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About
INNOVATOR 2005: Coppin State
7/28/2005
Key Players Assessment and implementation of the technology (Learning on Demand, Coppin’s Tegrity Project) was a campuswide effort, and came under the auspices of the Information Resources Management Committee (including El-Haggan and other top administrators, and student affairs representatives), the Office of Information Technology, Office of the Provost, the Faculty Information Technology Committee, and the Student Advisory Board.Results
The initiative resulted in saving students a great deal of study and learning time by allowing them to re-access classes and lectures at any time of the day or night. Response has been “overwhelming,” says Habtu Braha, chair of the Faculty Information and Technology Committee and professor of Economics.“Our students have jobs on top of their school work—many have responsibilities at home. They’re facing the pressure to succeed academically, despite considerable financial challenges. Now they have flexibility. They have an effective learning tool that conforms to their unique situation.”
Coppin State commissioned the A-HEC (www.a-hec.org), a non-profit research and educational organization, to conduct an objective survey of its students and faculty to determine the impact of the technology. Nearly 90 percent of the student respondents said that the new technology contributed positively to their learning, and 94 percent indicated their desire to use the note-taking solution in some or all of their future classes. Fifty-four percent indicated that they believed that the technology solution helped to improve their grades in the course in which it was used.“For our instructors,” says Sadie Gregory, provost and VP of Academic Affairs, “the enthusiasm and success that students are reporting has led to similar sentiments. The rate and extent of adoption by the faculty was unprecedented. We had originally designed the pilot project, which concluded this past spring, to involve two faculty using Tegrity for two courses. Due to high demand, we expanded the pilot to include 10 faculty and 12 courses. When we held our technology conference at the onset of the summer, to train the faculty on the technologies available to them on campus, we had a 99 percent turnout rate, largely due to the growing interest in this technology. At the conference, 30 instructors signed up for summer training, unpaid, in order to use the new solution in the fall.”
This summer, Coppin State’s Office of the Provost designed a mini-grant for the summer that initially enlisted five faculty members to develop full online courses using the Tegrity technology coupled with Blackboard’s course management system. Again, due to demand, the mini-grant was extended to 10 faculty members. The faculty also took part in the survey conducted by the A-HEC. Ninety percent of the faculty indicated a desire to use Tegrity in some or all future classes; 62 percent expressed a desire to use Tegrity Campus in all of their courses.
Fifty instructors are currently expected to use the note-taking solution throughout the fall semester, for 160 courses. Last spring, 150 students were using Tegrity pens; this fall, there will be over 800 pens in use. Coppin expects full deployment by spring of next year.
