$15 million for Learning
Lab: Wallenberg gift to help Stanford 're-imagine itself'
BY ELAINE RAY
Asked what education will
look like 50 years from now, Larry Leifer, founding
director of the Stanford Learning Lab, quips,
"We’ll know in 40." The university will
have an opportunity to shape the technological landscape
of education for future generations, thanks to a $15
million gift from the Wallenberg family of Sweden.
The Knut and Alice
Wallenberg Foundation and the Marianne and Marcus
Wallenberg Foundation have made a $27.5 million grant to
be shared by the Stanford Learning Lab and the Swedish
Learning Lab to support interdisciplinary, global
learning on Stanford’s main campus and other
locations around the world. With its $15 million portion,
the Stanford Learning Lab will establish the Wallenberg
Global Learning Center. The Stanford gift is the largest
single award the foundations ever have granted.
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“The Wallenberg
Global Learning Center is a significant step forward for
the republic of learning – a forum without borders,
built upon excellent traditional universities, including
Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology and Stanford
University,” said President Gerhard Casper.
Part of the Stanford grant
will be used to equip Wallenberg Hall, a state-of-the-art
facility that will serve as a prototype for
"technologically agile" learning spaces. The
remaining $12.5 million will be directed to partner
activities in the Swedish Learning Laboratory.
"In a profound
manner, this gift brings two communities together in a
way that has not previously been possible," said
Larry Leifer, a professor of mechanical engineering.
"The new dimension made possible by the Wallenberg
award is that the faculty, staff and students of our
respective communities can begin to merge their thinking
in real time, building on shared insights and novel
perspectives to learn faster and more deeply," said
Leifer, who noted that projects undertaken by both
learning labs will be jointly funded.
The Wallenberg Global
Learning Center, under the direction of the Stanford
Learning Lab, will bring together teachers, scholars,
students, and industry and foundation representatives
from Sweden and around the world. These individuals will
conduct theoretical and empirical studies designed to
improve formal and informal learning at all educational
levels and disciplines and across cultural and geographic
boundaries. The center will build on existing Stanford
campus programs while establishing new curriculum
opportunities. It will expand the Global Learning
Network, which currently is led by Stanford and includes
learning labs in Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.
Stanford officials are exploring the establishment of
comparable partnerships with educational, cultural and
industrial institutions in England, Switzerland, Germany
and Japan.
According to Larry
Friedlander, teaching professor of English and one of the
Stanford lab's co-directors, the center will establish a
third alternative to the traditional classroom and the
online virtual university. "This third model
emphasizes the strengths of locality and community while
exploiting the benefits of intensive virtual experience.
In other words, don't do away with the buildings and with
the faculty, but place it all in the broadest possible
landscape of experience and resources," Friedlander
said.
Stanford Learning Lab
The Stanford Learning Lab
was launched in the summer of 1997 to explore a wide
range of models for using technology in higher education.
Its goal is not merely to introduce technology into
Stanford courses, but to transform those classes through
a combination of the judicious use of technology and new
teaching methods. For more than a year, the lab has
worked with faculty, teaching fellows and students to
develop new courses and other activities that focus on
the learner and the processes of learning rather than on
technical innovation, or even academic content, for its
own sake. Each project is designed as a rigorous
experiment with a testable hypothesis and explicit
procedures for evaluation.
According to Leifer,
better learning depends on better, more frequent sharing
of experiences. His teaching background with
high-performance product development teams demonstrated
that student outcomes were enhanced in settings where
peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, co-learning and
co-mentoring were used.
One example of a globally
focused learner-centered course is "Literary
Institutions," currently being taught as a
collaborative project between the university's Overseas
Studies Program and the Learning Lab. Students enrolled
in the university's campuses in four Western European
cites and in Santiago, Chile, are conducting research on
film, theater, art, literature and literary education in
their temporary homes. Computer technology is used to
facilitate dialogues among students, and between students
abroad and faculty on the main campus. (See story on page
xx.)
"This is a good
example of engaging our students as researchers. Guided
by experienced faculty, students explore the real
physical world of foreign places and cultures to better
understand the meaning of our institutions," Leifer
said.
"It's a very
different model of education," said Friedlander.
"We're not interested in broadcasting facts, but in
creating shared understanding," he said, adding that
technology is a tool to help "Stanford re-imagine
itself as an institution."
Wallenberg Hall
While half of the Stanford
portion of the Wallenberg gift will be used for
Stanford's core educational and curricular initiatives,
the other half will support the renovation of the
building that will house the Global Learning Center and
the Learning Lab. Wallenberg Hall will be located in
Building 160 in the Main Quad. The university will invest
$12 million for basic renovations of the 60,000 square
foot structure, while the Wallenberg Foundation funds
will be used to ensure that the renovation is completed
with the most technologically advanced infrastructure and
equipment.
"As part of the
center we will experiment with how technology can
facilitate effective collaboration among learning
partners and with how the physical classroom or
laboratory layout affects interactions," said Sheri
D. Sheppard, associate professor of mechanical
engineering and a co-director of the Stanford Learning
Lab.
Silicon Valley,
Stanford and Sweden
With its proximity to and
connections with Silicon Valley, Stanford has had a
long-standing relationship with Sweden. For several
years, the university has made distance-learning courses
available to Swedish institutions such as the Royal
Institute of Technology, which is a partner in the
Swedish Learning Laboratory with the Karolinska Institute
and the University of Uppsala. Stig Hagstrom, professor
emeritus of materials science and former director of
Stanford's Center for Materials Research, recently
stepped down as chancellor of Sweden's university system.
He is back on the Stanford campus helping to establish
the Wallenberg Global Learning Center. Moreover, the
Sweden-Silicon Valley Link, another Wallenberg-funded
academic program devoted to exploring the impact of the
global information infrastructure on the future of
academic life, maintains a facility on Stanford's campus.
A prototype of this high-performance learning link, which
is three to five years ahead of mainstream Internet
services, is being used now to support experiments with
Sweden, Singapore and five of Stanford's overseas
campuses.
"The creation of a
global learning space with the Stanford Learning Lab and
corresponding learning labs in Sweden will further
strengthen the already strong ties between Silicon Valley
and Sweden to the benefit of universities and industries
involved," said Hagstrom. "It will serve as a
base and a platform for the creation of true partnerships
in the fields of both education and research."
The Knut and Alice
Wallenberg Foundation, the primary contributor of the
grant, is the largest private foundation in Sweden.
Established in 1918, it is based on donations by K. A.
Wallenberg, then head of Stockholm Enskilda Bank, and his
wife, Alice. In the past, the foundation has primarily
supported Swedish universities and researchers; however,
in recent years the foundation has supported initiatives
that encourage international and global cooperation in
research and higher education.
"We are not only
interested in watching and studying the evolution of the
university of the future but want to play an active role
in the creation of it," said Peter Wallenberg,
chairman of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
"Certainly the university of the future will have a
strong global character." SR
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