Innovation Fund Enhances Extension Course Offerings

Video-on-demand lectures, Web slide show presentations, list servers, on-line teaching assistants, interactive Q & A testing, and virtual field trips are new tools of the trade for John Spengler, George Buckley, and Petros Koutrakis, instructors of three Harvard Extension School courses.

Thanks to the Harvard Extension School's Instructional Innovation Fund, more than 150 students will benefit from course enhancements designed to allow distance learning from home or office in addition to regularly scheduled class time. NSCI E-126 Environmental Management I, NSCI E-127 Environmental Management II, and NSCI E-133c Ocean Environments offer students seven-day, 24-hour access to selected course materials via the Web (http://lab.dce.harvard.edu/environment).

Established this year, the Instructional Innovation Fund provides financial support to faculty members who want to introduce innovations into existing courses or to develop new offerings. "Excellent teaching has always been a hallmark of the Harvard Extension School, and with this fund we have signaled our abiding commitment to this principle," said Dean of Continuing Education Michael Shinagel. All instructors were invited to submit applications, and the Spengler-Buckley-Koutrakis team put together an impressive proposal.

For their three natural science courses, the Extension School Fund is providing comprehensive support, including a grant to develop and program environmental management websites, access for their students to the new 53a Church Street computing facility, and the videotaping of classes by Harvard's Instructional Media Services.

The environmental management websites feature easy to navigate pull-down menus and frame sets, and employ the newest capabilities of the Web such as Java, Javascript, ActiveX, video streaming, animation, and sound. This spring, NSCI E-127 and E-133c will experiment with Web video conferencing (remote guest lectures) and push technology, a new capability of Web browsers to download high bandwidth data (big files) during off-peak hours.

During the fall, student involvement in the website development process was a key ingredient in the success of the project. Many students in NSCI E-126 assisted in the production of the Cape Cod virtual field trip, sharing their experiences with each other and future classes. More than 80 percent of the students submitted work for publication on the website. Undergraduate credit students took photographs, shot video, and wrote narratives, while graduate credit students designed web presentations.

George Buckley, instructor in NSCI E-126 and E-133c, is pleased with the results so far. "The Extension School's Instructional Innovation Fund supports a unique opportunity for students to be involved in their course work as active learners. They are able to interact with their instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students; make significant contributions to the website; and participate in virtual field trips. The expanded repertoire of learning opportunities provided by these experiences is a most valuable addition to the courses."

Another Innovation Fund winner is just beginning to see results. Thomas Raymond, instructor of CSS-500 Effective Written Communication, along with his teaching assistants, applied for funds to collect and edit student-written case studies and develop pilot sections to address the needs of international students. During the fall, the instructors created an anthology of case studies dealing with international management communication issues, and they hope to be able to use it as a textbook in future years. This spring, a small number of CSS-500 students are participating in a section devoted to cross-cultural perspectives on persuasive managerial writing. Using the student-written cases assembled in the fall, they will examine communication problems and conventions that managers encounter around the world.

The students enrolled in the pilot section believe that the trend toward corporate globalization compels businesspeople to become fluent in the varying mores and nuances that govern international communication. This is especially so for Americans, who are often stereotyped abroad as superficial, boorish, and parochial. But it is also true for those from other countries who may be stymied by the "cut-to-the-chase" informality characteristic of business writing in the United States.

Two other funded proposals are just getting off the ground: Joanna Rohrbaugh will use her instructional innovation grant to convert existing course materials to new formats that will allow greater student interaction in her social science courses on the psychology of gender. Doug Bond, instructor of GOVT E-1025/W Democracy, Violence, and Empowerment and SSCI E-100 Introduction to Graduate Study in Social Sciences, will use his grant to develop a Web-based software system designed to assist students in conducting comparative case research on contemporary political conflict. This student system is part of the Asia-Specific Information and Analysis (ASIA) project sponsored by the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, a unit of the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

According to Dr. Bond, a distinctive aspect of the software system will be its repository of global news report "event data" on conflict and cooperation. These event data will bring together reports on armed conflict, political crises and protests (both violent and nonviolent), as well as routine political interactions. The software system will enable students to link these event data to related information on the unique social, cultural, economic, and political regimes in which the events take place.

"It is important to note," said Dean Shinagel, "that all of the winning Innovation Fund proposals share a commitment to active involvement of adult learners in the educational process." Whether they succeed is still to be determined, but if fall-term course evaluations are any indication, they seem to be on the right track. As one NSCI E-126 student wrote, "This is way cool."