Burlington Free Press
Dartmouth experiments with future
Narain Batra 12:11 a.m. EDT May 11, 2014
Calculus and Shakespeare are forever but what will be the shape of Dartmouth when the school celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2019? Dr. Phil Hanlon who assumed the college presidency last year has a plan: cluster the faculty brainpower and create experiential learning for students, among other initiatives.
The purpose of developing faculty clusters, teacher-researchers who straddle across disciplines and push the boundaries of traditional thinking is to tackle society’s most troublesome challenges through collaboration. The hope is that disruption of boundaries might result in disruptive innovation if, let’s say, information technology, humanities, business and politics were to cohabitate.
American society has become more open and tolerant of diversity. But academicians live in intellectual silos, most of us publishing in journals that very few people read outside our disciplines.
Bring down the walls; but what better place to do than Dartmouth where bold and innovative thinking is not an uncommon phenomenon. Think of the most recent: the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, which has generated a trailblazing new field of graduate study, promoting international collaboration between researchers and medical practitioners to develop new models of low-cost high-quality health care.
Across-the-discipline collaborations from diverse areas leads to opening up of what the evolutionary biologist Stuart A. Kauffman called as “the adjacent possible,” the door that opens unto another door and creates new possibilites. That’s the potential of cluster faculty.
The cluster hiring initiative that began at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1998 and later was adopted by several universities is now receiving global attention because our problems are global in scope and scale. But it is never too late for Dartmouth, UVM, Middlebury and Norwich to explore its potential, building on the strength of their core disciplines, and challenge their faculty and students to work out solutions to mankind’s big messy problems through collaboration and pooling of multidisciplinary brainpower amplified by digital technologies.
Digital technologies not only can enhance the collective brainpower of the clustered faculty but they can also facilitate the personalization of learning via online learning platforms such as massive open online courses (MOOCs). But in the emerging environment of MOOCs, when Johnny Digital doesn’t have to go to the classroom, experiential learning becomes absolutely necessary.
Experiential learning, popularized by educational psychologist David A. Kolb, is a holistic approach where knowledge is gained through reflective observation and hands-on do-it-yourself experimentation. Students learn outside the classroom where a sponsoring organization provides structured programs to supplement their classroom academic experience leading to enrichment of learning and skills. It’s the site where the Millennials (Pew Research Center calls them: “Confident. Connected, Open to Change”) interact with the Boomers (Always worried about retirement and health care).
How to bring experiential learning to hundreds of undergraduate students in the age of MOOCs is going to be a big challenge especially for Dartmouth and Vermont schools because of their isolation from metro areas, places where students normally find opportunities for experiential learning, on-the-training jobs and internships.
Dartmouth has embraced MOOCs and digital learning, which according to MIT president L. Rafael Reif, “is the most important innovation in education since the printing press.” The printing press broke up the stranglehold of the religious establishment and liberated the European mind. Digital learning is questioning us as to why we teach the way we do. Why does Jane Digital have to spend four years on the UVM campus?
Changing four-year on-campus undergraduate learning to a blended three-year on-campus and one-year off-campus supervised experiential learning model will result in highly employable youth. Most of all it will free the faculty from excessive routine teaching and enable them to collaborate across disciples and schools to do research on society’s pressing problems.
Narain Batra, of Hartford, is author of The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation, teaches digital media, law, ethics, and criticism, as well as diplomacy at Norwich University.
Calculus and Shakespeare are forever but what will be the shape of Dartmouth when the school celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2019? Dr. Phil Hanlon who assumed the college presidency last year has a plan: cluster the faculty brainpower and create experiential learning for students, among other initiatives.
The purpose of developing faculty clusters, teacher-researchers who straddle across disciplines and push the boundaries of traditional thinking is to tackle society’s most troublesome challenges through collaboration. The hope is that disruption of boundaries might result in disruptive innovation if, let’s say, information technology, humanities, business and politics were to cohabitate.
American society has become more open and tolerant of diversity. But academicians live in intellectual silos, most of us publishing in journals that very few people read outside our disciplines.
Bring down the walls; but what better place to do than Dartmouth where bold and innovative thinking is not an uncommon phenomenon. Think of the most recent: the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, which has generated a trailblazing new field of graduate study, promoting international collaboration between researchers and medical practitioners to develop new models of low-cost high-quality health care.
Across-the-discipline collaborations from diverse areas leads to opening up of what the evolutionary biologist Stuart A. Kauffman called as “the adjacent possible,” the door that opens unto another door and creates new possibilites. That’s the potential of cluster faculty.
The cluster hiring initiative that began at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1998 and later was adopted by several universities is now receiving global attention because our problems are global in scope and scale. But it is never too late for Dartmouth, UVM, Middlebury and Norwich to explore its potential, building on the strength of their core disciplines, and challenge their faculty and students to work out solutions to mankind’s big messy problems through collaboration and pooling of multidisciplinary brainpower amplified by digital technologies.
Digital technologies not only can enhance the collective brainpower of the clustered faculty but they can also facilitate the personalization of learning via online learning platforms such as massive open online courses (MOOCs). But in the emerging environment of MOOCs, when Johnny Digital doesn’t have to go to the classroom, experiential learning becomes absolutely necessary.
Experiential learning, popularized by educational psychologist David A. Kolb, is a holistic approach where knowledge is gained through reflective observation and hands-on do-it-yourself experimentation. Students learn outside the classroom where a sponsoring organization provides structured programs to supplement their classroom academic experience leading to enrichment of learning and skills. It’s the site where the Millennials (Pew Research Center calls them: “Confident. Connected, Open to Change”) interact with the Boomers (Always worried about retirement and health care).
How to bring experiential learning to hundreds of undergraduate students in the age of MOOCs is going to be a big challenge especially for Dartmouth and Vermont schools because of their isolation from metro areas, places where students normally find opportunities for experiential learning, on-the-training jobs and internships.
Dartmouth has embraced MOOCs and digital learning, which according to MIT president L. Rafael Reif, “is the most important innovation in education since the printing press.” The printing press broke up the stranglehold of the religious establishment and liberated the European mind. Digital learning is questioning us as to why we teach the way we do. Why does Jane Digital have to spend four years on the UVM campus?
Changing four-year on-campus undergraduate learning to a blended three-year on-campus and one-year off-campus supervised experiential learning model will result in highly employable youth. Most of all it will free the faculty from excessive routine teaching and enable them to collaborate across disciples and schools to do research on society’s pressing problems.
Narain Batra, of Hartford, is author of The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation, teaches digital media, law, ethics, and criticism, as well as diplomacy at Norwich University.
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