Technology-enhanced Learning

Effectively using technology to enhance learning is crucial to the survival of institutions of higher education.

Georgetown is engaging this challenge
head-on, embracing technology-enhanced learning throughout its curriculum by:
- Breaking geographical barriers of traditional learning—allowing students to connect with diverse cultural perspectives and experts around the world
- Helping students learn to write critically and communicate effectively using today’s media
- Providing a highly-interactive learning environment of meaningful feedback, whether socially through blogs or through computer-based adaptive systems
- Optimizing mentorship from Georgetown’s faculty experts
- Accelerating the learning curve from basic knowledge to complex problem solving
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Research-based Learning

Building on the learning of foundational knowledge and engaging students in research and inquiry is essential for equipping them to be professionals, leaders, and citizens in
the 21st century.

Georgetown is infusing its curriculum with research-based learning by:
- Teaching research skills to explore the world’s most pressing challenges
- Taking advantage of unprecedented access to information, by helping students learn how to work with and interpret data, including big data, as part of in-depth analysis
- Crafting coursework so that students contribute meaningfully to public knowledge and the solutions to global challenges
- Expanding opportunities outside the classroom for authentic research across the globe
- Creating innovators who learn from failure and are comfortable with uncertainty
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Integrative Learning

Merging world-class education with commitment to the Jesuit ideal of cura personalis, care of the whole person, Georgetown is dedicated to educating women and men for others who can connect their academic experiences
with the choices they make in life.

Aligning students' lives in and beyond the classroom, Georgetown is:
- Bringing real-life issues into the classroom
  through readings, guest speakers, class discussions, projects, and assignments
- Pushing students to critically reflect on their lives and make transformative personal connections between coursework and their experiences
- Extending classroom discussion and reflection into community-based work
- Creating citizens of the world whose educations and reflective judgment inform the way they live their lives
- Helping students develop empathy for difference and the capacity for civil dialogue
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Open Learning Initiative

Oded Meyer

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI), an online learning platform developed at Carnegie Mellon University with funding from the Hewlett Foundation, is now an integral part of statistics courses at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown.

With guidance from Oded Meyer (Mathematics and Statistics), who helped to develop the Open Learning Initiative system at Carnegie Mellon, Parina Patel (SFS) created online content for her undergraduate and graduate statistics courses.

In a hybrid model that combines the irreplaceable experience of face-to-face instruction with the flexibility and interactivity of an online system, students learn material in large lectures and then practice applying those concepts using OLI in their lab sessions. OLI, which allows each user to work at his or her own pace, gives immediate and targeted feedback to students as they progress through the interactive material. Instructors then can view information about where students are struggling, and target their instruction to address those misconceptions.

To read more about Parina Patel's OLI project, visit this page on the Teaching Commons. Parina Patel is currently working to develop more content for her statistics classes, and hopes that other Georgetown instructors will be able to adapt it for other courses as well.

No machine in the world will ever be able to substitute for an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher. The advantage of OLI is that it does not replace the teacher,
but works in conjunction with the teacher. With OLI, class time can be used by far more effectively.
Oded Meyer (Mathematics and Statistics)

Oded Meyer describes the Open Learning Initiative, how OLI can be used in courses, and its advantages for students and faculty.