Online courses often use virtual worlds. At the Center for Distance Learning, Dr. Joyce McKnight's community and human services course, Community Organization, creatively merges the virtual with the 'real.'


Dr. Joyce McKnight, CDL faculty and recipient of the Altes Prize for Excellence in Community Service



The Course
From the course description below, you might get an idea that Dr. McKnight’s course is not your average textbook-only course, but you might be surprised at just how different it is.

Community Organization
Work with fellow students and community members to apply the theory and practice of community organization to real-life projects. Learn the theoretical frameworks and practical tools that have enabled ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things in their communities. Through the applied small group dynamics, experience the challenge of working together to create the future. The class focuses on “altruistic grassroots initiatives” or projects begun by community people at the local level to solve local problems. By the end of the course, students will have the tools, theoretical understanding and confidence needed to create successful community-based projects.

The Idea

With a nod to the hands-on methods of traditional community and human services professors, Joyce McKnight hoped to incorporate a real-world project into her Community Organization course. She designed her course so students participate in two reality-based projects. The first asks students to identify a need in their own community and propose a solution to fill that need. The other, and perhaps more intriguing, engages students in one of two "virtual" community projects based on real communities, one urban and one rural. Students discuss issues and brainstorm ideas for these projects, with Dr. McKnight acting as the intermediary, bringing the students' ideas to the "real" communities.

When asked how she came up with the idea of combining actual community projects with online students, McKnight explains, “I’ve been trying different approaches to teaching Community Organization and trying to make the most of my nearly 40 years of life experience in that area. The difficulty arises when you try to translate real-world experience into teaching in an online environment. This blended community project is the result. I wanted people to not only understand the theory, but also to understand the feeling of making a difference in an actual community. There is a science to it, but also a lot of art. Basically, my life’s work is based on the idea that people work together in their communities to create what’s needed - basically a higher quality of life - and I wanted my students to get a true sense of accomplishing something real."

The Projects

The rural community project deals with the Hadley-Lake Luzerne School District, a typical area in the southern Adirondack region of New York state. Since its tourism and papermaking industries have slowed in past years, the community is in an economic downturn. Over the past three semesters, students in McKnight's course identified the following broad areas of concern in Hadley-Lake Luzurne: business development, government concerns, and the needs of youth and senior citizens.

Using photos and geographical information embedded in her course, McKnight created a "virtual" portal into these communities. She says, "I have provided the students with thorough information on the area and add to it on an almost daily basis. I attend a variety of meetings and make contacts with many different people and act as a consultant to the real community. I then report back to the students who share suggestions and ideas and, in some cases, use what we are learning in Hadley-Lake Luzerne for their own projects, since many small communities share similar issues."

The urban community project deals with Vale, an inner city neighborhood in Schenectady, New York, that was in the process of being renewed and rehabilitated several years ago. Recently, these efforts have slowed down due to lack of momentum in the community organizations. One of Vale's younger inhabitants, Empire State College student Naomi Schanz, found herself associated with a group of younger community members interested in reigniting the rehabilitation. Naomi chose Vale as her personal community-based project for the September, 2006, semester, and McKnight added Vale as the urban community project, a natural next step in developing the course.

McKnight explains, "As Naomi explored the community, I became interested in Vale as an ongoing focus. It has many of the characteristics of the urban communities selected by other students and has the advantage of being within driving distance of Saratoga Springs, so I can physically represent the class on a fairly regular basis. Naomi has agreed to be the main contact person in Vale and is the liaison with the Vale community organization. I am then the connection back to the Empire State College students. At the moment we are developing a stronger community organization using a block club model."

Making a Real Difference
As Naomi did, students in Dr. McKnight’s Community Organization course also identify and begin working on their own community projects. Here are just a few examples of what they are working on:

• Creating youth centers for rural communities
• Developing a community garden that will include help for seniors with their gardening needs
• Preventing AIDS in an urban community
• Preventing youth violence in urban communities
• Linking Head Start students and the elderly
• Integrating developmentally disabled individuals into an urban community
• Creating a sense of community in a new suburban development
• Recruiting a grocery store for an urban neighborhood