Ball State University is looking for innovative ways to educate by bringing the workplace to the classroom through immersion learning.
"We want to expand all forms of experiential learning," Ball State President Jo Ann Gora said. "Immersive learning projects have the greatest impact on communities and student learning. We see that as a hallmark of a Ball State education."
With three new immersion-based institutes on digital technology open this fall, and a fourth set to open next week, Ball State is continuing to emphasize experiential learning and new forms of technology.
A major portion of the $20 million Lilly Endowment Grant received last December is being used to fund these four institutes, Philip Repp, associate vice president of information technology, said. The three open institutes include Digital Fabrication and Rapid Prototyping, which will be architecture based, Intermedia and Animation, which will focus on 3-D animation and Digital Entertainment and Education, which will focus on filmmaking.
The fourth, News Research Institute, is still being planned and will work with NewsLink Indiana, Dave Ferguson, executive director of the Center for Media Design, said.
The institutes are guaranteed funding for 12 months to prove they can produce innovations in research, curriculum and digital media use, Repp said.
"After that time there will be an assessment of their success and then a decision will be made to move forward or start a new area," Repp said. "The idea is to pick the successful institutes that will be around after that grant."
A rigorous evaluation of the institutes will take place in the spring, Ferguson said.
If the institutes are innovative and able to find sources of funding, they will be kept, Repp said. If they don't fit those criteria, the grant money will be used to explore new options.
Terry King, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said programs like the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry and NewsLink Indiana started out as experiments, but have been successful enough to continue.
"Sometimes they work really well and sometimes they don't," King said. "If they work, we say that's great: how do we go about implementing these? How can we continue with these good programs?"
Even though NewsLink Indiana and the VBC have been successful, they constantly search for new funding. The VBC's original funding ran dry at the end of the 2005-06 school year, but it recently received $400,000 from the Edmund F. Ball and Virginia B. Ball Foundation, Gora said. In addition, a smaller amount around $70,000, was donated by the George and Frances Ball Foundation of Muncie, King said.
Joseph Trimmer, director of the Virginia Ball Center, said funding for Virginia Ball Center will cover costs for the next two years. Unlike previous years, the Virginia Ball Center will only have three seminars instead of four. The seminars include projects to create 3-D educational video games, an art installation in an Indianapolis gallery about homelessness and radio broadcasts discussing and raising awareness of poverty in central Indiana.
NewsLink Indiana's initial funding from a $20 million Lilly Endowment iCommunication grant from 2002 ran out in June 2005. It's been receiving funding from the university since Fall 2005, but it may receive future funding indirectly from the new Lilly grant, Chris Bavender, managing editor for NewsLink Indiana, said.
Rodger Smith, head of the Institute of Digital Entertainment and Education, said he hoped the institutes would follow in the footsteps of the Virginia Ball Center and NewsLink Indiana and find a way to incorporate into the curriculum.
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