Cases on Higher Education Spaces: Innovation, Collaboration, and Technology, IGI Global
2012
The administration, faculty, and staff at Hostos Community College strive to improve students’ computer and information literacy skills while meeting the distinct needs of Millennials. In 2007, Hostos initiated a project to reconfigure physical spaces throughout the campus (areas in the Library, Academic Learning Center, Educational Technology Office, and Academic Computing Center) and establish a unified virtual space, creating a cross-divisional entity: the Information Learning Commons (ILC). This case discusses the formation of the ILC Committee, the group that envisions and manages physical ILC spaces’ renovation and also develops virtual spaces; the planning and implementation of physical learning commons spaces; the web applications that unify the ILC; the benefits of reducing duplication and optimizing resource utilization; Hostos current challenges with the ILC concept; and finally, the imminent expansion of virtual commons spaces. Hostos is an exemplar in how collaboration can creatively maximize resources through technology to meet students’ needs.
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Common Ground Publisher; Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal
2010
This paper reports on the use of various online technologies to facilitate group-projects at a community college serving a multilingual population in a large metropolitan area. The paper explains why and how wikis, podcasts, and audio-editing software were selected and introduced to and by second language learners to carry out a multi-task project on the historical figure, Thomas Jefferson, an American founding father. It describes features of wikis that not only foster the acquisition of academic language and content, but also help students develop teamwork skills needed for college and workplace success. In short, this paper presents an on-going curricular project to integrate online technologies into ESL content-based instruction (CBI) using student-directed, small-group project work.
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