Library & Writing Faculty Awarded S-BOLD Grant

President Stanley and Provost Assanis, in support of the continuing evolution of educational excellence, have established the Stony Brook Online Learning Development Initiative (S-BOLD), funded initially for four years at a level of $250,000 per year. This initiative sought new and innovative proposals to develop both online and blended-learning courses and tools that would offer special opportunities for learners at Stony Brook University and beyond. A successful proposal must have had significant curricular impact and advance understanding of effective practices for online learning. In 2014-2015, the initiative gave preference to proposals that addressed time-to-graduation and graduation rates. Foundational courses that lead to degree completion and efforts that increase timely success in such courses were particularly sought. For details of the initiative, please visit the S-BOLD website.

Six proposals were selected for funding, including a collaboration between Darren Chase, Scholarly Communication Librarian; Cynthia Davidson, Emerging Technologies Coordinator, Program in Writing & Rhetoric; and Kristina Lucenko, Interim Director, Program in Writing & Rhetoric:

WOLFIE (Writers’ Online Learning Forum & Information literacy Environment)

The goal of the project is to develop WOLFIE (Writers’ Online Learning Forum & Information literacy Environment) – an interactive digital community to enhance multiple writing intensive courses and teach information literacy practices. The initial target audience is students who take courses that satisfy the University’s writing requirement, WRT 101 and 102: approximately 5,000 per year. Of the 1,534 students who took WRT 102 in fall 2014, 229, or around 15%, need to retake it in order to graduate. WOLFIE can support students who struggle to meet the requirements of the course, and help them stay on track to graduate in four years. Once the materials are developed, both online and face-to-face sections of the course will be offered using these materials.

Janet Clarke

Janet Clarke

Associate Dean, Research & User Engagement at Stony Brook University Libraries
email: janet.clarke@stonybrook.edu
Janet Clarke
Posted in Featured, Information Literacy, Library Instruction, Library Technology, New and Notable, Scholarly Communication