Immersive virtual worlds are providing a new frontier for online learning by expanding the kinds of interaction possible online. Virtual environments are being developed specifically for education while some innovative schools and colleges are experimenting with the educational applications of existing commercial virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. The following describes the experiences of faculty members integrating a commercial gaming world into a community college literature course.

Dona Cady, David Kalivas, Don Margulis and Matthew Olson
Middlesex Community College

In the spring of 2007, at Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts, we undertook a radical experiment to use an online gaming world to enhance teaching and learning in a fantasy and science fiction literature class. Working from an established framework for technological innovation, this cutting edge project using new popular online environments has great potential to the future of education and provides us with pragmatic and technical guidelines. For information on our Model for Effective Learning Environments, see "Creating a Community of Practice to Support Technological Innovation in Instruction," (Cady, Kalivas, Margulis, & Olson) Community College Journal Oct/Nov 2006 at http://www.middlesex.mass.edu/PeoplePages/olsonm/CCJournal_Nov06.pdf

O Brave New World That Has Such People in It

For this project our goal was to extend the learning environment into the virtual realm many of our students are so familiar with (i.e. Second Life and EverQuest).  In our case we selected the wildly popular World of Warcaft (WoW) online game.  Put simply, WoW, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a virtual worldwide community of over nine million people, all interacting in a virtual fantasy world, all playing a game in which they set aside true identities and take on the roles of fantastic creatures and mythic heroes. While many in academia view these games as pure escapism, the possibility of igniting interest in previously disengaged learners was too enticing to resist.  For more information about Virtual Worlds, see Don Margulis' blog, Beyond the Screen at http://beyondthescreen.wordpress.com/.

The WoW Assignments

To minimize the unpredictable nature of the online world, we structured a multi-part activity based on two components: the stages of the hero's journey (as described by Joseph Campbell), and the basic elements of fiction. These assignments asked students to analyze the background mythology of the World of Warcraft, develop a character, join a guild, complete quests, and perhaps most importantly, to keep a "travelogue" of their experiences in the form of an ongoing fantasy story.

Stories within the sci-fi and fantasy genres are often distinguished by their creation of a complicated, multifaceted world with its own mythos serving as a backdrop and context for understanding plot and characters.  We asked students to compare the lore of the World of Warcraft with other literature covered in the course. Next, students created characters, on the side of good or evil, choosing gender, race, class, individual appearance, and name. By making choices in the creation of characters, the class was given a new lens for character analysis.  In a later assignment, students reversed character gender roles, exploring concepts of perception and point of view.  In addition to engaging issues related to mythos and perception, the WoW assignments also had the class establish a guild, which enabled participants to explore the virtual community and build connections with each other during their journeys.

All's Well That Ends Well

Students spoke positively about their gaming experience and the connections it helped them make in the class.  Students connected with each other and with the course material in wholly new ways. "I enjoyed the camaraderie. It gave us a chance to relate on an outside level," said one student.  "It really helped me understand a lot more...get into the characters' minds... and it helped me understand the stories a lot better," said another. In fact, one student observed the game's effect on our face-to-face sessions by noting, "You could use your imagination to jump off to discussions in class."

Our experiences have provided us with three guidelines for future use:

• Students and faculty need time, dedicated space, and equipment able to run the software.
• When students "put themselves out there," care must be taken to separate private and public identities.
• Design is essential for creating "order from chaos" and may require collaboration with instructional and academic support professionals.

In this project we advanced our understanding of the potential for virtual worlds in education. Through the virtual world experience we saw students form supportive social bonds that are so necessary to their persistence and success in college.  We saw students engage course material in ways we have never seen before, creating deep and meaningful learning experiences.  Finally, through their virtual world interaction students supported each others' learning creating a social learning experience so lacking in many of our traditional college courses. Truly we are only at the beginning of this new educational opportunity.

Virtual World Resources

Below is a list of helpful online resources for understanding the uses of Virtual Worlds in instruction.

