to institutional formulas.
(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)