The Collaboratory for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) began as a college-level center, the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University during 1998, based in the Department of Political Science within the College of Arts and Sciences, as directed by then-dean Robert C. Bates. Working with faculty in the Virginia Tech Cyberschool as well as the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning (IDDL), he CDDC continued its activities within the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences from 2003 to 2013. With the abrupt restructuring of IDDL in 2013, budgetary support and space constraints at the university level made it necessary to return to its collaborative roots in the Department of Political Science.
The CDDC continues much of the experimentation as one of the world's first university based digital points-of-publication for new forms of scholarly communication, academic research, and cultural analysis. At the same time, it supports traditional research practices, including scholarly peer review, academic freedom, network formation, and intellectual experimentation as part of the department's support of the University's research mission.
Our agenda is to support all forms of cultural, ideological, methodological, and scientific discourse, while encouraging diversity, interdisciplinarity, and academic excellence. For additional information, contact us @ cddc @ vt.edu .