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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2001: article | |
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School of Information Sciences and Technology and partners deliver on-line course By Susan J. Burlingame | ||||||
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One of the goals of the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is to be an asset to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to Dr. James B. Thomas, dean, “The school not only benefits students of Penn State, but it also benefits other higher education institutions, as well as K through 12 around the state.” With the creative development of an on-line version of Introduction to Information Sciences and Technology, also called IST 110, the school found one way to reach out to these Commonwealth audiences. (The e-version of the course, along with a growing number of others, is delivered in partnership with Penn State’s World Campus.) For Penn State undergraduate Information Sciences and Technology majors, IST 110 is the foundation core course. Students are required to take it during their first year at the University, either on-line or in the traditional classroom setting. In both forms, IST 110 is unlike many other courses in the approach to learning it follows. Designed around a problem-based pedagogy, the course includes four problem modules that students, divided into “consulting” teams, are required to solve. Each team’s goal is to address the problem by researching, analyzing and gaining knowledge about all the related issues, such as technical, organizational, legal and privacy issues. The team members’ grades are based on the quality of the solutions they pose for each problem. “This is a new approach to learning,” said Cole Camplese, who oversaw the development of IST 110 as director of education and training solutions in the IST Solutions Institute. “We use collaborative teams to encourage real-world problem solving using discovery-based learning. Students learn by discovering solutions to the problems as opposed to textbook or rote learning.” The course’s discovery-based learning approach was only one of its outstanding features. In its on-line form, IST 110 was designed so students anywhere — elsewhere in the state, at another university or in another country — could take it, as well. “The idea was to develop an on-line course that we could deliver to multiple audiences using multiple delivery systems,” explained Dr. Frederick D. Loomis, who led the school’s early outreach efforts as the first director of the IST Solutions Institute before taking on new duties for Penn State. These multiple delivery methods allowed IST to partner with Juniata College, State College Area High School and others to offer the course for their students, as well. Shawn Foley, IST instructional Web coordinator, helped develop the on-line version of IST 110 and also teaches the course. “We can deliver this course in a number of different ways,” he said, as he explained its asynchronous quality, which allows students to work independently. “It’s anytime, anywhere learning. Basically, I am very flexible with the students. I fill the role of a mentor more than a traditional lecture-type teacher. When students have a question, they ask me. I give them feedback on assignments and everyone works at his or her own pace.” Because this course was successfully developed and being implemented, Juniata College was able to tap Penn State IST resources when educators there were setting up their new Information Technology Program. Juniata College formed an external advisory board, which included Thomas. According to Dr. James Lakso, Juniata College provost, “Jim Thomas suggested we could test the IST program courses being developed at Penn State. We modified IST 110 for our small, liberal arts setting,” he said, as he explained how it made sense to work with a successful product rather than inventing a new one. “This partnership has been mutually beneficial,” Lakso added. “It has been a good way for us to introduce information technology to our students, and it has supplied valuable information to Penn State in terms of how the course has evolved.” “Juniata was our first partner,” Thomas said. “They took the course that we licensed to them, and we helped their faculty learn how to deliver it on-line.” The collaboration expanded when Juniata College involved eight high schools in the Commonwealth, and Penn State tested the course with State College Area High School students and students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The students from the high school had their own problem-solving team. “The five IUP students were taking the same course at the same time. So, in one course, we had Penn State undergraduates, State College high school students and IUP students,” Thomas explained. “We received a Link-to-Learn Grant,” Lakso said. “We decided in addition to experimenting with our campus, we would try adding a high school component. We have a distance learning facility, and we involved the eight high schools whose students, for free, were ‘bridged’ into our classroom to take the course along with college students.” With some modification, the course is being delivered again in fall 2001. Dr. Dennis Johnson is the professor who delivers the course for Juniata College. “We have a responsibility to expose (Juniata) students to the Web and to technology,” he said. “This course is very well designed.” He also touted the partnership aspect of working with Penn State to offer IST 110 to Juniata College students. “The partnership has been really nice,” Johnson said. “It has never been viewed as ‘them helping us,’ but rather we’ve been working together. It is as though they [Penn State] are developing a course textbook that we are able to use and modify.” He was one of the presenters at the 2001 IST Faculty Academy held at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel last summer. The Faculty Academy annually brings together educators to delve into issues of e-learning. In his session, Johnson talked about delivering IST 110 at Juniata College and the unique challenges in offering it in a small, liberal arts setting. He said, “Students have been the ones to come up with some of the best suggestions for modifying the course.” Foley explained the importance of communication for IST 110 students, noting, “The most important thing is to encourage students to communicate among themselves. We are teaching people to think more in terms of having on-line discussions by using electronic resources and tools. That way we can respond to our students and they can get to know each other.” For more information about IST 110: Introduction to Information Sciences and Technology, visit https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/welcome/ist110/. An outreach program of the School of Information Sciences and Technology and Penn State World Campus | |||||
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