Low-Threshold Applications/Activities Home Page

This is a new, exploratory, extension of the Building Community and Connections Online and On Campus (BCCOOC) series, the Low-Threshold Application (LTA) approach, and the TLTR/Collaborative Change commitment to working across traditional boundaries to achieve traditional goals with new technologies.  This exploration has been prompted by suggestions and reactions from many BCCOOC participants and some of our other online international colleagues.  

The TLT Group already has good connections with these four important sectors:

1.  Those who build and support “online communities”; 
2.  Those who try to enhance engagement and connectedness among learners and teachers – especially in higher education; 
3.  Those involved in organizations dedicated to help achieve peace and social justice;  and
4.  Academic leaders and others involved with higher education institutions in different countries and continents who want to find and promote constructive possibilities of Internet-based globalization.

We have begun to engage representatives from these key sectors who could offer much to each other although now many of them scarcely know each other at all.  Through collaborative exploration, we hope to develop  a shared Vision Worth Working Toward. 

A series of online events has already begun to evolve, with a preliminary commitment from some educational institutions, professional organizations, and corporations to help with technical support and telecommunications options.  Each event features a small panel on site linked by the Internet to a few other leader/presenters located in other countries and, potentially, to many others in different locations – with varied institutional affiliations. 

The first event has been scheduled in conjunction with the international ELit 2004 conference hosted for the first time in the US this year by St. John’s University on June 2;  the second will be in conjunction with the Friends Assoc. for Higher Education at George Fox University on June 25;  and a 3rd is scheduled as a featured panel for the League for Innovation in the Community College Conference on Information Technology in Tampa, Florida in early November.  The diversity of these organizations and the enthusiasm of their response to these ideas is both encouraging and a little daunting.

For more than ten years, the leaders and friends of the TLT Group have often asked ourselves these two “Fundamental Questions” about the future of higher education and the changing role of information technology:

–What do we most want to gain?

–What do we most cherish and want not to lose?

The answers have always converged toward meaningful connections between faculty and students, toward something quite like building community within a course, within a college or university.  It is time to extend our responses to those fundamental questions, quite naturally, to a vision of new alliances and new progress;  a vision of building together even more widely.  Can’t we use the Web and Internet to link efforts to build communities, support social justice, move a little closer to world peace? 

Prep for extending this online workshop:
Tell us how we can structure interaction in this workshop so that your team can participate most frequently, actively, effectively, and happily - TOGETHER!

Full Participant Roster
<http://www.tltgroup.org/
onlineInstitute/workshops/
LTAsMayJune2004/LTARoster.htm>

Teams
Auburn University
Bucks County Comm. College
Butler Univ. (College of Pharm/Health)
California Lutheran University
Elgin Community College
Judson College
Northern Arizona University
Philadelphia University
Univ. of Kansas (School of Nursing)
University of Missouri-St. Louis
University of Nebraska
University System of Georgia
Waukesha County Tech College

Co-Sponsoring Organizations
[Registration Discounts available for members]

Current Co-sponsors include:
FAHE: Friends Association for Higher Education

eLit: eLiteracy for Learning and Life

• OLN: Ohio Learning Network
• POD: Professional and Organizational Network in Higher Education

Info about becoming a Co-sponsor for the TLT Group Online Institute and/or one or more of its events.

Corporate Sponsors
[Info about becoming Corporate Sponsor for Series]

Click here for information on LearningTimes Network


eHelp Corporation
Click here for information on Macromedia


Click here for information on XanEdu