Title: Georgetown Invests $8 Million in Tech-Enhanced Learning

DECEMBER 4, 2012GEORGETOWN HAS ANNOUNCED AN$8 million investment in an Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL) to enrich teaching on campus through technology and to strengthen the university’s online activity globally.

The university’s ITEL investment will support faculty grants to encourage creative approaches to course development and will enhance existing information technology infrastructure to support higher network volume.

“Over the next three years, we will support a number of faculty who wish to integrate technology into their classes to improve the ways that students interact with course material, each other and their professors,” says Georgetown President John J. DeGioia.

EXTRAORDINARY OPPORTUNITIES

The total investment also will fund a partnership with a consortium of universities committed to enhancing education both on campus and online.

The partnership could be announced as soon as this month, DeGioia says.

“A partnership like this will present extraordinary opportunities for our community,” he adds, “including new ways to enliven our tradition and fulfill our mission, particularly deepening our work as a global research university.”

TRANSFORMED LEARNING

Georgetown Provost Robert Groves announced ITEL plans earlier this fall.

“ITEL’s work is shaped by a set ofprinciples and goalsthat includes transforming the way the university helps students learn foundational knowledge in fields and enhancing the opportunities for students to develop research skills and analytic abilities,” he says.

Groves says the grants, for which faculty may apply next semester, will allow Georgetown to build upon the successful classroom innovation already in progress at the university.

ENHANCING COLLABORATION

Examples include the distance-education version of Georgetown’s Master of Science in Nursing, as well as the interactive learning that comes from faculty using blogs, clickers and other approaches in the classroom.

“We want this initiative to encourage faculty collaboration within and across academic units, as well as launch new collaboration between faculty and students,” says Groves.

Whether individuals are novices or well-versed in technological forms of learning, faculty members may seek grants from one of three categories – demonstration grants, design and implementation grants, and transformation grants.

A GOOD INVESTMENT

Each grant allows for varying levels of support and technological approaches that are already in use or to turn face-to-face courses into courses that are totally online.

“These grants are a good investment in our faculty, allowing them the freedom to develop pilot projects or to experiment with new approaches to teaching,” says Groves. “By creating new opportunities to support innovation among our faculty, we are strengthening our investment in the intellectual resources of our own community.”

For more information, visit theITEL grants website.