by Hannah Kliger and Rakhmiel Peltz A paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Technology in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Nowy Sacz, Poland, July 24, 2007. Hannah Kliger is Senior Adviser to the Chancellor and Professor of Communication at The Pennsylvania State University, Abington College. Rakhmiel Peltz is Director of Judaic Studies, and Professor of Sociolinguistics at Drexel University. Colleges and universities are settings in our society where the concepts of collaboration and teamwork are publicly promoted and encouraged. Value is placed, at least in principle, on utilizing new knowledge and new technology to further diversity in the classroom and to forge partnerships with surrounding communities. Yet, much of our curricular and co-curricular programming underestimates the power of technology. In this paper, we describe how we have used technology to promote strengths-based team-dependent paradigms in higher education to advance progress in several arenas: pedagogy in the classroom, the design and assessment of departmental and college-wide goals, civic responsibility and community engagement, and campus-wide strategic planning. Examples from two sites, Drexel University and The Pennsylvania State University’s Abington College, will illustrate how the collaborative use of technology facilitates the creation of new realities. Propositions generated by stakeholders within the organizations (students, faculty, staff, board members, etc.), both of which are universities with a deep commitment to teaching with technology, fostered insights and implementation projects that substantially refocused institutional practices, programs, and potential for future growth. This paper explicates the steps that were taken to produce profound and positive changes, while addressing the challenging environment of higher education. We discuss the pathways that, through technology and teamwork, result in productive improvements in classroom teaching, organizational learning, and creative community coalitions. A comparison of two different kinds of organizations (private vs public, urban vs suburban, residential vs commuter) sets the stage for proposing a template for effectively utilizing technology in other educational settings. At Penn State Abington, transformational learning in the classroom has been energetically discussed and evaluated by students, utilizing technology, resulting in a strong and convincing spirit aimed at meeting course objectives and setting new goals for collaboration and teamwork. By hiring an instructional design specialist to train and work with faculty and staff, the campus reinforced its commitment to these pedagogical aims. The use of ANGEL (A New Global Environment for Learning), Penn State’s online CMS (Course Management System), has increased exponentially as has its utilization for a variety of curricular and co-curricular purposes. Via an interactive database and a straightforward, web-based interface, faculty members are able to create a web presence for their courses. This tool allows faculty to post online documents, create online activities, and foster communication outside of the classroom. For instructional purposes, ANGEL provides the capability to create quizzes using a variety of question types (multiple choice, true/false, essay, etc.) and have objective answers scored automatically. Additionally, it is possible to create student surveys and polls (which can also be anonymous) and automatically compile results into usable forms. For facilitating communication among participants on a committee, ANGEL can generate group discussion via threaded message boards, mail messages can be sent to one or more members, and announcements and news can be sent. The advantage that ANGEL offers is single login access and uniform interface. In addition, no additional software is needed since ANGEL exhibits cross-platform (PC & Mac) compatibility using popular web browsers. Moreover, the integration with institutional administrative software allows for seamless transfer of registration and grading data to and from ANGEL, a package which is available at all times and can be customized to serve specific needs and projects. The interrelation of technology and pedagogy remains at the core of this endeavor at Penn State Abington. In other areas related to academic affairs at Penn State Abington, teamwork and collaboration coupled with technology helped to advance an innovative (for us) effort to craft action steps and strategies for all units as part of a strategic planning effort. In addition to intensive committee work, with working groups meeting regularly to explicate the strategic planning unit goal of “Academic Excellence”, the statement that was crafted was immeasurably improved by the blending of face-to-face interaction with technological aids that facilitated computer-mediated communication. Together, a diversity of voices and viewpoints is more easily accessed and ultimately more fully represented in the final documents and products related to academic planning and programming. Technology, in other words, can be successfully drawn on to create new approaches not only to teaching, but also to effective leadership and strategic management in the twenty-first-century university. Turning now to Drexel University, a large private urban university known as a “technological university,” a careful balance has similarly been constructed between the direct face-to-face learning setting and a technology-mediated environment. Founded more than 110 years ago as the Drexel Institute of Technology, by 1983, the university was the first university in the USA to require that all its students own a computer. By 1998, this growing university, still known for its engineering, computer and information science faculties, introduced a Judaic Studies Program. This program was intentionally oriented to working together with community