The shared mission of Denison and Kenyon is to graduate independent, critical thinkers and discerning moral agents who are equipped to pursue successful careers and to become active citizens of a democratic society. Through an emphasis on active learning across the disciplines, we aspire to engage students in a liberal education that fosters self-determination and demonstrates the transformative power of education. We seek to foster collaborations among students and their faculty mentors, as well as among students themselves, to create a participatory learning environment. Moreover, because we are keenly aware of the growing public skepticism about the value and cost of a college degree, we also seek to enhance the quality of our academic programs without increasing net per-student costs.

Technology can play a vital role in helping to achieve these objectives. As educators in an increasingly information-oriented society, we believe that teaching students in how to access, evaluate, and act on information is central to our mission as well as to the future success of our graduates. It is essential that our graduates understand how to manage and communicate information effectively. The ability to work in a changed environment, marked by a shift from fixed information boundaries to open and virtually unlimited access to multiple sources of information, is critical to success as a student as well as later in life.

Today’s information rich networked technologies are breaking down barriers and creating many new opportunities for students and faculty to access information, collaborate in ways never before possible, and publish for new audiences. Because technology accommodates different ways of learning, faculty are challenged to rethink teaching methods as well as course structure and content, and students are learning in new ways. Faculty are able to reallocate precious time to academic strategies that prove most effective and far reaching. Students become more active and independent learners and partners with faculty mentors in the learning experience. The best liberal arts colleges will use technology to enhance their traditional strengths, while benefiting from information access and worldwide interaction on a par with the largest research universities.

The primary goals of this program are to provide our faculties ample opportunity to engage with new technologies in settings that accommodate their diverse approaches to their own learning and experimentation and to explore how we can use technologies that enhance our curricula while containing costs. We plan to accomplish this by providing incentives and resources that will encourage faculty and students to increase their technological literacy and proficiency while collaborating in the exploration and implementation of new pedagogical methods. During the course of the program, we also expect to achieve cost efficiencies through collaboration; to reinforce students’ roles as collaborators by teaching them how to work in an environment in which the central task is no longer finding information. but evaluating, managing, using, and communicating it are now paramount; and to test a new configuration and strategy of deploying technical support resources in a way that provides adequate support (quality, timeliness, effectiveness) to faculty without building in permanent increases to our budget bases.

Our intent is to attract those who are inexperienced, and even reluctant, to utilize new approaches, as well as to encourage those who are in the lead by providing them with the resources needed to pursue joint applications development with their colleagues. We are reasonably well prepared in terms of infrastructure and equipment to move forward in the achievement of these objectives, and we now intend to invest significantly in collaborative faculty and course development.