• Beyond The Screen: On Teaching, Learning, Technology, Games and Virtual Worlds, Don Margulis, Middlesex Community College  http://beyondthescreen.wordpress.com/
• The Virtual Education Research Group (VERG) at Middlesex Community College http://www.middlesex.mass.edu/VERG
• "Learning in a Digital Age," David Carew, Vanderbilt University http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltview/articles/2007/11/01/learning-in-a-digital-age.48427
• River City Project , Chris Dede, Harvard University http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/
• Games + Learning + Society , University of Wisconsin http://gameslearningsociety.org/
• "The Learning Guild: MMORPGs as Educational Environments,"
  Rodney Riegle and Wesley Matejka, Illinois State University http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/proceedings/06_4095.pdf

Learn more about ways to increase critical thinking skills for undergraduate students!

Critical Thinking Video Conference
November 14, 2007*
12-2pm (Pacific Time)
2-4pm (Central Time)
3-5pm (Eastern Time)**

*These times are the most current.
* *Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Pine Manor College and Salem State College will gather at Salem State College from 12:30-3pm (EST) for lunch and information sharing prior to the video conference. Shelley Steenrod is coordinating the logistics.

Presentations will include:

Turning It Off: Teaching Media Criticism Through Ethnography
by Dr. Charles Lewis, professor of Mass Communications
Hear the results of a project that explored how students could develop a critical perspective of media through observation and analysis of their own media use as well as an experiment in abstaining from viewing electronic-media for a period of time.

The redesign of general Chemistry II to promote critical thinking and long term learning
by Dr. Marie Pomije and Dr. John Thoemke, professors of Chemistry
Learn about online materials and "workshop days" to promote critical thinking in chemistry. The researchers developed online materials to motivate and guide students to review topics from General Chemistry I, as required for success in Chemistry II.  They also created "workshop days" in which the students worked in groups to solve application problems designed to create multi-dimensional critical thinking skills (both conceptual and mathematical). 

Incorporating critical thinking through media literacy in global perspectives on women and change  
by Dr. Cathryn Bailey, professor of Philosophy
Based on observation it seemed clear that not enough has been done to creatively incorporate revision strategies to best exploit revision's potential to develop critical thinking in philosophy classes.  The project proposed to explore how professors in other disciplines understand and utilize revision.  From this information new revision strategies were developed and implemented in a writing intensive course titled "Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender."

Did we learn anything?  Evaluating the effectiveness of physics, psychology and philosophy courses designed to improve critical thinking in the sciences.
by Dr. Steven Kipp, professor of Astronomy
Learn about research that aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of three critical thinking courses in Philosophy, Psychology and Physics.

Background on IPESL
The Initiative to Promote Excellence in Student Learning (IPESL) was a grant opportunity from the Minnesota State Legislature for faculty to improve student learning. Each of the seven state universities in Minnesota were asked to develop their own propectus for their own campus. At MSU it was decided that the most important need was for faculty to infuse courses with critical thinking through one or more of the following areas:

• new instructional or curriculum materials to improve critical thinking (development, implementation, and assessment)
• new support mechanisms to improve critical thinking (development, implementation, and assessment)
• new assessments of critical thinking (development and implementation).

A total of 38 faculty received funding for 22 different grants to develop projects during the spring semester 2007.  Areas of study included the following disciplines with some projects completed by teams of faculty:  Philosophy, Speech Communication, English, Music, Mass Communications, Physics & Astronomy, Modern Languages, Nursing, Accounting & Business Law, Mathematics & Statistics, Chemistry, Women's Studies and Urban & Regional Studie

For more details about IPESL please go to the following website: http://www.mnsu.edu/grants/ipesl

In December 2006 the Minnesota State University Mankato Initiative to Promote Excellence in Student Learning (IPESL) project provided faculty with a competitive grant opportunity to develop instructional, support or assessment methods to improve students' critical thinking. Their projects posted on their website provide faculty with critical thinking resources such as a Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric, a video stream of renowned educator Stephen Brookfield speaking on developing critical thinking skills in students and Dr. Stewart Ross speaking on integrated course design. Included on the site is a comprehensive handout with background information on critical thinking, classroom activities, classroom research techniques, ideas on how to assess critical thinking and an extensive bibliography. Content from workshops presented by Barbara Millis on promoting critical thinking should be added soon along with her many handouts.

All of this information can be found at: http://www.mnsu.edu/grants/ipesl

Once you've had a chance to digest MSU's thought-provoking material on critical thinking, let us know your thoughts! What connections did you make to your own teaching? How can we use these resources to lead to actual changes in classroom practice? Start the discussion today by posting a comment.

