Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and data with others. This is a central tenet to the constructionist approach to learn-
ing (Papert, 1980) that has been carried to virtual communities designed with the
constructionist framework (Elliott & Bruckman, 2002). At the end of the intensive
program, students make a short digital video or infomercial about their virtual cam-
pus to share with their peers, faculty, and administrators. Each year participants
host an open house in the semester following the preorientation program where they
show their infomercials to the campus community and invite campus faculty, staff,
and students to visit the
campus of the future
that they created during ACT.
Participants introduce the audience to their virtual creation and to learn about
their ideas for building a stronger community within the campus as well as strength-
ening the relationships between campus and surrounding neighborhoods. This open
house demonstrates students' work in Zora and invites participation and discussions
in the virtual environment from guests from the wider academic community. As
such, the ACT project provided students with an experience during the program to
grapple with issues dealing with their civic life as they think through the design
of the
campus of the future
, and it also served as an object to think with and talk
about during the open house discussion. Much like the previous case study, Zora
afforded an opportunity for these students to reflect and introspect through design
and community building; in addition, the ACT program empowered participants
by providing them an innovative tool to share their ideas with other members and
faculties of the university.
From the participants' point of view, the ACT program might have seemed
focused solely on their technology-based activities, in their research, and their
design. However, participants' experience in the program was influenced by the
many other activities included in the overall intervention, some that took part in out-
side of the computer labs, student's interaction with each other online and off-line,
and the design of the overall 3-day program.
(1)
Curriculum.
The ACT curriculum was focused on the specific theme of design-
ing the
campus of the future
, and peer leaders created a list of activities for
students to explore and to guide their building of the
campus
. However, these
activities were designed to be broad so that participant engagement remained
flexible and open-ended. For example, in one activity participants were asked
to consider the role of the university and its students in the lives of youth in
the community surrounding the university. Some participants took the task to
learn about the various early childhood education programs in the community
and research about the different roles that university students could take to help
educate young children; other students created objects and collected news arti-
cles to reflect on how campus and community police to work together to prevent
rowdy college students to disturb community neighbors. While the curriculum
had in its design specific topics that we wanted students to explore through the
medium of discussion cases (e.g., youth programs, safety, equity, and private-
public funds), participants were able to create the
campus
to reflect particular
issues that they were most interested and felt most connected.
