Yesterday we announced that we will spend $8 million over the next 36 months on course initiatives to enhance learning at Georgetown. It’s a united, three-campus effort that will enhance skills among us and create new approaches to learning on campus.
The job of a provost, in my belief, is to give faculty the environment and tools to assure that their hard work will achieve their aspirations. I’m a newbie here, but I’m proud to be associated with so many faculty who helped make the initiative possible.
The mission we’ve addressed in the Technology-Enhanced Learning initiative is our delivery of a world-class education to our students. We want to evaluate whether some new tools, most involving technology, permit us to achieve that mission better.
Ironically, a successful initiative to evaluate these new tools should surface some situations that do not improve learning using these tools. These will be the examples we give to parents when they ask us why their child can’t merely study at home using online courses, why their child needs to come to Georgetown to experience the face-to-face interaction that is necessary for such learning.
On the other hand, we also expect some great advances, evidence that using online learning modules blended with face-to-face classroom interaction allows students and faculty to spend more time together working on the “expression” of knowledge in diverse situations, the higher-order learning we seek.
There are three related activities that we must now mount. First, we need to develop methods of analysis of student online experiences that provide real insights to faculty about what knowledge is easily consumed by which students using which delivery mode. Some folks call this “learning analytics.” Second, we need to make sure that reviews, rewards, and evaluations of faculty acknowledge fairly their personal investment in innovating using these new tools. Incentives for various faculty activities must be in alignment for real advances to be made. Third, we need to develop a strategy for what Georgetown wants to achieve in launching its presence in the world of massive open online courses (MOOCs). What educational modules are best suited for presentation to a global audience?
All of these things are exciting, and deserve widespread discussion and deliberation. They each go to the heart of the 21st century version of Georgetown as a student-centered research university.
We together have much work to do, but it will be fun and satisfying to those who are constantly striving to do better for Georgetown students.
“Technology-Enhanced Learning”
how does a new computer or new device make the delivery of information any better? the quality of an explanation doesn’t change if it’s live, through video, in a text, on a tablet as long as it’s the same explanation.
teaching would improve if faculty had an incentive to teach better but usually research, grant money, books, etc. are what really count in the tenure process so as a result junior faculty know to put more effort into things besides teaching. our feedback is from student reviews which everyone knows are severely biased by how well the student reviewer’s grade is, how easy/difficult the course is, and how personable the instructor is. so we have no feedback/improvement method that is proven. we have no incentive to teach since that’s never a priority for advancement.
It has also been argued that some kinds of technology, like the use of powerpoint, has removed content from education. What was once a text and a lecture is now reducded to print outs of slides annotated with comments from class. this allows students to skip a lot and learn less.
essentially, i fail to see how spending a bunch of money on new stuff improves the people using the stuff.
The Technology-Enhanced Learning Initiative is a very exciting development for Georgetown and I commend the University leadership for its efforts in developing and promoting it. As an involved alumnus, I can say that many alumni have a strong interest in this area as well. On behalf of my fellow alumni, we look forward to reading about future developments, including Georgetown’s promised participation in educational consortia with other institutions to promote education both on campus and online.
Maintain the momentum of excellence!!