ANNOUNCEMENT: COPPER colleges will engage in discussion and information sharing on critical thinking via videoconference on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 2pm (EST).  Faculty from Minnesota State will present their projects. Massachusetts colleges will gather at Salem State College at noon for lunch and then join the videoconference at 2pm.

Contact Yvette Hassakoursian, yvetteh@glendale.edu

Beginning in Fall 2000, the Mathematics Division at Glendale College administered a common final exam for all exiting Intermediate Algebra students, providing a wealth of extremely useful data. The original goal was to ensure that all students who completed the course were exposed to the same content. Since adjunct faculty taught most of these classes, it had been difficult to monitor course coverage. But now all instructors knew their students would suffer on the final if they didn’t learn all the material and the item analysis reveals exactly what material was left unlearned. In 2004, the common final exam was expanded to include all students exiting Elementary Algebra and we plan to add Basic Math courses as well.

Based on our Carnegie SPECC award, we are able to put more time and effort into analyzing the data collected in the common final exam.  Currently we discuss grading practices with faculty, create seminars for instructors emphasizing topics on which students performed poorly, and, most recently, we introduced final review workshops for students. The common final item analysis breaks down the results to show which problems were most difficult for students. We discuss these problems in seminars and our annual Division retreat, helping us to complete the feedback loop needed for student learning outcomes.

The Division Chair uses the results of the common final (along with student final grades) to open a discussion with individual faculty members regarding their grading scale.  For example, if an instructor’s class average on the final is very low and students’ final grades are mostly A’s and B’s, then the instructor may be too lenient, tests may be too easy, or homework or class participation may be emphasized too heavily in the calculation of the final grade.

Last year, we introduced student workshops during the second half of the semester to prepare students for the common final exam. We will continue these workshops using the previous versions of the common final exams as a study tool.  (They are posted online at:  http://www.glendale.edu/current/departments/math/cfeIndex.htm.) This year we will also consider the psychology of the common final exam and consider ways to reduce students’ fear and anxiety.

The CASTL Campus Program Leadership Clusters participated together from 2003 to 2006; COPPER was one of the 12 cluster groups.  In 2006 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began the Institutional Leadership Program to build on the work of the Leadership clusters to further develop and sustain the scholarship of teaching and learning on college campuses.  The Institutional Leadership Program will run from 2006 to 2009.  More details are available at: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/sub.asp?key=21

Several members of the original COPPER group (Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Pine Manor College, and Salem State College) will continue as one of the 12 Leadership themes in the Institutional Leadership Program and will be joined by two new members: Glendale Community College (CA), and Minnesota State University Mankato.   We plan to continue using communities of practice to pool our educational resources to support the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The COPPER blog will assume new roles in the next few months as we begin unfolding different projects.  Stay tuned!

Donna Duffy
Middlesex Community College

Below is the link to the COPPER Snapshot produced with the KEEP Toolkit developed by the Knowledge Media Lab of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

COPPER Snapshot

The first round of Carnegie cluster work has come to an end this summer. For many member colleges, a second three year period of SoTL cluster work will begin this coming fall.  Many of the COPPER cluster colleges have been accepted into the second round, and several of us will continue to work together.  We will also be welcoming new schools to our community.

At this point, aspects of the upcoming cluster structure, goals, and online tools used by the new community are still to be determined.  Much of this work will take place during the fall semester.  What role this site will play, if any, in the emerging cluster will be decided during this process.  It may be that a new blog, wiki, or a combination of online tools will be created to both serve the communication needs of our community of colleges and also serve as a link to others interested in our work.

For now, this site and it’s over 200 pages of ideas, resources and conversations will remain available.  You can continue to visit and make use of the blog, as well as add comments.  Occasional entries, particularly related to existing themes, may be added from time to time. However, the practice of providing updates and new entries to the site on a regular basis over the last two plus years will be put on hold for the time being.

Many thanks to all those that have contributed their entries and comments to the COPPER Blog during its lifetime, or have taken the time to visit the site and view what we have to offer.  We hope the time spent with us has been worthwhile.  As Blog editor, the process has been a unique challenge and opportunity.

Don

Thanks to Donna Duffy for providing the following summary of Barbara Cambridge's Keynote address at the co-sponsored  Carnegie COPPER Cluster and New England Faculty Development Consortium summer SoTL conference, June 2, 2006.    

We’re Teaching But are Students Learning?

A Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Main Points from Keynote by Barbara Cambridge
President, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:

Cambridge invited conferees to consider four ways in which the scholarship of teaching and learning can affect the common good.

• Engaging students at any academic level in a changing society

• Enriching our disciplines by expanding the questions we ask

• Defining and accounting for higher education through increased knowledge about student learning

• Anticipating positively future non-human partners in knowledge making

Student engagement in a changing society

Student engagement has been positively linked to student learning; therefore, creating conditions that draw students into their own learning is essential. Two current conditions that affect engagement are the No Child Left Behind Act and increasing numbers of English Language Learners. With effects of NCLB including overuse of a single assessment instrument, the driving out of subjects other than reading and mathematics, and the narrowing of teacher choice, innovative practices and structures are necessary. The Internationals High Schools in NYC offer innovative structures and practices to counter NCLB and to affirm ELL students. The high schools include two-year institutes, community service requirements, and teaching of language and content by all teachers. Now school and college scholars need to study how the structural changes and novel practices affect learning outcomes.

Through research on its electronic portfolio project with incoming students, LaGuardia Community College has realized greater retention and more satisfaction among its first-year students who come from the largest number of ethnic backgrounds at any institution in the United States. In their eportfolios these students affirm their home cultures and their new college culture. Further scholarly work will delve into particular pedagogical and assessment practices that support this diverse academic community, affirming the wide variety of cultural roles they inhabit and helping them understand the influence of those roles on their learning.

Enrichment of disciplines through expanding ranges of questions asked

Asking questions about the how as well as the what of learning in a discipline enriches the knowledge base of the discipline. Curt Bennett and Jacqueline Dewar’s work in mathematics demonstrates the value of asking new questions about how students understand a good mathematical problem. Using multiple inquiry methods and a “proof-aloud” protocol for probing students’ thinking, Bennett and Dewar generated a mathematical knowledge expertise grid to trace developmentally learning in mathematics.

In addition to new questions about novice and developmental learning in a discipline, asking unexpected questions but using more traditional disciplinary-based methods to answer the questions also enriches disciplines. The book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything challenges individuals to ask unusual questions in order to understand the world in new ways. Questions that complicate our disciplines and demand alternative lenses enrich and expand our disciplines in a healthy way.

Accountability in higher education through increased knowledge about student learning

Defining and describing student learning outcomes for prospective students and their families, for legislators, for accreditors, and for other stakeholders of higher education benefits all these education stakeholders. The call for data is reasonable because higher education needs to be more transparent about its outcomes to counter calls like those of some Spelling Commission members for a single national test for college graduation.

Because not all student learning can be represented by quantitative data, however, we need to think of ways for quantitative and qualitative data to interact. An example of this possibility can be seen at Bowling Green University, whose summer 2005 study, controlled for background factors, indicated that students who used eportfolios had significantly higher grade point averages, credit hours earned, and retention rates than a matched set of students without electronic portfolios. Using results of research about reflection by campuses in the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, faculty at Bowling Green can now do scholarly work on the ways in which increased experience with reflection can account for increased engagement and learning presumably yielding higher grades.  Putting such information in forms understandable to various audiences unites quantitative data and results of the scholarship of teaching and learning in productive ways.

Anticipation of non-human partners in knowledge making

Joel Garreau’s book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds. Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human argues that by 2029 “Of the total computing power of the human race—all human brains plus all the technology that the species has created—more than 99 percent will be nonhuman.” Although we will be able to buy long-term memory and reasoning, “learning still requires time-consuming human experience and study. This is how humans spend most of their day. . . The largest profession is education” (102).

In Garreau’s scenarios about the future, human beings are still very central in the world. But, they are central because they can learn and can generate knowledge. In other words, knowing how human beings learn becomes even more central than it is today. Knowing how human beings learn in all realms of their existence is what keeps the human race going. Doing the scholarship of teaching and learning, then, is foundational to human’s very existence.

We want to do scholarship of teaching and learning that supports student learning in our classrooms and on our campuses now, but we also need to consider the conditions of our society now and in the future that mandate a broader view, a view that situates the scholarship of teaching and learning as central to addressing societal problems and to assuring a future that nourishes human being, their non-human partners, and the society of which they all will be a part.

