Miernowski wins national online education award

The 2007 "R1edu Award" for Distinguished Faculty Contributions to Online Learning has been presented to Professor Jan Miernowski of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Presented annually, the R1edu Award acknowledges innovative and stellar work of faculty in online learning at member institutions of the R1edu consortium, an organization of top U.S. research universities. Miernowski’s peers at the UW–Madison Teaching Academy will recognize him for his achievement at a September 27 fall kickoff meeting.

Miernowski, a professor of French and Italian, created an innovative course, "French and Italian Renaissance Literature Online." He developed a full multimedia offering that helps students develop skills in reading and interpreting literary texts in their cultural and historical contexts. Features include multimedia lectures, printed text readings, interactive online reading assignments, a discussion forum and a weekly essay. Exercises, both graded and non-graded, provide students with immediate feedback. The course design simulates a journey through Renaissance Italy and France led by a group of faculty guides and mentors.

Contrary to many online courses, the class does not aim primarily at transferring a large amount of data over the Internet. Instead, it employs the unique strengths of online presentation and the latest interactive tools to train students in advanced interpretation of artistically complex and ideologically multi-layered texts.

Special features include guidance to specific passages in the text, clues to unravel the hidden meanings and immediate and continuous feedback at every step. This interactive reading instructional strategy can be easily adapted to any course aimed at teaching students to interpret structurally sophisticated and culturally challenging texts. Miernowski sees application to other disciplines including literary studies, history, philosophy, cultural studies, communication, film studies, history of art and more.

"We were impressed with the high quality of Professor Miernowski’s program and its innovative use of online interactive features," says Dave Szatmary, vice provost of educational outreach at the University of Washington and founder and coordinator of R1edu. "Even more so, by developing a new model that can be applied to enhance learning in many other fields, Professor Miernowski has advanced the conceptual underpinnings of online learning as a whole."

Founded in 1999, R1edu is a consortium of more than 30 top U.S. research universities that pool their resources and knowledge to provide access to distance learning classes and reference materials. The consortium’s Web site allows students to search classes and programs by subject, type or institution. Participating institutions are members of the Carnegie Foundation and of the prestigious Association of American Universities.