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Letter from the editor Cloud College 4 BELLARM INE MAGAZINE Officers of the University Dr. Joseph J. McGowan, President Dr. Doris Tegart, Executive Vice President & Provost Dr. Carole Pfeffer, Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Fred Rhodes, Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Sean Ryan, Vice President for Enrollment Management Mr. Glenn Kosse, Vice President for Development & Alumni Relations Mr. Hunt Helm, Vice President for Communications & Public Affairs Mr. Bob Zimlich, Vice President for Administration & Finance Bellarmine Magazine Staff Editor-in-Chief Jim Welp ’81 Assistant Vice President for Publications and Electronic Communications jwelp@bellarmine.edu Managing Editor Carla Carlton Director of Development Communications ccarlton@bellarmine.edu Creative Director & Designer Brad Craig ’01, MAC ’11 Director of Strategic and Creative Communications Art Director Katie Kelty ’07, MAC ’10 Assistant Director of Creative Services Editors Maria González, Administrative Assistant Contributors Fr. Clyde Crews, Tom Dekle, Chris Kenning, Bill Luster, James Moses, Samantha O’Brien ’12, Tatiana Rathke ’13, Emily Ruppel ’08, Amber Sigman Printed by Clark and Riggs Printing Letters/Comments jwelp@bellarmine.edu | 502.272.7492 Bellarmine Magazine is published for and distributed to the alumni, parents and friends of Bellarmine University by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Bellarmine University 2001 Newburg Road Louisville, KY 40205 www.bellarmine.edu This fall, I’ll be studying philosophy at the Un iversity of Edinburgh. I’ll also be studying psychology at San Jose State University. Oh, and I’ll be taking a course called “Ideas of the 20th Century” at the University of Texas. I won’t be getting any frequent flyer miles, though. I’ll be on my couch with my iPad. The courses I’ve signed up for are “MOOCs” – “massive open online courses,” which are all the rage in higher-ed online. They are taught by distinguished faculty in actual classrooms at prestigious universities and they are free, via MOOC sites Coursera, Udacity and edX, respectively. They are also not what I would call “going to college.” I enrolled in these classes while researching instructional technology for the story that begins on Page 20. These courses aren’t just YouTube on steroids. MOOC students can get college credit and even complete degrees entirely online. The courses integrate social media into the bill of fare, so students can interact via Twitter hashtags, Facebook groups or Google+ Hangouts. This is a fabulous resource for those of us who are more interested in the fun of learning than in earning a degree, let alone becoming one’s best self. And it’s great for those who can’t afford college or choose not to go. But MOOCs don’t come close to truly transforming young peoples’ minds. For that, you still need a non-virtual college. I took part of a MOOC course at Yale last spring, and I learned a lot. But there was a lot to be desired. I could see my professor, but she couldn’t see me. I could not ask questions or participate in classroom discussions. I couldn’t even see my classmates, let alone play hacky sack in the quad, which, to be fair, probably would have resulted in a virtual broken neck. There were no MOOC keggers. (Full disclosure: I did skip some classes, which was as furtively satisfying as doing that the old-fashioned way.) And, like 90 percent of the people who sign up for MOOCs, I didn’t complete the course. So MOOCs have a long way to go. But that doesn’t mean technology doesn’t have an exciting and transformative role to play in the classroom. For the story about technology at Bellarmine I was delighted and impressed to see some exciting things going on here every day. Many tech tools in use at BU are the exact opposite of the MOOCs’ one-size-fits-all approach: facilitating individual learning instead of repressing it. And what I describe here is just the tip of the iPhone. There are more faculty using more forms of classroom tech than I could possibly cover in one story. And, of course, the tech industry is constantly inventing exciting new breakthroughs for educators. In fact, as this issue’s Concord Classic from 1951 shows (Page 9), cutting-edge technology has been on campus since the university’s earliest days. So consider this story a snapshot in time. We’ll let you know when the jetpacks get here. Jim Welp ’81 | jwelp@bellarmine.edu ...a fabulous resource for those of us who are more interested in the fun of learning than in earning a degree...


Bellarmine Magazine_Summer2013_single
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