As one of his final acts as university provost, Nariman Farvardin has called on professors to develop new hybrid courses that aim to spice up traditional lecture classes with a dash of creativity and technological innovation.
Known as “blended learning courses,” these new classes seek to combine the face-to-face, in-classroom experience with online interactions between faculty and students. By utilizing information technology tools — such as simulations, visualizations and interactive media — officials said the concept will evolve and enhance large lecture-style classes with low success rates.
His office sent out a campus-wide proposal for such courses, which will receive $25,000 to $100,000 in funding. And although many acknowledged that these technology-heavy courses could cater to the hard science disciplines, officials said humanities courses are readily embracing innovative teaching techniques.
“If we can use technology to improve the student success rate and the student learning experience in these important courses, you can have a profound impact on this university,” said Farvardin, who will be leaving this university at the end of the month to assume the presidency of Stevens Institute of Technology.
Arts and humanities college Dean James Harris said technology is alive and well in humanities courses, noting the establishment of 10 online classes over winter break.
“Blended learning and online courses appear to me to work very well within the humanities,” Harris wrote in an e-mail to The Diamondback. “The question, to my mind, is not whether these courses can be used or are attractive to students and faculty — they are — it is whether they are of high quality and particularly of ‘as high or higher’ a quality as found in our classroom courses.”
And according to some professors, when Farvardin first appointed a committee to develop criteria for these courses in October, there was worry across the campus that these new courses would replace instructors with computer screens.
“A real concern from just everybody around the table was that what was being proposed was to turn us into another University of Phoenix,” said economics professor and committee member Robert Schwab. “But then it became clearer and clearer that a completely different set of models was available, and it was much richer and much more interesting. It’s using technology to enhance the courses that are offered, not simply moving UMCP online.”
Officials said several university courses already in existence are being taught like blended learning courses and their success suggests more classes with such an approach will be popular among students.
JOUR289I: 3.0 Exploring Technological Tools — a social media class with enrollment from all majors — heavily utilizes out-of-classroom research and classwork through blogging, Tweeting, online forums, ePortfolios and iPhones Professor Ronald Yaros provides the class.
Yaros said while the different approach was initially overwhelming to students, it made the material come alive in the end.
“It’s a novel approach, one that at first you kind of have to understand the big picture of where we’re going with this,” said Yaros, who sat on the blended learning committee. “Then a few weeks later they’re walking into the room with a big picture of how technology and learning can be applied in their fields, and based on the final evaluations, they seem to love it.”
Schwab said he plans to propose a new blended learning approach for ECON 200 — a course Schwab described as hard to teach, hard to sit through and hard to pass. His plan, he said, is to integrate the traditional approach with online chatrooms in place of typical discussion sections and online computer simulations of buyer-and-seller games.
“It’s really to engage the students and get them more interested in what’s going on,” Schwab said. “ECON 200 is the perfect candidate because so many students take the course and if we make more of those kind of courses, lots of students will benefit.”
Because these classes come with a hefty price tag and require a great deal of technological effort to set up, the Office of Information Technology plans to hold a series of workshops for faculty before the proposals are due. In addition to introducing them to various tools available, OIT officials said they will also help faculty develop the courses after they are approved.
“It’s going to be difficult for some of the faculty,” said acting Chief Information Officer Joseph Jaja, who leads the technological aspect of the initiative. “This is not just putting PowerPoint slides online. It takes much, much more work and it takes creative technology.”
But Jaja said his office is committed to supporting the technological aspects of these courses. It is the professor’s job, he said, to bring the creativity so that they can work together to enhance student learning.
“We want the whole campus to advance, not just a few departments or a few majors or a few courses,” Jaja said. “We want to get as many faculty engaged as possible and broaden it greatly.”
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