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FITness HomeClaremont McKenna College has developed a programmatic, cross-curricular approach to integrating technology into the curriculum. Targeting seven skillsets identified by each of our nine academic departments, the FITness Program gained unanimous support from the entire faculty who voted to establish a formal across-the-curriculum approach to integrating technology into our teaching and learning on May 13, 2003.
Together with an assessment team, the FITness program unites staff who partner with both faculty and students to overcome what we believe is the major stumbling block of this type of program: unified acceptance by and support of the faculty as a whole. Educational Technology Services and the Teaching Resource Center empower faculty to include technology into their classes; support and train students to use that technology; and maintain the resources necessary for both to work together. FITness has become an official CMC college-wide program, in large part due to a $1.3 million grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies. A FITness Program Committee was created to oversee the grant's implementation. Among its duties was to investigate the feasibility of such a program and to consider curricular implications. Since winning approval of the across the curriculum approach, The Atlantic Philanthropies grant has supported the determination of seven core FIT skills and the development of dozens of course modules in every CMC department, reaching nearly all CMC students, creating a more “FIT” faculty, and a more “FIT”student body. Recently, a grant of $500,000 over two years from The Fletcher Jones Foundation proposes to extend our FITness program into an entirely new dimension. The Fletcher Jones FITness Implementation Project will allow CMC to implement a student peer to peer technology training program. Over the course of the next two years, we intend to develop a cadre of Fletcher Jones Technology Consultants. These trained student FITness consultants will be assigned to work closely with faculty members who are incorporating FITness goals into their classes. These consultants will learn how technology is used in the class, and will support students in the curriculum-wide FITness goals as they pertain to specific course needs. The consultants will provide on-demand personalized instruction to students in our three computer laboratories and in the Fletcher Jones Technology Classroom, a model recently featured on page 30 of A Liberal Arts IT Odyssey article in the Educause Review. |
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