The Liberal Arts Online: an ACS Blended Learning Webinar Dr. Rebecca Frost Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities, National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) Improving technology, changing students, challenging finances, and alternative credentialing sources have all combined to create an online learning boom in higher education. For liberal arts colleges, online learning promises to enhance the curriculum by moving some tasks online to allow for more active learning face-to-face, increasing student time on task, connecting study abroad or internship students back to campus, adding curricular resources, or expanding access to liberal education. Whatever the motivation for considering online learning, liberal arts colleges are forging new ground in bringing the liberal arts educational model--highly interactive, close work between students and faculty--into an online context. This seminar will explore a variety of models for using technology to fulfill the essential learning outcomes of liberal education and suggest ways faculty might enhance their courses with online teaching.

1. What is online learning?
Type your answer in the chat room.

2. Liberal Arts Online
An ACS Blended Learning Webinar
Rebecca Frost Davis
March 9, 2012

3. The Faculty Project
http://facultyproject.com/
“Free Courses, Elite Colleges”, Inside Higher Ed

5. Tracking Trends in Higher Ed
• Calls for Efficiency
• MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses
• DIYU—Anya Kamenetz
• Open Educational Resources
• Alternative credentials
• Hybrid teaching
• Flipped Classroom

7. What’s Missing?

8. Study of Online Learning
“most professors relied on text-based
assignments and materials. In the instances
when professors did decide to use interactive
tools like online video, many of those
technologies were not connected to learning
objectives, the study found.”
---“Study Suggests Many Professors
Use Interactive Tools Ineffectively
in Online Courses”

9. Are there approaches to online
learning that fit liberal arts colleges?
How do we implement liberal
education in an online environment?

10. Why go online?
• Pressures
– New technologies & student expectations
– Challenging finances
– Business models under threat
– Alternative credentialing models

12. Opportunities
• Connecting students back to campus
• Free up curricular resources
• Expand the curriculum
– Sunoikisis: http://www.sunoikisis.org
• 5 Private Liberal-Arts Colleges Will Share a
Professor

13. What do you do online?
(for teaching and learning)

14. Distance Education
“Distance education or distance learning, is a
field of education that focuses on teaching
methods and technology with the aim of
delivering teaching, often on an individual basis,
to students who are not physically present in a
traditional educational setting such as a
classroom.”
--Wikipedia definition for distance education

15. Looking for Whitman in . . .
• New York City College of Technology (CUNY)
• New York University
• University of Mary Washington in
Fredericksburg, VA
• Rutgers University-Camden
• University of Novi Sad (Serbia)

16. http://lookingforwhitman.org
• Personal student blogs
• Aggregation via tags and news feeds

17. Frontispiece Project
Students choose
frontispiece (inspired by
the famous 1855
frontispiece from
Whitman’s Leaves of
Grass) along with a quote
from “Song of Myself”

20. Annotation
Project
• Each campus
focuses on one
set of writings
connected to
their place
• Contributes to
larger project

21. Find out More
• http://bavatuesdays.com/looking-for-
whitman-a-grand-aggregated-experiment/
• http://mkgold.net/blog/tag/lookingforwhitma
n/
• Matt Gold. “Looking for Whitman: A Multi-
Campus Experiment in Digital
Pedagogy.”Teaching Digital Humanities, ed.
Brett D. Hirsch. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, Forthcoming.

22. Networked World
• John Seely Brown, NITLE Fellow 2011
– Explosion of data
– Exponential advances in computation storage and
bandwidth
– Large-scale, deeply-connected problems
• Ken O’Donnell
– Assoc. Dean, Office of the Chancellor, California
State University, Opening Forum, AAC&U
– Produce systems thinkers that innovate
– Teach ability to work in a team structure

23. Networked Learning
• Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the
Digital Age.” elearnspace, December 12, 2004.
• Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg, Future of
Learning Institutions in a Digital Age
– Participatory learning
• Distributed team
• Active and collaborative learning

24. Place-based, Networked
Learning
ACS courses built on this model?

25. Bryn Mawr College
• Blended learning: courses in which students
both participate in face-to-face classes and
work through computer-based, interactive
tutorials and quizzes that provide customized
learning and instant feedback
• Spiro, Lisa. Blended Learning and the Open Learning
Initiative in a Liberal Arts Context: Bryn Mawr’s Next
Generation Learning Challenge Grant. New Learning
Resources, a NITLE Initiative, December 23, 2011.

26. Hybrid Learning
• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
• Kolowich, Steve. “Hybrid Education 2.0.” Inside
Higher Ed, December 28, 2009.
• Department of Education, Evaluation of
Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning :
A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online
Learning Studies

27. Open
Learning
Initiative
Chemistry
Module

28. Open Learning Resources
• Kahn Academy: www.khanacademy.org/
• Codeacademy.com

29. Blended Learning
Do you use or know of open learning
resources?

30. Global Learning
• Re-envisioning Diasporas at Swarthmore
College and Asheshi University in Ghana

31. SUNY-COIL
• SUNY Center for Online International
Collaborative Learning (COIL)
• http://coilcenter.purchase.edu/
• Globally Networked Learning
• Faculty Guide for COIL Course Development

32. Challenges
• Technology
– “minding and living with the gap”
– “No-Frustration policy”
• Logistics
– Time differences
– Cultural expectations

33. Globally Networked Learning
Examples or ideas for the ACS?

34. Designing the Liberal Arts Online
• University of Mary Washington Online
Learning Initiative
• Steven Greenlaw, Acting Director, University
Teaching Center, & Professor of Economics
– Goals
– Activities
– Tools
– Context

35. Define liberal arts values
What are they for you?

36. Online Course Design Process
1. Define liberal arts values
2. Develop process to ensure values are
integrated
3. Faculty development: thinking about
teaching and learning

37. NITLE Symposium
• April 16 - 17, in Arlington, Virginia
• Sunoikisis
• Bryn Mawr, Next Generation Learning
Challenges
• Mary Washington, Liberal Arts Online
• SUNY-COIL

38. New Terms for Online Learning
• Place-based, Networked Learning
• Blended Learning (aka Hybrid Learning)
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Digital Humanities
• Globally Networked Learning
• Learning
• Liberal Education