Instructional Technology Conference
Middle Tennessee State University
Building Communities of Learners
April 3-5, 2005
2005 Featured Speakers
- Phillip Long, Senior Strategist, Academic Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology iCampus
- Tracy Mitrano, Director of Information Technologies Policy and the University Computer Policy and Law Program, Cornell University
Co-Director of the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computer Policy & Law - Van Weigel, Professor of Ethics and Economic Development, Eastern University
 |
Phillip Long, Senior Strategist, Academic Computing
Massachusetts Institute of Technology iCampus
"Innovating Education Through Sharing"
Universities create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. In addressing that mission, universities should take care to preserve and strengthen the ideas and innovation from which all may freely draw. The basis of scholarship, on which advances in knowledge are built, rests on the ability to challenge the status quo, to propose falsifiable ideas, to collect information, to reflect on that information, and to share the results so others can follow, build or reject the work. Without sharing information we value, the process of building new knowledge fails to advance.
This talk describes some MIT initiatives, as well as others, aimed at building resources that preserve and promote scholarly activity.
These include both large initiatives and simple tools:
- MIT OpenCourseWare publishes the materials from all MIT courses for free use worldwide
- iCampus incubates educational innovations at MIT and promotes their dissemination around the world
- Sakai, an open source collaborative learning environment
- VUE (virtual understanding environment) transforms concept maps into content maps
- DSpace aims to create a federated system of repositories among the world's research institution
Beyond these projects building educational technologies, there is a crucial foundation of copyright practice that can either constrain sharing new ideas or enable them. Creative Commons offers a layer of flexible copyright practices in that promote the scholarly practices.
Long, senior strategist for academic computing enterprise and director of learning outreach for the MIT iCampus, provides direction in applying MIT information services and technology resources to support the integration of technology into the curriculum. He leads MIT iCampus outreach efforts to freely disseminate educational technology tools complementing the OpenCourseWare distribution of MIT educational content. Long's professional activities include the Syllabus conference board, past chair of the Advisory Committee on Teaching and Learning of the National Learning Infrastructure Institute, MIT DSpace Policy Committee, the NMC Project Horizon technology advisory task force, Steven's Institute of Technology WebCampus board, and the US Army Distance Learning Subcommittee. Long is a senior associate with the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group, the American Association of Higher Education's technology affiliate.
 |
Tracy Mitrano, Director of Information Technologies Policy and the
University Computer Policy and Law Program, Cornell University
Co-Director of the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computer Policy & Law
"The Politics of Information Technology Policies is the Politics
of Everything Digital"
Digital copyright, government surveillance, privacy and security concerns are policy issues because they are political issues in the academy as well as in the society. Mitrano will address how colleges and universities must exercise leadership in addressing them, first by clarifying their meaning and then weighing the politics against IT practice, and institutional liability with institutional citizenship all in the name of our missions of teaching, research, and outreach. As a beacon to the society in these interesting times, higher education must continue, through free speech and critical inquiry, to stand for ordered liberty and there is no better arena in which to take the measure of this effort than in the politics of digital media and information technology resources.
Mitrano is director of the information technologies policy and law program at Cornell University. She is also co-director of the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computer Policy and Law. Previously, she was the acting security co-coordinator for the Office of Information Technologies at Cornell.
Mitrano earned her law degree from Cornell Law School and a doctorate in American History from Binghamton University. She is a member of the New York State Bar and previously was an associate at True, Walsh & Miller. She received administrative and academic training at Berkman Center for Internet Law at Stanford University, the Cornell University Leadership Training Program, and the Frye Leadership Institute sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources and EDUCAUSE.
She has been a lecturer at Cornell in the School of Human Ecology, Department of Human Development, a visiting professor of history at Syracuse University, and a visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University. She was also an assistant history professor at State University of New York at Buffalo.
Mitrano holds faculty positions at the EDUCAUSE Institute for Computer Policy and Law; EDUCAUSE Leadership Program, Annual Institute; and Frye Leadership Institute.
In 2003, she was the Ada Stoflet Lecturer at the University of Iowa, University Libraries. The same year, she was invited to be part of the Internet2 executive committee for Shibboleth Technologies. In 2004, she served on the International Association of Privacy Professionals higher education committee and the National Center on Disability and Access to education national summit on distance education.
