The faculty development program Privacy Pedagogy for Open Inquiry and Student Expression (POISE) Project aims to support robust, civil campus and classroom expression on important, complex topics in which students with diverse perspectives may otherwise self-sensor.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State University Libraries project team has received an Equal Opportunity Planning Committee (EOPC) grant from Penn State Educational Equity to facilitate the Privacy Pedagogy for Open Inquiry and Student Expression (POISE) Project. Its faculty development cohort will support instructors University-wide in integrating privacy pedagogy into their inclusive teaching practices.
The POISE Project, a Provost Endorsement Program, aims to enhance campus climates for open inquiry and free expression with a purposeful emphasis on the experience of identity- and viewpoint-diverse students by considering student privacy in learning design. Cohort participants will explore intellectual privacy and its relationship to learning, inquiry and expression, and implement privacy pedagogy practices by critically evaluating educational technology and redesigning select course materials. The 2025-26 POISE Project pilot instructor cohort will run throughout the 2025-26 academic year with in-person workshops in September 2025 and May 2026.
“There is mounting concern about the health of campus expression and robustness of classroom discussion, with indicators from organizations like the Knight Foundation, Heterodox Academy and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression showing that students self-censor in discussions about important, complex topics. Research also shows that students with diverse identities or minority viewpoints self-censor and express privacy concerns at higher rates,” said Sarah Hartman-Caverly, Penn State faculty librarian and project director. “The POISE Project is a first-of-its-kind approach to improving the climate for campus speech by focusing on student privacy as a complement to existing work on civil discourse, respectful dialogue and ed tech adoption. The POISE Project introduces privacy pedagogy and the practice of teaching about privacy while accounting for student privacy in learning design, and engages instructors in applying these principles to their own courses.”
The project team includes Penn State faculty librarians Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, both reference and instruction librarians based at the Berks Thun Library at Penn State Berks, along with members from Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), also part of University Libraries. Hartman-Caverly and Chisholm are also co-editors of the 2023 book “Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods and Cases” from ACRL Publishing, and recipients of an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant for the National Forum for Privacy Literacy Standards and Competencies held in March 2025 at Penn State.
The POISE Project cohort will participate in a kick-off in-person workshop in September, a synchronous online workshop in October and a culminating in-person workshop in May 2026. Cohort participants will also engage in learning design consultations and other faculty development activities to create their chosen course materials using privacy pedagogy conventions, and evaluate the effectiveness of privacy pedagogy in improving the dynamic for open discussion in their courses. Cohort members who complete the POISE Project program will be eligible for Provost Endorsement.
“Recognizing faculty for their commitment to evolving their skills in teaching and learning is important, and this project is an accepted Provost Endorsement that provides the opportunity for this acknowledgment,” said Julie Meyer, an instructional designer in Teaching and Learning with Technology.
Penn State instructors who are interested in enhancing the campus climate for inquiry and expression by piloting privacy pedagogy elements in their spring 2026 courses are invited to apply for the 2025-26 POISE Project pilot cohort and Provost Endorsement program. A call for participants is open through August 2025. Participant travel to in-person events is supported by the EOPC grant, totaling $11,685 and supplemented by $4,066 from the University Libraries.
In addition to facilitating the instructor cohort, the POISE Project team will create an original faculty development curriculum on privacy pedagogy that is open-licensed for reuse. Additional information about the POISE Project is available from TLT or by contacting Sarah Hartman-Caverly at [email protected].
