Trustees’ Presentation (July 10, 2009) on e-learning

In the last twenty-five years, I’ve made a number of presentations to Penn State’s trustees. Believe it or not, I once demonstrated Gopher as an introduction to our campus-wide information system (CWIS). I’ve talked several times about academic integrity. I have been on a handful of panel discussions on various IT issues, including ANGEL. But in the past, the presentations have been very formal: the tyrrany of Powerpoint. And there was very little time for discussion. Today’s meeting would be different.

At today’s meeting of the Educational Policy committee in New Kensington, three folks (Yvonne Gaudelius, Angela Linse, and I) were asked to talk about e-learning and e-testing. But this time we were going to have a discussion, not a presentation. Would this new format work? By any measure, we had a very stimulating discussion of real questions and issues that face higher education — education integrity, curricular consistency, adoption of course materials created by other faculty, “open educational resources,” and the future of textbooks vs. Web resources. Very quickly we were talking about what computers could and couldn’t do — the expert-systems or artificial intelligence question. Students need to development judgment, great communication skills, and know how far to trust the information sources available to them in all fields. (Isn’t that part of what general education does?) And then we all wondered aloud what computers would be like in 20 years — and how teaching and learning would need to change.

I couldn’t have had a more engaged and engaging conversation with people who care deeply about Penn State’s students, faculty, and staff. The Trustees serve us well, and I hope that they found the conversation as stimulating as I did this morning.

I have attached the PDF that summarizes our activities in five important areas, including e-testing, blogs/e-portfolios, digital commons, ANGEL, and the e-learning cooperative.Digital Learning & e-Testing for BoT_July09.pdf