This fall, I had the opportunity to
participate in the prototype of a new community action project—GeoDeliberations. The project was organized by faculty in
Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology and funded by the
National Science Foundation. It
was adapted from an Oregon initiative that brought together a small panel of
community members in a week-long conference to address an important community
issue and report recommendations to local elected officials. GeoDeliberations organizers
adapted the original Oregon model, replacing much of the face-to-face meeting
time with an interactive online website to facilitate discussion by the citizen
panelists.
One
advantage of the online environment is that it gives all participants an equal
opportunity to voice their concerns.
In most face-to-face meetings, a small number of participants do most of
the talking, while others listen, take notes, and wait for the vote. Online, all panelists have equal
access. They can sign in multiple
times whenever they wish to read, post, and respond to the postings of other
members. The pilot effort
demonstrated the power of the online environment to bring neighbors together
around issues and to create citizen-based input into the governmental process. It also demonstrated the value of
public universities using technology to engage and empower the communities they
serve.
The
project also raises an important question for the future: How do our public universities support
faculty engagement in the community through online technology? At most institutions, online technology
was used originally to extend credit courses—and certificate and degree
programs—to off-campus populations.
Institutions organized their technology and support services around the
needs of credit instruction, both on and off campus. GeoDeliberations is just one example of how online
technology can also be used to engage the community in less formal ways that
build on the traditional missions of engaged research, technology transfer, and
public engagement. Two other
examples of emerging online engagement are:
·
Open Educational Resources – Extending access to
online learning objects and other resources to other educational sectors,such
as K-12 school classrooms, business and industry, government, and civil society organizations.
·
Engaged MOOCs—Using the idea of “massively open
online courses” to bring together interest groups who otherwise have little
ability to meet face-to-face (see my earlier post).
Over
the past twenty years, universities around the world have innovated to extend
credit programs to off-campus students through online learning. In the process, they have proven that
higher education can address a key stress point as society adapts to the needs
of the Information Revolution: the need for a better-educated workforce. The challenge for a new generation of
university leaders is to provide central support and encouragement for faculty
who want to engage with the community to address the multitude of issues facing
residents in their roles as citizens, workers, parents, and members of civil
society organizations in the years ahead. The GeoDeliberations project is demonstrating what faculty
can achieve by engaging at the neighborhood level. As this model is refined and expanded, it should be possible
to use online technology to bring together panels in many different
contexts. This kind of engagement
in this era of rapid and profound societal change is central to the continued
vitality of public higher education.
