The Chico Balloon Project
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The Chico Red Balloon Project: Re-Imagining the Chico Learning Experience DARPA AASCU CSU, CHICO September 2011 The Chico Red Balloon Project Team Sarah Blakeslee Kathy A. Fernandes Gayle E. Hutchinson William M. Loker Margaret A. Owens William E. Post Arno J. Rethans http://www.csuchico.edu/academicreorg/documents/Red%20Balloon.pdf Page ii TABLE OF CONTENTS The Red Balloon Contest………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1 The AASCU’s Red Balloon Project…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2 Project Impetus…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Project Goals……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2 Drivers of Change………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3 Creating New Educational Models………………………………………………………………………………………………4 The Chico Red Balloon Project: The Challenge…………………………………………………………………………………………5 The Chico Red Balloon Project: The Vision……………………………………………………………………………………………….5 The Chico Red Balloon Project: Translating Vision into Reality……………………………………………………………….6 Role of Learning Sciences…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7 Role of Technology-Based Tools………………………………………………………………………………………………….8 Role of Faculty…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Role of Students………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Role of Enabling Support Programs………………………………………………………………..…………………………10 Role of Learning Spaces…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Role of Assessment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………13 Role of Leadership…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14 Realizing the Chico Red Balloon Vision: The 2011 – 2012 Steps………………………………………….………………….15 Recommended Readings……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….17 Recommended Resources……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..18 Page iii Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….19 Learning Powered by Technology………………………………………………………………………………………………19 Math that Moves: Schools Embrace the iPad……………………….……………………………………………………21 Turning the Classroom Upside Down…………………………………………………………………………………………22 Learning Unbound…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24 A Vision for Learning – Year 2020…………………………………………………………………..…………………………25 Page iv The Red Balloon Contest On December 5, 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Network Challenge conducted the DARPA Network Challenge 1 (DNC), a social network mobilization experiment to identify distributed mobilization strategies and demonstrate how quickly a challenging geo- location problem could be solved by crowd-sourcing. Ten numbered, 8- foot, red balloons were simultaneously launched and moored in parks across the contiguous United States. The first person to report to DARPA the correct locations of all ten balloons was awarded a $40,000 prize. DARPA announced the Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the ARPANet, pre- cursor to today’s Internet, to explore how broad-scope problems can be tackled using social networking tools. The Challenge was to explore basic research issues such as mobilization, collaboration, and trust in diverse social networking constructs and could serve to fuel innovation across a wide spectrum of applications. The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team was the first to identify the locations of all 10 balloons and won the $40,000 cash prize. Winning time: 8 hrs and 52 min! 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgB8ucWqRUs Page 1 The AASCU’s Red Balloon Project Project Impetus Reading about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) experiment, triggered a ‘red balloon’ moment for George L. Mehaffy, Vice President for Academic Leadership and Change of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).2 To him, the Red Balloon contest served as a metaphor for a newly-networked world. This new way of generating, aggregating and disseminating information, he thought, has profound implications for higher education. It challenges our long-held practices of teaching and learning, institutional organization and structure, and, indeed, the very notion of expertise. At the same time, he concluded, the Red Balloon contest can also serve as an analogy for how a community of higher education institutions and their national association can work together to promote and support change in higher education. Project Goals The goal of the Red Balloon Project is to collaboratively create models of undergraduate education that: 1. Will allow us to successfully educate, with fewer resources, an increasing number of students who are likely to be more culturally, linguistically, and racially more diverse than our current students. 2. Utilize educational technologies to better engage students in authentic learning experiences more aligned with the ways that knowledge is being generated, aggregated and disseminated in an age of networked knowledge. 3. Provide students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities they will need to become successful participants in careers, engaged citizens in a democracy, and thoughtful leaders in the global society of the 21st century. 3 The Red Balloon Project is intended to use the power of a group of higher education institutions working together. Accordingly, at its heart, the Project is designed to be a learning community of AASCU institutions in which we can all learn faster together. 2 George L. Mehaffy, The Red Balloon Project: Re-Imagining Undergraduate Education, AASCU 2010. 3 From AASCU’s Red Balloon Project website: http://www.aascu.org/programs/redballoon/index.htm# Page 2 Drivers for Change Universities are said to be at a critical crossroad. “They are both at great risk of competitive disruption and potentially poised for an innovation-fueled renaissance.”4 To continue to play their indispensible function in the new environment for higher education they must bring about change more fundamentally and more quickly than they are accustomed to. 5 They must, it is suggested, genetically reengineer themselves. While the language of crisis is nothing new to higher education, the current set of drivers of the crisis is perceived to be of a disruptive nature.6 E. Gordon Gee, President of Ohio State University, in his Robert H. Atwell Lecture at the American Council on Education Annual Meeting in 2009 remarked: “… the choice for higher education during this critical juncture is 7 reinvention or extinction.” 4 Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring, The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, p. xxii. 5 Ibid., p. 379. 6 Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, Louis Caldera and Louis Soares, Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can Deliver Quality and Affordability to Postsecondary Education, February 2011 at http://www.innosightinstitute.org/ 7 See http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/09/gee Page 3 Creating New Educational Models Mehaffy has noted that ... “The model of the university as a collection of experts … the model of teaching that requires expert knowledge … the model of an institution that requires the physical presence of human beings … all … are being called into question in the Information Age.” Put simply …”the present dismal financial circumstances, growing expectations, and rapidly developing technologies, challenge us to develop new, more sustainable, more effective, and more adaptive educational models.”8 In response, the AASCU Red Balloon Project has identified to following areas for its Red Balloon Initiatives: 8 George L. Mehaffy, The Red Balloon Project: Re-Imagining Undergraduate Education, AASCU 2010, p. 16 Page 4 Chico Red Balloon Project: The Challenge “Our duty is to wholly reinvent ourselves. We are America’s future— intellectually, socially and culturally.”9 The essential question facing us is: “What should the Chico Learning Model of the 21st century look like?” 10 Stated more operationally, “How do we leverage Chico’s current unique learning assets with insights from the new learning sciences and new technology-based tools to create engaging personalized Chico learning experiences that mirror the future as well as the reality of our students’ daily lives?” Chico Red Balloon Project: The Vision CSU, Chico considers itself a vibrant learning community. It is widely known for its excellence in learning; especially for its role in facilitating student learning and student success. Given its rich history of innovation in pedagogy and in the use of information and communication technologies, it is well poised to partake in the next round of exploration and experimentation with alternative educational models. In fact, the Chico Academic Plan calls for the pursuit of ‘active, collaborative and transformative pedagogies’ and for ‘ensuring learner access to the most effective information and learning resources.’ 11 Within this historic and strategic context, we foster engaging and empowering learning experiences for our students—both inside and outside the classroom—through innovative pedagogies and the use of state-of-the-art information and communication technologies. We create enriching and personalized learner-centered learning environments by building out university-wide learning and teaching infrastructures and providing seamless access to 21st century digital learning opportunities and resources. Realizing this vision is no small task and will require revolutionary transformation rather than evolutionary tinkering. Building capacity for this transformation requires commitment, collaboration and investment for success. As we