The wireless initiative. It sounds inventive, even daring, and it is. It’s a technological breakthrough that takes the classroom computer to a new educational dimension, freeing students from the restrictions of learning imposed by an earlier time.

Recently, at Montclair State, it assumed exciting proportions in a program spearheaded by Susana Sotillo, a professor in the Linguistics Department. The project involved five student volunteers from applied linguistics. “The graduate students had different interests and viewpoints but participated at multiple levels in a wireless community that centered around the activity of writing academic prose,” Sotillo said.

The students were equipped with laptops and met in a seminar room in Dickson Hall where five wireless access points had been installed. They used the conferencing software, NetMeeting, for the project that enabled them to communicate on their computers in real time, as if they were talking on the phone.

“The students acquired skills and jargon of academic writers, often thinking out loud, composing their own identities as academic writers, and getting feedback from a critical audience of their peers, as well as from the instructor,” Sotillo said.

Critical thinking processes were in high gear as members of the wireless initiative were able to share each other’s documents. Most of the students, who were writing either their master’s thesis or master’s proposal, hosted meetings on NetMeeting.
“This kind of technology enables student writers to incorporate valuable feedback that helps them to restructure and revise their documents,” Sotillo said. “The bottom line is that they gain ownership of the learning process.”

The wireless initiative is only one example of the expanding focus on technology at Montclair State. From its state-of-the-art 24-hour Student Center computer lab to the new Red Hawk Diner, where booths are equipped with laptop hook-up capabilities, the University is the only one in New Jersey that is its own Internet service provider and the only one offering Internet access for faculty, staff and students over an extensive geographic area.

University President Susan A. Cole says technology has been a developing priority on campus over the past several years and is highlighted by the recent creation of the Technology Solutions Center, which integrates end-user support for all technology-related issues, from digitizing course materials to Web page production and programming support.

“We are prepared to position Montclair State as the second most highly visible and prominent public university in New Jersey, and we are making every possible use of technology to do that,” Cole said. (continued)