Page 44 - Campus Technology, March/April 2019

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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | March/April 2019
2018
Category: Education Futurists Institution: Drexel University Project: Virtually Inspired
Project Leads: Susan C. Aldridge, president, Drexel University Online, and Marci Powell, project director and researcher, Virtually Inspired, CEO/president, Marci Powell & Associates, and chair emerita and past president, United States Distance Learning Association
Tech lineup: Adobe, GoDaddy, MailChimp, Seer Interactive, WordPress
At Drexel University (PA), a long-standing culture of community leadership has often benefitted surrounding or relat- ed communities with new or better access to digital technology advancements. One exem- plary initiative, back in the early 2000s, brought enhanced IT services to more than 50 institutional partners via an ASP model — a strategy that received a Campus Technology Innovators award in 2006. Now in 2018, we are recognizing Drexel University Online (DUO) for “Virtually Inspired,” a project designed to reach out to the education com- munity worldwide, with resources and exam- ples to help institutions integrate digital tech- nologies into their online and blended learning programs.
It all began a little more than three years ago, when DUO leadership noticed that the education community as a whole was still struggling to remain ahead of the learning curve when it came to providing effective access to high-quality online and blended education — especially given the ever- increasing numbers of tools and applications in today’s technology-driven environment.
So, DUO looked carefully at the surround- ing landscape. “We saw a widening divide between the academic content delivery meth- ods of educators and student expectations,”
explained project co-lead Susan C. Aldridge, senior vice president for online learning at Drexel University and president of Drexel University Online. “It was clear to us what was needed: easily accessible and consum- able information around inventive and repli- cable strategies for institutions interested in closing that gap.”
DUO began researching the problem inten- sively in May 2015, determined to find a way to offer practical as well as insightful help to the education community. Project co-lead Marci Powell, CEO/president of Marci Powell & Associates and USDLA chair emerita and past president, leads the research for Virtually Inspired.
Research for the ambitious, ongoing project initially included many dozens of interviews with faculty, administrators and professional development trainers to define problems and recommend solutions. And after investigating literally hundreds of innovative approaches, DUO selected just over 100 case studies that could help institutions identify their goals and their own steps forward.
In June 2016 DUO launched its Virtually Inspired website, which provides new video case studies and supporting content on a reg- ular schedule, covering topics like technology- enhanced education, augmented reality, vir- tual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, gamification, simulation, virtual worlds and more. This open, evolving repository features a rich array of best practices for connected learning, along with project descriptions, vid- eos and other useful supplemental links.
Virtually Inspired uses relatively common technologies to convey uncommon ideas about the more sophisticated tools and pro- grams that will become the keys to success for institutions as they form their plans. The technologies used to create, and probably more importantly, to update Virtually Inspired, include the suite of tools from Adobe (for flexible and flawless video and