members and organizations by inviting community members to the university: a) to study together with the undergraduate students, b) to participate in a variety of public programs that are coordinated with curricular projects, and c) to interact with university students within communal institutional settings in order to enact intergenerational ethnic education programs. Students come from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds and learn about intergroup relations, the struggles of minorities, and the building and functioning of non-profit communal organizations. Although the Judaic Studies Program operates within an educational environment that is replete with technological resources and support, including distance learning, web-based on-line courses, well-equipped “smart” classrooms, and student access to sophisticated equipment and software for their academic and co-operative education work, its signature academic project is the Program on Intergenerational Ethnic Education. The Drexel Judaic Studies Program is one of the few higher educational units that showcases an approach that creates a consciousness of the centrality of multigenerational living informants in the learning process. This academic area of endeavor is discussed, for example, in the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships ( Haworth Press, jir.ucsur.pitt.edu). The methods and results of the variety of Drexel’s Judaic Studies intergenerational work can be reviewed on the Program’s website, which is available at www.drexel.edu/judaicstudies. One of the curricular and programmatic goals of the Judaic Studies Program is to teach about the culture and life of East European Jews that were annihilated by Nazi Germany. The larger intent of such a teaching goal is to demonstrate that universities possess pedagogical resources to help provide for the continuity of cultures decimated by genocide. As part of a history course on the Holocaust, the Program invited the Holocaust survivor artist, Toby Knobel Fluek, to talk about her life and art. Ms. Fluek had authored two art books on her life experience. However, at the time of the visit, a team of our associates, including one of our students who was a Film and Video major and Judaic Studies minor, realized that these books, although recently issued by a major publisher, Knopf, were out of print. Ms. Fluek, then into her ‘70s, would not always be able to lecture, nor would the original artwork be available at a gallery for easy viewing. The medium of film seemed ideal to insure that the vital story of Ms. Fluek that emphasized the life and culture of her pre-war family and village would be available to future generations of students in a variety of educational settings. Using the latest technology that was available for film production and editing, including a team of consultants and professional filmmakers, in addition to Drexel-based technological experts and students, the Judaic Studies Program proceeded to mount a project that would create a film on the life and art of Toby Fluek. This project will form an integral tool in our larger goal of providing for the continuity of cultures that have been subjected to genocide. We have learned that nothing can replace the living informants who have studied alongside our students in a variety of courses. But the application of the latest technology, for example, has enabled us to digitally record representatives of different generations of voices that sing traditional Yiddish songs in state-of-the-art recording studios of Drexel University. The Drexel team, including our students as well as professionals, is instrumental in this recording process that has captured a combination of voices of different generations. In our study of the subject that forms the basis of the film project, namely the multi-faceted life of Jews in Poland before World War II, we use many sources besides standard books, journals, and our own informants and film. We have been fortunate to be able to utilize a new website that reflects the latest research, led by the sociologist, Dr. Adina Cimet, at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York. This project is called the Educational Program on Yiddish Culture, or EYPC, and presents via its website (http://epyc.yivo.org) an exciting multimedia format that introduces the student to the case study of the pre-war community of Lublin, Poland. When our Drexel team goes out with our university students and survivor community volunteers to a local high school to teach and learn together about the Yiddish culture and way of life that were destroyed, we actively engage this rich web-based source. Although our Program encourages direct intergenerational interaction, our experience has served to assure us that even the curricula that use intensive interaction of students and community members can be complemented and enhanced by technologically-based learning aids. In sum, we have seen inspiring developments at our institutions, and we want to help others lead their organizations toward a culture that is supportive of technology, teamwork, and a community of diverse voices encompassing individual and collective experience, imagination, and hope. Fluek, Toby Knobel (1990). Memories of My Life in a Polish Village 1930-1949. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Fluek, Toby Knobel (1994). Passover as I Remember It. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Gayle, John Dennis, Tewarie, Bhoendradatt, & White, A. Quinton (2003). Governance in the Twenty-First-Century University. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rowley, Daniel James, & Sherman, Herbert (2001). From Strategy to Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001 The Pennsylvania State University (September 2004, revised February 2005). Teaching and Learning in Undergraduate Education at Penn State: An Institutional Self-Study. State College, PA: Author |