Page 46 - Campus Technology, March/April 2020

2019
Category: Education Futurists Institution: Georgia State University Project: Digital Learners to Leaders
Project lead: Tiffany Green-Abdullah, assistant director of learning community development
Tech lineup: Angular, Arduino, HTC Vive, IBM, Raspberry Pi, Reallusion
successful first pilot semester, the program expanded to include larger numbers of students. DLL continues to evolve, holding open-access events that are available to all GSU students.
Inclusivity has been key to making the program work. It’s important to make sure DLL is available to all students, not just those at certain levels or within selected departments. “You don’t have to be narrowly focused on majors to make a huge impact on students,” noted Tiffany Green-
context for better problem solving.
Digital Learners to Leaders is an experiential
learning program aimed at developing the next generation of digital problem solvers through industry partnerships and exposure to digital technologies and the Internet of Things. DLL began as a co-curricular program, seeing its first cohort of 45 students in Spring 2018. After a
Tiffany Green-Abdullah
Abdullah, who first established and led the DLL program from her post in CETL as assistant director of learning community development.
When she begins the Fall 2020 semester, Green-Abdullah will have a faculty position as well as serving under CETL as a strategic consultant for the university, giving guidance as GSU offers, for the first time, DLL in credit-bearing courses. The first of these courses will be offered through GSU’s Creative Media Industries Institute and the larger College of Arts and Sciences.
As CETL looks at moving DLL further into the credit-bearing space, it is exploring ways to bring the program’s experiential learning components to the university’s for-credit classes. The focus is on creating courses aimed at providing professional experiences within the undergraduate curriculum. To do this CETL is leveraging partnerships with campus resources, such as the university’s incubator space. The move to for-credit courses will occur as CETL works with receptive departments to identify courses and degrees that can benefit from the experiential elements provided by DLL. With each DLL implementation, CETL staff expects to see participating students reach new levels of professional potential, supporting the university’s overall “College to Career” initiative.
An important element of DLL has always been its engagement of external corporate and nonprofit communities. DLL first started with a Digital Economy Initiative grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in partnership with Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility. It later expanded with funding from State Farm. Even as DLL grows
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | Mar/Apr 2020