Ilsley prepares for final chapter of Fulbright

by Mark McGowan

Paul Ilsley, who has spent the last two autumns in Finland on a Fulbright Fellowship, will return this fall to complete his project examining active citizenship and online learning.

The professor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, working with colleagues in the Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education, promises a “Hollywood ending” for his work, which will include two books and has already landed him on the editorial board of the journal “Lifelong Learning in Europe.”

Ilsley will leave in late August and return in late December.

“Each year, the project has become increasingly layered with additional responsibilities and also additional opportunities,” Ilsley said. “We’re continuing the kind of commitment that’s a model for international cooperation.”

Ilsley is editing a book that will report research on how people learn online, and what kind of self-regulation is necessary. The second book, which he is writing, studies citizen involvement and social forums in China, Finland and the United States.

Meanwhile, he will continue a study of doctoral students who are learning research skills via the computer. “I want to know if important aspects of dissertation research can be taught online,” Ilsley said.

Perhaps most important, however, is the completion of an agreement between NIU and the University of Helsinki, which Ilsley calls “one of Europe’s best, oldest and deepest institutions.” Ilsley and his U.S. and Finnish colleagues, mostly in the field of adult education, will celebrate the agreement over the next year.

Unlike many agreements between universities that are “just pieces of paper,” Ilsley said, this pact is a “meaningful” one that includes faculty exchanges, student exchanges, joint teaching and even joint courses, where Americans and Finns will take the same course but in different places.

“Finland has wonderful online teaching capabilities, like Northern,” Ilsley said. “We want to let sharing flourish. If we can build resources and exchanges, this leads to people being able to work together to build new ways for the future.”

NIU recently hosted Ulpukka Isopahkala, a visiting scholar from the University of Helsinki, who conducted research here on Fortune 50 companies and how CEOs learn.

For his part, Ilsley has advised Finnish doctoral students, taught classes and gave lectures at the Centre for Vocational Educational Research at Tampere University in Hämeenlinna.

“The goal is to use all these things as means, not ends, so we can internationalize our curriculum,” he said. “Especially for teachers, it’s important to have a global view.”

Ilsley’s Fulbright began there in 2002 as qualitative research into how the establishment of the European Union would change the country’s citizenship structure.

His research on active citizenship sheds light on an important concept, one that involves both liberals and conservatives: What is the basis of how we decide to support the status quo or change it?

Using phenomenology – both a school of thought and set of research practices – he examines voluntary action, the stakeholders of citizenship and the role of the government, and uses events such as the Million Man March or the rise in patriotism since Sept. 11 to probe citizenship’s shifts and meanings.

Finland, situated between Russia and Sweden, is a fertile laboratory for Ilsley’s research. “The Finns are neither East nor West,” he said. “Finland is the gateway to both East and West.”

As the three-year project nears its end, Ilsley is grateful to Chris Sorensen, dean of the College of Education; Jeff Hecht, his department chair, and Deb Pierce, executive director of International Programs. Ilsley has taught summer courses for free in exchange for permission to visit Finland in the fall semesters.

“I’ve been given a great chance with the Fulbright, and then able to follow up one year and then two,” he said. “It’s certainly the most meaningful professional shake I’ve been given.”

7-26-04