Technology
Bailey Named Director of e-Learning Institute
The College of Arts and Architecture has appointed Keith Bailey the first director of the Institute for e-Learning and Research in the Arts and Design, an initiative launched in 2004 to expand online course development and arts/design research using digital technologies, while providing support for faculty, staff and students involved in associated projects. Bailey, who received his doctorate in workforce education, training and development from Penn State in 2002, was previously the associate director of Penn State’s Information Sciences and Technology (IST) Solutions Institute and assistant professor in the School of IST. He holds a master’s degree in instructional technology and bachelor’s degree in adult health and fitness, both from Bloomsburg University.
Bailey says he is excited about the opportunity to shape the direction of the institute, noting one of the aspects that attracted him to the position was the high level of creativity that builds the foundation in the arts and design disciplines. His immediate goal is to build a strong team who can focus on constructing a design and development process for the creation of online courseware. One of his long-term goals is to collaborate with each of the disciplines in the college on either the development of online courseware or the pursuit of a mutually beneficial research initiative. In addition to assisting academic units with online course development, Bailey says part of the mission of the institute is to assist faculty in identifying innovative ways to incorporate instructional technology applications into their courses.
Bailey’s research interests include investigating how instructional technology can be used to enhance teaching, learning and the delivery of curricular activities, including how online education can be enhanced by assessing the impact of instructional technology on a course’s quality. He is also interested in blending instructional methodologies to enhance and promote interactivity in online courses.
Design Students’ Digitally Fabricated Furniture Benefits Native American Childcare Center
In a collaborative service-learning effort during the spring 2005 semester, Penn State students from three departments developed digital design/build furniture that is now being used in a childcare center on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana. The student teams, from the departments of architecture, architectural engineering and landscape architecture, created the furniture as part of the College of Arts and Architecture’s new Digital Arts Design and Fabrication major. The course was taught by architecture faculty members Peter Aeschbacher, Jason Boris and Loukas Kalisperis.
The childcare center in Lame Deer was constructed by Penn Staters as part of the American Indian Housing Initiative, which strives to adapt and deploy sustainable building technologies on American Indian reservations. Partners in the effort include Penn State, the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin and Chief Dull Knife College.
As part of the project, students completed an intensive development process for children’s furniture prototypes using cutting-edge, computer-based design and fabrication technologies. The integration of digital design and fabrication technologies for the furniture represents an innovative approach to computer-aided design that focuses on the end-users, the tectonics of construction and the qualities of the materials used. The students began the design process by investigating the nature of children’s activities, the options for materials and the logic of construction. Their designs were first realized entirely in a virtual arena, then via small-scale models and finally at full scale. A single computer model was used for all scales of fabrication.
The furniture project was the first part of a two-phase course that extended through the summer with a collaboration with renowned New York architects Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (SHoP). In the second phase, students designed and fabricated elements for the new Stuckeman Family Building.
