APPENDIX VIII-9

 

 

9.       LASPAU/Harvard University Project

 

Project 1. Strategic Use of Technology in Higher Education
Project 2. Sustainable Development in Amazonias


 
Project 1.        Strategic Use of Technology in Higher Education

 

Need

 

The globalization of society and the rise of a knowledge-based economy have combined in the past decade to impose drastically raised expectations upon higher education institutions. Governments and corporations look to universities for innovative uses of new information technologies in teaching and administration, while also expecting that universities will make their students sufficiently technology-literate to participate in a global economy. This vision of the new university emphasizes the role of market forces in shaping the institution, the need to respond to consumer needs, and the need to deliver knowledge continuously through distance learning and lifelong learning. However, the vast majority of Latin American universities‹as well as the public and private organizations they work with‹are unprepared to reorganize themselves to address these new demands.

 

Vision

 

Technology investments in education generally fall into two categories: supply driven, top-down investments and, the other, "demand pull" investments that aim for change from the bottom-up.  We envision our program as much more "demand pull" than "top down."  By offering training, information support, and advising to individuals within universities, LASPAU will move institutions from passive users to early adopters of sound technology strategies. This will allow them to become self-sustaining in their use of technology in teaching and internal systems, and to take advantage of top-down investments (like those promoted by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank through local government agencies). For LASPAU, developing this strategic capacity means bringing educational opportunities to disadvantaged Latin Americans, and empowering local universities. The program is intended to have a disproportionate benefit for those provincial universities with less access to educational, financial, and strategic resources.

 

Implementation

 

For institutions to successfully develop and incorporate distance learning, they need new skills and behaviors.  LASPAU will effect these changes through seminars on the strategic use of information technologies. Pursuant to the goal of driving technology leadership on a sector-wide basis, LASPAU would hope to implement this training program for representatives of all higher education institutions within the AmazonNet consortium¹s region.

 

The goal of the seminars is to provide key members of Latin American universities new skills in conceiving, proselytizing, and implementing a technology strategy.  The seminars will be an extension of LASPAU's five years of training experience in the use of the internet as a research tool for basic end users coupled with LASPAU's seven more recent seminars on the strategic use of technology for Latin American institutions. Seminar content will focus on the strategic managerial and pedagogical aspects of integrating technology within the university, with a particular focus on distance education.  Trainees will discover, for example, how jobs will be affected if their faculty or school adopts distance education and what kinds of resistance they can expect to encounter, and how to offset that resistance with coping strategies.  Another topic will be the costing and financing of technology programs and how it challenges traditional university budgeting paradigms. The end result of the seminars will be a project that the trainee plans to implement within his/her home institution.

 

Seminars will contain both online and in-person components (with the former increasing or decreasing in complexity depending on the background and access requirements of the trainees).  Trainees will complete four modules via asynchronous distance learning.  Formats will range from discussion list only (for institutions with limited access and experience) to web-based training including streaming audio and video (for high-access institutions).  The in-person component will be conducted in three-day sessions for each group of approximately forty participants, on location at a site determined by demand and proximity within Amazonias.  Curriculum for the in-person seminar will include case studies in institutional change through technology and the core theory of strategic use of technology: these cases will draw from Harvard Business School publications as well as LASPAU-originated studies of Latin American institutions.

 

Faculty for the seminars will be drawn from Harvard University and from other leading institutions as necessary.

 

Ongoing Support

 

LASPAU will facilitate ongoing feedback and support for participants by means of online forums. In these forums, participants will be invited to submit progress reports from their home institutions after several months of work implementing their program proposals. Faculty from the seminars as well as peers will provide commentary and constructive criticism. These forums could be expanded as an Internet-based resource for use by the entire CampusNet consortium.

 

Further details

 

Details on the LASPAU programs in institutional technology strategy are available at http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/tech.htm

 

Contact:

 

Joshua S. Jacobs

Development Officer for Technology Initiatives

LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas

Tel (617) 495-0498 Fax (617) 495-8990

25 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138-6095 USA

joshua_jacobs@harvard.edu

www.laspau.harvard.edu


Project 2.        Sustainable Development in Amazonias

 

Need

 

One of the most important issues in Latin America and the Caribbean is the impact that economic investment, environmental preservation, lack of equity, and high levels of poverty may have upon each other.  Conflicting forces usually have a negative impact on the environment, yet experience shows that solutions can be found.  This seminar hopes to provide future environmental leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean with the tools and theoretical framework to understand the many forces that affect sustainable development.

 

Through instruction, collaboration, case study, discussion, and debate‹both on-line and during three days at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts ‹the participants in the seminar will develop a theoretical framework and the tools for addressing the challenges they and their institutions will face when they return to their home countries.

 

Implementation

 

The seminar is implemented through five weeks of online readings, discussion, and study, followed by a weeklong residential seminar. The online seminar, if developed after full implementation of the CampusNet Amazonia network, would allow participants to share research and case study materials of a sophisticated nature in order to achieve a richer collaboration. This aspect of the seminar will be conducted as a colloquium, with the understanding that participants are already practitioners in their fields. The residential seminar, conducted at a location to be determined within the Amazonias region, will bring together the participants and a range of faculty devoted to the study of the Amazon region from a variety of perspectives.

 

Faculty for the seminar will be led by Otto T. Solbrig, Bussey Professor of Biology Emeritus, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, as well as other experts from institutions throughout the hemisphere.

 

Further details

 

Details of the previous iteration of the seminar are available at http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/eco_seminar/index.htm

 

Contact:

 

Joshua S. Jacobs

Development Officer for Technology Initiatives

LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas

Tel (617) 495-0498 Fax (617) 495-8990

25 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138-6095 USA

joshua_jacobs@harvard.edu

www.laspau.harvard.edu