Next Generation Technology Gets a Home within Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Efforts are underway to provide some leadership and assistance to campuses in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. Housed within Academic Innovations, a division of Academic and Student Affairs, staff in the Office of the Chancellor will be focusing on the following activities: 

• Identifying current campus faculty and staff creating, using, or interested in Learning Games and Simulations
• Exploration of 3rd party products and service providers to achieve institutional goals, especially those that leverage technology and innovation to create a competitive advantage
• Facilitating research and development initiatives that include documentation of most promising technologies, system requirements gathering, and prototyping of technologies through small testing environments
• Identifying campus/faculty experiments and pilots which show promise for larger scale/enterprise-wide implementation
• Recognizing faculty and staff that will take a leadership role in creating and teaching classes using Next Generation technologies/virtual environments
• Facilitating the of development of learning games and simulations for shared use within MnSCU
• Establishing a participative "Learning Commons" for MnSCU faculty and staff interested in Next Generation Technologies 

Over the past several years, Academic and Student Affairs has invested funds in new and emerging technologies that show promise in improving instruction and services to students.

To continue these efforts, the division received about $275,000 to be delegated toward expanding learning-based simulations, games and learning objects. To choose the best projects for funding, Academic and Student Affairs will be conducting a Request for Proposal review in mid-November.

The learning-based simulations and games initiative will build on the gaming activities initiated last year and will support a long-term gaming strategy for the system. Temporary learning games and simulations managers are taking the lead in identifying, cataloguing and nurturing the nascent gaming activity in the system. This year’s funds will help leverage resources to build capacity in the system by generating collaborative connections between faculty and others currently working on learning games in isolation.

Learning objects provide a vehicle to share course content as a means to effectively and efficiently develop courses. Last year, Minnesota Online continued the expansion of the Learning Object Repository by adding a temporary digital librarian, training campus staff on how to create learning objects, acquiring tools to aid in developing learning objects, and creating and acquiring several hundred learning objects. The initiative will expand the use of learning objects in science, technology, engineering and math and high demand programs areas, both credit and non-credit.

Information about the proposal deadline and RFP expectations will be distributed soon. In the meantime, if you have questions about the simulations and games initiative, contact Lesley Blicker at lesley.blicker@so.mnscu.edu or (651) 201-1413; for questions about the learning objects initiative, contact Deborah Proctor at deborah.proctor@so.mnscu.edu or (651) 649-5935.