Project Overview:
In the Spring of 2008, I worked on a project with several other Olin students centered around the creation of a student-driven Educational Research Lab @ Olin, something we hoped would help drive student-level (not that they couldn’t include faculty and staff!) discussions on educational models and approaches.
### Project Motivation:
The motivation for this project came out of a long-term interest in formalizing, or institutionalizing at Olin College student interest in curricular innovation, discussion, and most importantly student empowerment through “personal ownership” of their learning experience at Olin. This interest materialized out of Olin’s practice of a regular “Curriculum Review,” which involved “throwing out the curriculum” and reevaluating everything every 5 years. For more on the history of Olin’s curricular development, see [Olin’s Academic history page](http://www.olin.edu/academics/olin_history/vision.aspx). For further visual details about Olin’s curriculum [see this post on Olin’s Curricular Vision](http://www.marcotuts.com/?p=226). The overarching trajectory for this project had three primary phases, or which this Education Group Research Project, was the first phase. The other parts of this effort happened in later years, and can be summarized in the following posts: [Academic Committee Representation Organization](http://www.marcotuts.com/?p=213), [Formalizing CORe’s Academic Director Role](http://www.marcotuts.com/?p=217).
### **Education Research Center @ Olin **
The goals for this one credit research project was to conduct primary research of the MET School’s “One Student at a Time” learning model, and use the questions and notes generated from this visit to help organize the kind of research this Education Lab at Olin might conduct. The presentation below was made to help organize our independent research credit proposal, and gives some sense of the objectives and vision behind the project. In the future I was able to work with others several times with the MET School, through projects including Alight Learning and other education related projects.
**[slideshare id=7700945&doc=educationresearchproposal-110421231325-phpapp01]
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