Following up on my post on Developing vision for teaching with technology, I am pleased to provide an example of how one university has gone about the process of visioning and the results. (Thanks to Anne Moore, Associate Vice President, Learning Technologies, Virginia Tech, for directing me to this).
Virginia Tech was one of the most effective ‘managers’ of learning technologies in our 11 case studies in our book: ‘Managing Technology in Higher Education.‘ It is not surprising then that they have just developed an exciting new vision, called Invent the Future: VT 2020. VT set up a Task Force whose work was guided by three questions:
- What should students know and be able to do to actively engage life in the modern world over the course of their lives?
- What should Virginia Tech’s aims be to enable students to meet their learning needs today?
- What does Virginia Tech need to do to support students’ learning needs for the foreseeable future?
The Task Force’s web site has a number of sections on
The latter section provides a set of strategies or recommendations that include not only teaching and learning, but also organization and administrative systems. The web site is stuffed full with great ideas and thoughts on what should and could be done in the future.
However, for me what is more important is the process they have followed, which has engaged a wide range of faculty and administrative staff. Although the report has many recommendations, what matters is what’s happened within the brains of those that participated. This will affect all their thinking from now on about the possible ways in which technology might be used for teaching and learning.
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.
Great to see this example and it proves that a student centric model with current assessments for quality assurance is likely to succeed for a long time.