Alvernia students Eric Schweitzer and Ashley Bauscher developed valuable skills, while making a positive impact in the community by helping Reading, Pa., citizens prepare tax forms.
M assive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) allow academic rock stars to share their prerecorded lectures with students on campuses across the nation and even with yak herders in Tibet. (Really.) There’s intense debate as to whether the rise of the MOOCs heralds the collapse of higher education, or its renaissance. But as
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traditional academics turn a skeptical eye, a growing number of campuses are signing on with the companies (both for profit and non profit) that offer them. More and more professors armed with webcams and a belief in active learning are “flipping the classroom.” With this model, they put their lectures online, which frees up class time for guided discussion, debate and reflection. Conferencing systems and virtual learning environments such as Blackboard are making it easier for professors and students to connect online. With such tools, busy distance-learning students can study when it suits their schedules — the “different time, different place” model of communication called asynchronous online learning — or “meet” as a class in real time for streaming video lectures, online labs and chat-room discussions (the “same time, same place” synchronous model). There is no question online learning can increase access to higher education and lower costs — definite advantages in a down economy. But no matter how interactive, it robs students of direct face-to-face interaction and the opportunity to learn by doing.
Hands-on learning: always in style At Alvernia, experiential learning, which turns the whole world into a classroom, gives students the hands-on experience and skills employers demand. The university’s broad mix of learn-by-doing opportunities includes internships, field work, work/ study, study-abroad programs as well as service learning, a hybrid of experiential learning and community service. “Our ‘learn by doing’ philosophy blends professional skills development with opportunities for community service,” says Provost Shirley Williams. “That helps students discover — and pursue — their passion, while providing meaningful opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others.” Williams says Alvernia’s faculty members understand that students learn best when lessons come alive through out-of-the-classroom experiences and that real-world learning helps students develop capabilities that enable them to thrive in the uncertain circumstances of life. Service learning fosters a deeper understanding of subject matter than classroom learning alone and aligns with Alvernia’s Franciscan tradition of “knowledge joined with love.” Teamed with the university’s community partners — more than 50 in all — students use what they learn in real workplaces, while serving their neighbors. “Students get hands-on experience, and connections for internships and jobs.
Theo Anderson
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f you remember buying your first record album, you probably watched “The Paper Chase,” a TV drama about first-year students at Harvard Law School. In the character of Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr., actor John Houseman gave the American public its most enduring visual cliché of higher education: the cantankerous professor at the lectern, dispensing wisdom and withering glances to a room of silent students. But to today’s generation of academics and students, that image is going the way of the yellow highlighter. At Alvernia, students do as much learning off campus as on, and “class” might meet at the nearby police academy, an area hospital, TV station or elementary school, an organic farm in Kutztown or even the floor of Parliament in London. Meanwhile, on other campuses across the nation, the opposite is occurring, and “going to class” increasingly means firing up a laptop: