A Student-Driven Online Collaborative Learning Environment

Marist College's The FOLD is a student-designed and delivered learning initiative combining a Web site, MOOC and open online community.

2014 Campus Technology Innovators Awards

Category: Teaching and Learning
Institution: Marist College
Project: The FOLD: Students Collaborate Internationally in the Academic Computing Cloud
Project lead: Radley Cramer, director, Fashion Program
Tech vendor/partner: Apereo Foundation

Marist College has honed its learning technology innovations for decades and is not new to the Campus Technology Innovators award program, having received previous recognitions in 2006 (Identity Quest podcasting) and 2013 (Open Academic Analytics Initiative). Its latest innovative program, launched in February 2014, is a student-driven online collaborative learning environment called The FOLD (Fashion Online Learning Domain).

Marist College The FOLD
The FOLD team draws on individuals from the Fashion Program and Academic Technology staff. (Photo courtesy of Marist College)

The inspiration for The FOLD, and what makes it unique among online learning initiatives, is the firm belief among Marist Fashion Program faculty and learning designers that students can generate knowledge from one another. With the oversight of project lead Radley Cramer, Marist's Fashion Program director, the students themselves created a project Web site; designed and delivered The FOLD's first MOOC in Spring 2014; and are managing an open, ongoing online community.

The content focus of The FOLD is based on the tracking of street trends in fashion. Students around the world are asked to participate by spotting trends, taking pictures and posting and commenting on the trends. The initiative is designed to open up the academic learning environment to be inclusive of Marist students and faculty, students from around the world, the fashion industry and the interested public.

"The way we like to describe The FOLD is a living learning experience around the topic of fashion scholarship, and a collaboration between people with a common interest in cultural phenomena, fashion, trends and change," said Melissa Halvorson, visiting professional lecturer at Marist.


Learn about The FOLD’s learning environment and MOOC offerings. (Video courtesy of Marist College)

Behind the scenes, the initiative relies on the cloud technology that forms the college's Academic Community Cloud (ACC): Sakai and the Open Academic Environment, both open source software from Apereo, the nonprofit foundation that was formed out of the merger of Sakai and Jasig. Marist's Fashion Program — in partnership with the college's Enterprise Computing Community — is the first academic center to pilot the ACC at Marist, so The FOLD will serve as a model for the institution's strategic cloud initiative going forward.

A key element of The FOLD and other academic learning communities forming within Marist's academic cloud is the ability to extend the reach of the college's academic programs to industry and to global partners. This both offers students a real-world, often international experience of their field of inquiry, and brings community professional interaction to academic programs.

Cramer sees The FOLD having a significant impact on the fashion industry: "Our next step is to expand the outreach to the industry. One of the most interesting things about fashion as an industry is that it's so driven by change. The FOLD is the perfect venue to communicate rapid changes in fashion trends, or consumer change in how products are evaluated. There are lots of ways to get an early reading from the students, which will, I think, become very interesting to the industry: In the same way that students are educating each other, they are also educating people who are responsible for the 'big picture' within the industry."

For more information on the Campus Technology Innovators program, visit the awards site.

About the Author

Meg Lloyd is a Northern California-based freelance writer.

Featured

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • Abstract geometric shapes including hexagons, circles, and triangles in blue, silver, and white

    Google Launches Its Most Advanced AI Model Yet

    Google has introduced Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, a new artificial intelligence model designed to reason through problems before delivering answers, a shift that marks a major leap in AI capability, according to the company.

  • Training the Next Generation of Space Cybersecurity Experts

    CT asked Scott Shackelford, Indiana University professor of law and director of the Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, about the possible emergence of space cybersecurity as a separate field that would support changing practices and foster future space cybersecurity leaders.

  • Two stylized glowing spheres with swirling particles and binary code are connected by light beams in a futuristic, gradient space

    New Boston-Based Research Center to Advance Quantum Computing with AI

    NVIDIA is establishing a research hub dedicated to advancing quantum computing through artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated computing technologies.