A Vision for Learning at Penn State: 2012-2017
Over the next five years, Penn State will draw on collaborations with its extensive network of world-renowned faculty and staff to anticipate and respond to new market opportunities, providing high quality, rigorous educational experiences that will exceed learners’ expectations in all modes of delivery. As we continue to grow, we will move the field of distance learning from “as good as” to a realization of the incredible affordances online learning brings to traditional residential based higher education, adding a level of quality, flexibility, and engagement that has heretofore not been reached.
We will work to move more of our learning experiences into modes that are available online, face to face, and in hybrid models. Through our collective work, we will strive to provide the tools, approaches, and programs to not just support the delivery of learning content, but to lead faculty towards new forms of teaching practice. We believe at the center of all learning environments are specific needs that start with faculty development. To this end, learning design staff will work to become more focused on the utilization of technology that is aligned with strong pedagogical strategies.
To reach our goals, we will
- Continue to build new learning environments that showcase the research strengths of the University, from the undergraduate to the doctoral level, while strategically scaling all of our offerings and resources.
- Build stronger online communities that take advantage of the increasing affordances of the Internet to better reproduce the engagement that takes place in various social spaces. These support structures will become increasingly important to better connect our residential and online students with each other and with resources that support and enrich their learning.
- Shift the focus from “content development” to “creating learning experiences” by personalizing the learning experiences of our students to create learning environments that are more flexible and “smart,” enabling us to analyze a student’s progress through courses and programs with just in time data that respond to their learning needs.
- Provide truly seamless access to both resident and online education for all students that is driven by student needs without putting unnecessary technical or administrative barriers in their path, including increased access to online courses for residential students, expanded online University learning and extracurricular resources to continue to break down the barriers and distinctions between online and face-to-face education, improved financial aid resources for programs that are “non-standard” by design, and proactive accessibility strategies for students with disabilities.
- Continue the movement away from a single one-size-fits-all online learning system (LMS) to a collection of best-in-class web-based tools that can be drawn together to create unique learning spaces that more effectively meet the expectations of our faculty and students.
Ann Taylor & Cole Camplese February 2012, Adapted from A Vision for Online Learning, Ann Taylor
Bart Pursel 1:41 pm on April 18, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I like it. I think either adding a bullet, or re-phrasing bullet 3, to focus on learning analytics might add some more data-driven focus to supporting students. We have a few LA projects underway at UP right now (ERP system, DUS advising data-driven project, the blog data analysis with grade correlations, etc), and I have a feeling we’ll see a lot more LA-driven projects to help support student learning and success in all course formats and settings. I can certainly craft a short paragraph if you’d like.
wlm103 8:44 am on April 18, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Overall, this looks great. Although you mention it in bullet point 3, perhaps adding something about assisting faculty re-think or develop new ways of assessing students’ performance that is congruent with these changes may be helpful.