California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) has won a New Media Consortium (NMC) Center of Excellence Award. CSUCI was just one of two universities that were awarded the honor out of 14 finalists from around the world. UC Santa Barbara alumna Jill Leafstedt, an Associate Professor of Education and Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Innovation at CSUCI, helped lead her university to this global recognition.
The award recognizes NMC member institutions with an exceptional record of integrating technology with learning or creative expression. “The New Media Consortium’s Center of Excellence Award is the highest honor bestowed by the NMC,” said Eden Dahlstrom, NMC executive director. “We are highly selective when we bestow this award and we don’t give out the CoE award every year. CSUCI’s untethered faculty development stood out as an exemplar of an innovative approach to building faculty digital literacy.”
Leafstedt said the school has taken an “untethered” approach when working with faculty members to integrate more technology into the classroom and build digital literacy across the campus. Faculty members can now access new information about digital classroom innovations at any time, at their convenience, rather than going to a conventional workshop. Also, the digital techniques developed by CSUCI’s Teaching and Learning Innovation are scalable, which has led to multiple campuses in the U.S. and worldwide adopting and adapting CSUCI’s innovations.
“We’ve been working really hard to move CSUCI forward,” Leafstedt, who received her Ph.D. from the Department of Education in the field of special education in 2002, said. “To be recognized internationally for our work is really powerful.”