ePAAWS Project--Overview
• Project Overview
The project to design and develop the ePAAWS system is to be conducted under the auspices of the Division of Undergraduate Studies, the professional unit of advising and discovery enrollment at Penn State. The design and development of specific components of the ePAAWS system will draw upon the expertise of advisers and professionals from academic units and from learning, instructional, and technological support units across the University.
The ePAAWS System Project vision is to develop the content and processes of a Discovery Advising Curriculum delivery system that supports both students and advisers in fulfilling their respective adviser/advisee relationships and responsibilities in a web-based educational environment. The full development of the ePAAWS System is a long-term project. This proposal covers the first phase, which involves establishing the basic core Advising Learning Modules and Tools and the putting in place the basic organizational and technological infrastructures to support both the initial development and delivery of the Discovery Advising Curriculum and its subsequent maintenance and evolution.
The Penn State educational environment incorporates the programming and services of academic and student affairs units as well as those of numerous support units across the University. A culture of assessment, improvement, and transformation is emerging in the academy, driven by new models of teaching and learning and fostered by new strategies and more sophisticated applications of instructional technologies and communications. The delivery of programming and services by these units is already highly embedded in technology applications, with both staff and students involved at high participation rates. This existing base of transformation and adoption of active learning and interactive technologies within the educational environment and support infrastructure will facilitate their extension into the domain of discovery advising learning and curriculum programming.
The ePAAWS design and development project will have four major components or subprojects--the construction of Advising Learning Modules; the construction of Advising Learning Tools; the construction of the ePAAWS system's technology infrastructure providing linkages to repositories and informational databases and operational support for students and advisers when accessing and using the system; and a pilot application of the system. Each subproject will include pre-, during, and post-assessment and evaluation activities to assure quality, relevance, and effectiveness in the resulting ePAAWS system outcome delivered to the larger university learning community.
The success of the ePAAWS project to design and development a system to deliver the Discovery Advising Curriculum in support of students and advisers will require the active collaboration of many units, involving commitments of their resources and professional expertise. The meaningful collaboration and commitments of these units and their personnel will need to be facilitated by active leadership among and within the units that communicates the vision of the project and its role in projecting the transformation of the new educational environment of active learning supported by instructional technologies into the University's advising curriculum. Active leadership will also be needed to assure that the project is aligned with the policies of the university's academic governance structure involving the Faculty Senate and the Subcommittee on Advising of it's Committee on Undergraduate Education.
Management responsibilities for the project will be vested in an administrative structure including a Project Director, a Project Executive Committee, and four Project Component Design and Development Working Groups. Responsibilities for the overall direction, coordination, and integration of project activities will lie with the Project Director; the Project Executive Committee provides management oversight for the Director and for each of the Project Component Working Groups and supports the Director in the negotiation of collaborative agreements with relevant agencies and units across the University. In addition, the Project Executive Committee will identify Task Forces within itself that will supply consulting services to each of the Project Component Working Groups in terms of ensuring the functional coherence and interoperability of ePAAWS system components. One example of a Executive Committee consulting subcommittee will be the Task Force on Project Assessment, Evaluation, and Quality to set, monitor, and implement the protocols and processes to be used in the pre-, during, and post-development activities of the Working Groups. Another Executive Task Force will address issues of technical standards to guide the design and development of the Advising Learning Modules and Tools to ensure their compatibility with each other and with existing administrative and information systems.
The initial phase of the ePAAWS project--including its design, development, and pilot implementation--will cover at least two years. The commitment of resources and, in particular, the time and expertise of professionals drawn from units across the university will be substantial in the initial phase of the project. In some cases, it will be necessary to provide special development and training opportunities to allow participating professionals to work effectively in bringing their expertise to new applications; as an example, for advisers to develop facility with applications of instructional technologies in the construction of Advising Learning Modules or in the use of the Angel instructional management system as they guide student involvement with the advising learning modules or tools.