ICDE partners with Drexel University Online (DUO) to share curated content
From holographs and educational games, to drones and robots, 21st century educators are forging new and amazing trails in technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Yet given the dizzying pace of digital innovation, it can feel overwhelming to stay on top of it all.
ICDE has partnered with Drexel University Online (DUO) to share curated content, designed to provide an easy way for professionals to become familiar with the technologies and applications that are transforming online, open and flexible learning around the world. Our partnership now affords our members access to Virtually Inspired, a website based resource center highlighting how educators are inventing the future of connected learning.
After conducting dozens of interviews with faculty, administrators, and training officers worldwide, DUO compiled more than 70 case studies that exemplify virtual success, using some of the latest and greatest technologies in both online and traditional classrooms.
Virtually Inspired serves as a repository for knowledge-sharing; a place where educators facing the unique opportunities and challenges of the digital age can come for inspiration. Anchored by Dr. Susan Aldridge, President for Drexel University Online and Marci Powell, U.S. Distance Learning Association Chair Emeritus and Past President, this website’s high-quality videos provide a quick and easy way to see how creative professionals around the globe are infusing learning with technology.
Curated content examples include research-validated, easy-to-implement models for employing robotic telepresence at Michigan State University, and gamification for teaching statistics at Singapore Management University. Others highlight a Collaborative Forecasting tool created by the University of Limerick and a unique collaboration among Canadian institutions, Ryerson University, George Brown College and Centennial College to develop virtual simulations for nursing and healthcare students. Likewise, you will see how Deakin University uses artificial intelligence to provide student support around the clock.
The DUO-ICDE partnership seeks to not only promote the importance of and encourage innovative approaches to online, open, distance, flexible and technology enhanced education, but also to support the development of new methodologies and technologies. In doing so, it will provide an exceptional venue for connecting with some of the thought leaders in our field, as well as contributing examples of your own virtual success stories.
With these objectives in mind, we encourage ICDE members to share your best practices, by emailing a quick summary of your innovation to info@virtuallyinspired.org or icde@icde.org. In the near future, the Virtually Inspired website will include a contributions page with a simple form to fill out and submit.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
Whether individual or institution, we hope by inspiring each other we can drive online, flexible, and open learning to become what is meant to be. Together, we can inspire the future of connected teaching and learning!