New Century College TAC Grant

March 2003 AAHE Presentation
(downloadable MS PowerPoint)

New Century College houses George Mason University's interdisciplinary undergraduate program, which offers bachelors of arts and sciences in integrative studies. New Century College students follow a competency-based, learning community model throughout their undergraduate careers.

First-year students in New Century College follow a common, seminar-based curriculum which covers almost all their general education requirements. Since the late 1990s, that curriculum has also included an integrated sequence of technology-enriched workshops and assignments.

This year-long sequence sharpens students' fluency in selecting and applying the appropriate computer-based technologies to research, analysis and communication.

Assignments include:

web site creation	electronic presentation
web site management	qualitative data analysis
web publishing	quantitative data analysis
collaborative web publishing	hypertext writing

However, once students moved into upper-level classes, their opportunities to develop existing technology-enhanced capabilities and investigate and master the advanced applications their programs of study required, were limited.

If a faculty member chose or was able to integrate technology-mediated analysis into his or her teaching, then students' technology fluency prospered. If a faculty member was not willing or able to do this, not only did students miss out on more sophisticated learning but their existing knowledge faded.

We thus applied to the College of Arts and Sciences' Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) Programfor a grant to infuse technology-enhanced learning and teaching through upper-level learning communties and courses.

In the fall of 2001, the TAC program awarded us a grant to develop a sequence of technology-enriched assignments suitable for inclusion in as wide a range of upper-level learning communities and courses.