Awarded Grant: $20,000 Principal Investigator: Lorette Pellettiere Calix, Empire State College Only a very small percentage of students are able to take advantage of study abroad programs and many groups are underrepresented. The goal of this pilot project is to eventually provide the opportunity for all SUNY students to participate in a virtual term abroad. Researchers will analyze and try to resolve technical issues related to international collaboration and will compare a variety of tools for learner engagement and promoting cross cultural and/or international interaction. The “lessons learned” from the easily replicable pilot could help improve the quality of international collaborations and broaden student opportunities for an international experience. Co-PI’s and Key Partners: Patrice Prusko Torcivia, Empire State College Oscar Leon, Quality Leadership University (QLU) – Panama Reports and Resources: 2013 Sloan Blended Conference Presentation This report discusses the technology used to support a virtual term abroad. We hope to edit it and publish at a future date. VTA-tech-assessment-report-final.pdf This is a bibliography of resources related to our topic. It includes an author abstract or clip from each article, as well as some of our working notes. Bibliography-Virtual-Term-Abroad.pdf Pre- and post- collaboration surveys for both students and participating faculty. Bibliography-Virtual-Term-Abroad1.pdf DISCUSSION-ANALYSIS-SHEET-1.xlsx A form used to help analyze the blog discussions using formulas developed by: Bliss, C and Lawrence, B.(2009). From posts to patterns: A metric to characterize discussion board activity in online courses. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, v13 n2 p15-32 http://www.cems.uvm.edu/~cabliss/Discussion_Paper_Bliss-Lawrence-2009.pdf. A form we used for virtual sessions to record technology used and related issues and resolutions. TECH-LOG.docx Project outcomes report Publications: This article discusses the value of a Virtual Term Abroad. It will be published in All About Mentoring at the end of this year. The-Value-of-a-Virtual-Term-Abroad-AAM-final.pdf Creative Commons License:

Throughout our educational system there is a growing need to understand, support and increase student success. Research has gone into defining characteristics that lead to student success. The authors assert that continued assessment of students and use of assessment data to create interventions and redesign curriculum lead to a state of continued improvement for the institution, its faculty and students while maintaining a strong relationship to the current tools used in any of the disciplines. Our goals for Phase One of this project are to develop, and validate an instrument designed to predict student success based on individual learner characteristics and the learner’s level of engagement with information and communication technology (ICT). The outcome of Phase One is a validated instrument and scoring rubric to assess learner readiness (SUNY Prep, Learner Preparedness Survey).

This project will develop a template that can be used for supporting interdisciplinary ‘alternate reality’ simulations that are collectively played by students using the Web. These simulations ask participants to analyze a fictional problem based on real-life situations, articulate a variety of possible responses to it, and examine the question of what form action should take in the real world after the simulation. The exercise combines online interaction with face-to-face activities that support the learning process. The template and the simulation guide will be released under an open access license.

Awarded Grant: $15,000 Principal Investigator: Gary Halada, Stony Brook University At Stony Brook University we will create an electronic portfolio approach to ensure a meaningful, academically rigorous outcome from internships, including a template based upon standards and goals of experiential learning and a website which connects students with internships and builds dissemination with the Long Island Alternative Energy Consortium of seven academic institutions dedicated to strengthening energy education. The project includes workshops for internship supervisors, representatives from regional industrial associations, faculty coordinators, and experts in experiential learning, eportfolios and assessment, to enhance the template and website, explore best practices for experiential learning, generate internships, and assess progress and benefits to both student learning and workforce development. Reports and Resources: Poster presentation from the “SPARKS of INNOVATION: The Future of Teaching and Learning” conference at Stony Brook University, Friday, April 12, 2013, entitled “Electronic Portfolios to Enhance Experiential Learning and Assessment in Internship Courses”. The poster summarizes the design of the project in which electronic portfolios (eportfolios) are to be used as an ideal mechanism to enhance experiential learning in undergraduate internships. Eportfolios are envisioned as a method to enhance instructors’ ability to assess student learning outcomes and the ability of industrial mentors to supervise and direct interns. Further, we show how eportfolios, through student reflection and direct assessment of activities, can help programs meet the challenges of program accreditation. IITG-poster-Halada.pdf Oral presentation from the “SPARKS of INNOVATION: The Future of Teaching and Learning” conference at Stony Brook University, Friday, April 12, 2013, entitled “Electronic Portfolios to Enhance Experiential Learning and Assessment in Internship Courses”. e-internship-Sparks-presentation-2013.pdf A video of the presentation is available for download: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx4tkG7Nn9I The electronic portfolio template developed for this project details what is expected as learning outcomes from students in internships. InternEmployersurveyed2012.doc Project Website: https://stonybrook.digication.com/engineering_internships/Welcome/ Project outcomes report Creative Commons License: