Excited

Yesterday, former colleagues from the World Campus and a faculty member from the College of Education, presented a workshop for the Humphrey Fellows on how engagement is facilitated in programs offered via the distance/online campus. Earlier in the academic year, a group of the Fellows asked me to present a seminar on quality assurance in distance education. In it I noted that student-faculty and student-student interaction facilitated by cutting hedge technology has been one of the quality factors that has made the World Campus an online educational leader over the last 20 years. Yesterday’s workshop was a follow-up requested by the Fellows. The workshop took place in one of the high tech studios (classrooms) of the Krause Studios for Innovation in the College of Education. Courses from the Master of Special Education program were used as examples.

As can be seen in the following photos, the Fellows were particularly excited by the demonstration of virtual reality and how it is being used to support student learning, irrespective of how the course is accessed by learners (e.g., computer, table, cell phone).

The Fellows also were excited to learn that the mother of one of the presenters had been in Humphrey Fellow at Penn State in 2002. She later returned to earn a PhD. She also encouraged her son to come to Penn State for a Master’s Degree in Instruction Design, which led to him being hired by the World Campus.