Draft--Letter of Inquiry re Penn State's electronic Personal Academic Advising Work Space (ePAAWS) Project

(An abbreviated description of the ePAAWS project intended as an inquiry as to the interest of a potential funding agency in receiving a full proposal.)

Summary of the Project:   The Division of Undergraduate Studies of the Pennsylvania State University is intending to undertake a project to develop a technology-based, individual learner-centered advising system that models "advising as educating" and includes a special curriculum centered on providing entering students with learning opportunities in four advising knowledge domains needed to set educational goals, develop plans, and conduct assessments of their own educational experiences.   The system will utilize a technology infrastructure supporting e-learning modules and e-portfolios to provide a learning structure, working space, and tools for individual students as they learn how to make and assess academic decisions and navigate among majors and courses offered by the institution while simultaneously developing their own knowledge and capacities for life-long learning.   Advisers as educators will develop the advising curriculum and learning tools and deliver them through Penn State's instructional management system. Students will engage   the advising curriculum as developing self-directed learners and educational planners.   A formative evaluation protocol is to be built into the project design to assure the efficacy of the ePAAWS advising system.

Statement of Need:   There has been a sharp paradigm shift in the aims and practices of higher education--from a narrow focus on knowledge acquisition by students to a broad emphasis on empowering students for a life-time of learning and applying knowledge by focusing on an education that centers on the development of student capacities for constructing knowledge and managing   their own learning.    (See, for example, the report Greater Expectations:   A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College , American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2003.)   This shift to learner-centered educational aims calls for a corresponding transformation in the advising systems of higher education.   Traditional advising systems have supported the proposition that the aims of higher education are to acquire knowledge already developed by the disciplines, with student advising focused on guiding and assisting students in selecting their major and scheduling courses required for graduation in that major. The principal advising activity consists of providing information about major requirements and course availabilities, often summarized in check sheets that, if followed, assures the student that passing grades in required courses will lead to graduation and, by implication, to the acquisition of the knowledge deemed important by the discipline underwriting the major program.   Traditional advising is focused on providing information on pre-packaged program requirements for graduation--not on helping to develop the student's awareness or capacities of the broader aims of individual learner-centered   development for constructing knowledge and managing learning.     A new model for advising is needed that provides for the development the knowledge and capacities needed by individual student's for authoring their own academic plans and for navigating   through the institution's educational environment to achieve competence as a self-directed, life-long learner.   The advising model proposed here is one that provides a curriculum   of learning opportunities to guide   the individual student in gaining knowledge and practiced skills in domains relevant to self-directed advising:   knowledge of self; knowledge of institutional educational environment and opportunities; knowledge of educational planning and assessment; and meta knowledge of knowledge structures, thinking, and learning.   The proposed advising system assumes the institution's responsibility for guiding students in their individual development as learners and educational planners.

Project Activity: The ePAAWS project will focus on the construction and assessment of the advising curriculum, which will consist of learning modules in the four advising knowledge domains that are stored and accessed via a special advising server; special web-based learning tools linked to an e-Portfolio system will be developed to assist students in constructing knowledge and in assessing and documenting their progress as they work through the advising learning modules.   Special attention will be given to the development of the technology infrastructure needed to support the construction and delivery of the advising curriculum by advisers and the engagement by students with advising learning modules and tools.   The construction and assessment of the advising curriculum learning modules and tools will be guided by an ePAAWS curriculum committee consisting of professional advisers and learning specialists from across the University.   Teams will beidentified for the development of specific learning modules and tools under the general specifications provided by the ePAAWS curriculum committee.   The effectiveness of the advising curriculum learning modules and tools will be assessed through experimentation and research gained through a pilot application involving a special population of students.

Outcomes: The outcomes of the ePAAWS project will be a set of technology-based learning modules and tools to deliver an advising curriculum aimed at developing the knowledge and capacities needed by individual students to self-author their own construction of knowledge and mange their own learning over their life-times.    An evaluation of the pilot application of the ePAAWs advising system will be conducted to determine refinements needed before it is made available to the full population of students in the Division of Undergraduate Studies and the larger University.

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