St. Lawrence University will participate in a “Blended Learning Project” aimed at integrating classroom-style teaching with online resources.

The project is part of a group known as the “New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium,” which recently received a $150,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation.

The pilot project will engage faculty from the six member campuses, including St. Lawrence, to combine the face-to-face engagement of a conventional class with online tutorials or modules, online journals, blogs, webinars, videos and group chats.

The institutions want to find “the most effective ways to integrate technology into an already strong liberal learning foundation,” said Amy Doonan Cronin, executive director of the New York Six.

“I am excited that we have been awarded this grant because, although it will involve only small numbers of faculty, it provides an opportunity for faculty across the six colleges to collaborate in meaningful ways that will benefit students on all of the campuses,” said Val Lehr, vice president and dean of academic affairs at St. Lawrence University.

The grant proposal calls for two approaches to the idea in up to 12 courses across the six campuses.

In the first approach, they will target comparable classes on two or more campuses, with a faculty member on each campus leading the course discussions with students and all classes using common online elements. Faculty members will work together to develop the online elements.

In the second option, faculty will develop a course to be offered across two or more campuses, but which is not team-taught. These courses will be more of an online course, with videoconferences and occasional in-person meetings with the instructor.

Other colleges in the consortium are Colgate University, Hamilton College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Skidmore College and Union College.