A little over a week ago, I had the opportunity to attend the third annual Learning Design Summer Camp (LDSC), hosted by Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State. The goal of this event is to create a platform that brings together staff, faculty, instructional designers, and other professionals to share ideas and discuss topics related to technology and higher education.
As most of you are aware, this past spring, Liberal Arts Undergraduate Studies began to implement a variety of social media in the daily functioning of our office. Our ultimate goal for these technologies was and is to create a community centered on the Liberal Arts undergraduate experience. (To read more about the trials and tribulations, hopes and fears, lessons learned etc. that have accompanied our exploits into the world of social media, see our blog post “Hacking the Liberal Arts“). The Learning and Design Summer Camp was a welcomed opportunity to meet with representatives across the campus and throughout Penn State at large who are thinking through similar issues.
As more and more universities begin to use social media and technology, the main questions seem to be: is this kind of technology truly beneficial within higher education and if so, what is the best way to implement these technologies? The key note speaker of LDSC, Sam Richards, professor of Sociology and Race Relations Project co-director, helped to show how students’ educational experiences can be positively impacted by this kind of technology. Everyone should watch the trailer of his SOC 119 course just to get a glimpse of the kind of dialogue and the level of engagement that he is able to generate in this project.
Later in the day, I was also able to attend a breakout session titled “Undergraduate Education Technology Ecosystem @ Penn State ” led by Bart Pursel, researcher and consultation specialist for the Schreyer Institute for Teaching and Excellence. In this session, Bart showed us some of the recent research he had collected on the use of wikis and blogs at Penn State. Basically, he broke down data collected about the users of these platforms. He looked at student profiles, faculty user rates, colleges and departments making pedagogical use of these technologies, and the university-wide adoption rate as well. You can find the actual content of this presentation at The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence blog. It was interesting to see that statistics related to the College of the Liberal Arts consistently ranked somewhere in the middle and even sometimes near the top. This is not to say that our numbers were all that impressive across the board. But it is important to note that because we are one of the biggest colleges at University Park, we seem to have a great deal of potential for growth within all of these categories.
Overall, the Learning Design Summer Camp was an extremely positive experience. It is always helpful and refreshing to meet with colleagues who are interested in and experimenting with similar initiatives. Indeed, as our office continues to strive to create the online community we are hoping for, it is nice to be reminded that this group of colleagues, on which we can rely, exists right here on campus.