2000-2001 Academic Year

Speakers:


 

* Larry Leifer,
Stanford University

Wednesday, November 1
3:00 p.m.
Room 4-237

 

Larry Leifer has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1976; there he teaches "Team-Based Product Design: Development with Corporate Partners," a masters level course and the Design Theory and Methodology Forum for Ph.D. candidates in Design Research. He was founding director of the Stanford/VA Rehabilitation R&D Center, where his research dealt with assistive robotics and cognitive prostheses. He is founding director of the Stanford Center for Design Research where he does design theoretic studies with an emphasis on integrated management technology. In July 1997 he was appointed Founding Director of the Stanford University Learning Laboratory, with a mandate to explore the opportunity (and risks) associated with information technology in distributed collaborative learning across the university.

Abstract: We hypothesize that best practice behavior can be embedded in product development knowledge sharing tools and services. We assert that this environment gates the team's rate of learning and benchmarks their knowledge baseline. Beginning in 1984 the Stanford University Center for Design Research (http://cdr.stanford.edu) has conducted formal studies of globally distributed product development teams working in corporate and academic settings. Since 1997, the same methods and objectives have been applied by the Stanford University Learning Laboratory (http://learninglab.stanford.edu) to redesign formal education, life-long-learning and learning-from-working. We strive to develop a unified model for innovative learning experiences that are both personal and sharable within a wide range of formal-learning and working situations. The presentation is based on examples from over 26,000 student/semester/hours of academic field work and corporate field trial case studies.

 

* Carl Berger
University of Michigan

Wednesday, October 4
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Room 4-237

Carl Berger is a professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in science and instructional technology education in the School of Education. He is also the Director of Advanced Academic Technologies in the Collaboratory for Advanced Research of Academic Technologies (CARAT), and Academic Liaison in the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Professor Berger will speak about some of the work he has done on the scholarly use of technology in teaching and learning, including the use of wireless technology on campus, and the Visible Human Project, which focuses on the creation of a detailed digital anatomical database of the human body. He will also discuss some of the national efforts with which he is associated, such as MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching).

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