Infrastructure for innovation

Teaching and learning with technology

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment.
-Albert Einstein

In becoming the university of the new millennium, Indiana University seeks to weave throughout its solid structure of bricks and mortar an infrastructure of "bits in order"‹to bring to teaching and learning the full promise and capabilities of information technology. Adding to its prominence in information technology and in pedagogy, IU is achieving leadership in creatively applying information technology to teaching and learning. The infrastructure is robust. Recognition ranges from IUB's "most-wired" designation by Yahoo!Internet Life magazine to IU's being chosen to run the Abilene NOC for the Internet2 backbone. It's clear from the few examples below that IU's investments and experiences are garnering support for teaching innovation for faculty across the campuses.

IU School of Education's newest research center, the Center for Research on Learning and Technology (CRLT), has been awarded $3.4 million to explore ways to help K-12 teachers use technology to improve their teaching.
IU received a $30 million Lilly Endowment grant to establish the Indiana Pervasive Computing Research (IPCRES) Initiative. This will advance the development of IU's new School of Informatics and of departments involved in computing, network technologies, and information technology and information science.
IU received a $1 million gift from Ameritech to establish the Ameritech Fellows program at IU. Announced at the Nov. 10 conference "Teaching and Learning with Technology," the program will support faculty innovation in teaching and learning with information technology.

To sustain the momentum and make the connections require continued vision and dialogue.

IU's Strategic Directions Charter called for Indiana University to "encourage and support excellence in learning through the refinement of traditional teaching methods and the use of new technologies of learning." IU's strategic plan for information technology sets out action items that are steering IU to a place of leadership in technology in teaching and learning.

IU faculty demonstrate this transformation. Students are connecting more broadly, more easily to the world of information. On-line communication is deepening the connection among students and faculty. Instructors choose from a variety of instructional formats to make learning vivid.

This transformation of learning is a work in progress. Its continued growth depends on the partnering of faculty and students. It requires investments of time, imagination and resources. Many resources across the university are at hand in the form of technology centers, Web sites, grant programs and people, all prepared to help in building technology into the instructional processes.

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