Robinia Tidbit #1

Interesting to learn what universities can do with resources! Imagine President Wong meeting a Swiss philanthropist at the Nobel peace prize ceremonies and leaving with $15 million to establish an innovative, technology-enhanced Center for learning. Stanford University was the recipient of such a gift from Mr. Wallenberg in 1998. Dissatisfied with the traditional higher learning structure, Wallenberg challenged Stanford to create a state of the art facility devoted to experimenting and developing new paradigms for learning. Robert Smith, director of the Center, shared that, “we have learned that bad teaching with technology is still bad teaching” (no kidding-right?). However, he did share an interesting story about a law professor who taught contract negotiation through virtual connectivity. Students were distributed in small groups with designated role identities and assigned into different rooms in the building. Through internet connectivity, a real-life scenario was introduced and played out as the groups had to negotiate and renegotiate with each other to resolve a litigation suit. Other than that, I left wondering how I would have used the $15 million for innovative teaching………