Mitrano's published works include "Civil Privacy and National Security Legislation: A Three Dimensional View" and "Copyright, Civil Rights and Middle Age," both in EDUCAUSE Review; "DMCA, TEACH Act, Privacy/Security," in Hot Topics, ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education; "Taking the Mystique Out of the USA-Patriot Act: Information, Process and Protocol," in College & University Auditor; "Privacy on Today's Electronic Campus," in ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education; "The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same: Policy Development in Information Technologies," and "Information Technology Security in Higher Education," as chapters in Managing Information Technology Resources . She has also spoken at numerous conferences and symposiums and given interviews about information technology policy, privacy issues, copyright, USA-Patriot Act and higher education, and campus network vulnerabilities.
 |
Van B. Weigel, Professor of Ethics and Economic Development, Eastern University
"Turning the Lecture on Its Head:
Implementing Discovery-Based Learning and the Teach-to-Learn Concept
Through Communities of Practice"
The contemporary course management system (CMS) is both a blessing and a curse for our evolving understanding of the value of e-learning technologies within the context of higher education.
The upside of the CMS is that popular e-learning platforms like WebCT and Blackboard have provided faculty with an array of user-friendly tools for the rapid publication of course content and management. This has increased our collective knowledge base about successful online practices and the readiness, or lack thereof, of specific student populations for this mode of educational delivery. However, the downside of the CMS is that it canalizes our collective creativity by forcing e-learning technologies into the familiar classroom categories of lectures, discussions, and exams (with an occasional opportunity to chat with the professor or other students after class). The overall effect of these developments is that many educators and administrators are locked into a "classroom on steroids" model of e-learning that is more preoccupied with the categories of accessibility and convenience than pedagogical effectiveness and skill development.
The genetic weakness of the contemporary CMS stems from its uncritical acceptance of the traditional features of the classroom model. This, of course, is understandable, in light of the market-based desire for rapid adoption among faculty and the early association between the CMS and distance learning. The idea that e-learning was going to replace the traditional classroom with a virtual one necessitated a hierarchical, centralized architecture that placed the teacher firmly in control of core classroom interactions and content creation and management.
Weigel will explore the significance of communities of practice for discovery-based learning, emphasizing the value of a "teach-to-learn" model for higher education and highlighting the potential of P2P software in extending the collaborative reach of existing course management systems. This approach emphasizes the importance of empowering students to become educators in their own right, using the lecture as an invitation for critical inquiry and discovery-based learning, in contrast to its traditional use as a professor-to-student medium for transmitting information. Weigel's address will present a menu of technology options that can be used to implement the teach-to-learn model and will discuss the implications of this approach for breaking the e-learning time barrier.
Weigel, a professor of ethics and economic development at Eastern University, received his Ph.D. in ethics and society from the University of Chicago. His doctoral dissertation explored the ethical dimensions of the basic needs approach to economic development. The preliminary findings of his research were published in World Development . He is the author of A Unified Theory of Global Development (Praeger, 1989) -- selected by Choice as an "Outstanding Academic Book."
After the publication of A Unified Theory of Global Development , Dr. Weigel focused on the challenges associated with facilitating strategic institutional change and promoting global environmental responsibility. In 1993, he published an article in World Development , with Elizabeth Morgan and Grant Power, which presented a six-fold typology of action programs for global change. This typology became a basis for a study commissioned by UNICEF that examined the organization's own approach to global change in connection with the 50 th anniversary of the United Nations. He is also the author of Earth Cancer (Praeger, 1995)--a book that critiques ethics and economics in light of the concept of ecological interdependence.
More recently, Weigel has focused his work on the role of technology in nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. Working under a grant from CoreStates Bank in Philadelphia (now Wachovia Bank), he developed the SmartGrant software package, designed to help nonprofit organizations and community groups do strategic planning, proposal writing, and project budgeting. The program can be downloaded free of charge at www.innovate.org.
Weigel is also the author of Deep Learning for a Digital Age: Technology's Untapped Potential for Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2002). The centerpiece of the book is the "knowledge room"--a virtual space where students work collaboratively on research projects, practice skill development, hold discussions and debates, and express themselves creatively. A selection from the book was published as the lead article in September-October 2000 issue of Change ("E-Learning and the Tradeoff Between Richness and Reach in Higher Education").