The following links are resources for the Massachusetts Colleges Online conference presentation Cast Your Pod to the Wind, June 13, 2006 at Middlesex Community College:

Horizon report:  http://www.nmc.org/horizon/   (Emerging educational technologies)

Podomatic:   http://www.podomatic.com/    (Easily create and post podcasts)

ActiveWorlds:  http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/index.asp  (virtual 3D worlds)

Muzzy Lane Software:  http://www.muzzylane.com/  (educational gaming software)

Serious Game Summit: http://www.seriousgamessummit.com/  (conference on educational use of games)

Games, Learning & Society: http://www.glsconference.org/default.htm  (conference on educational gaming)

Educational Arcade: http://www.educationarcade.org/  (MIT -University of Wisconsin joint project on educational gaming)

Best of Web 2.0 Software: http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm  (review of Web 2.0 software)

The following excerpt is from the Tomorrow's Professor listserv post on the Scholarship of Engagement from May 23.  The article can be viewed and comments made on the new  "Tomorrow's Professor Blog" sponsored by MIT.

"In sum, the scholarship or engagement, therefore, is a set of activities. At its core are four dimensions of scholarship-discovery, integration, application, and teaching.  It becomes the scholarship of engagement through its active and interactive connection with people and places outside of the university in the activities of scholarship, setting goals, selecting means and methods, applying means and methods, reflecting on results, and dissemination of the results."

To read the post in its entirety click here

There may be times when you have a question, comment, request, or thought that you wish to share with our group that does not appear to fit neatly under the theme of one of our current entries.  For that reason, the "Open Forum" topic will be republished on a regular basis to function as a convenient location for those messages.  Just use the "comments" option below to respond.

"It is our belief that to be effective citizens of a global society, individuals need to have in the first place as deep an understanding of themselves and their specific ways of functioning as possible."

A brief context for the following remarks in response to the question: “What knowledge or skills will students need to be effective citizens of our world in the future?

Through 26 years of investigation involving more than 80,000 people from more than 25 cultures, we have discovered that hard-wired into everyone from birth onwards is a very specific pattern of mental-emotional-physical interplay which determines how each individual naturally “experiences experience,” thinks, learns, plans, communicates, relates to others, experiences stress and maintains well-being, as a whole system of functioning.  Your specific pattern also determines your particular path of development.  We have found that five such specific human systems (we term them “personality dynamics”) seem to predominate (numerically speaking) in the world, and that they exist regardless of age, race, culture and  gender.  In other words, these distinct “ways of being,” with their very different inherent processes, gifts and needs are present in every family, every classroom, every organization, wherever people come together, anywhere in the world.

We should add that that the mental, emotional and physical capacities that we identify are expanded along a continuum of development, ranging from the personal to the transpersonal. i.e. mental functioning can be expressed as simply thinking, or as formulating high vision; emotional functioning as simply having feelings, or as expressing deep compassion; physical functioning as doing anything, or as undertaking actions that express vision and compassion in service to humanity.

We term this new body of knowledge concerning human functioning and distinctions in human functioning: “Human Dynamics.”  Programs based upon it are in use internationally, primarily in the fields of organizational development, teacher training, parenting, health care, and cross-cultural bridge building.

It is our belief that to be effective citizens of a global society, individuals need to have in the first place as deep an understanding of themselves and their specific ways of functioning as possible. By “functioning” we mean awareness of their individual inherent processes and needs with regard to such aspects of themselves as the ways in which they naturally learn, undertake tasks, communicate, relate to stress and, most importantly, develop - personally, interpersonally and transpersonally. Since these processes are inherently different for different people, effective citizens also need to be able to understand others and their particular processes and needs, in order to be able to make positive connections with others and foster harmonious and productive relationships. Especially in the context of a global society, the development of such awarenesses and skills constitutes at least as important an educational objective as the acquisition of knowledge in an academic discipline or skills in a profession or craft.

Moreover, in times of rapid change and increasing complexity, the most reliable and sustaining asset one can have is a strong sense of self, not in the sense of blind self-confidence, but in having a deep understanding of the “instrument” one has to use in life.  It is also reassuring to know that one has insights that help make sense of others’ behavior, and tools and practices available to help maintain the health and well-being of the instrument and achieve one’s  personal, interpersonal and transpersonal potential.

A related issue that we suggest needs to be recognized and addressed is: “How does the technological revolution impact the human system?”

Human Dynamics has identified 3 frequencies (or 3 principles) as the elemental threads from which the complexity of human functioning is woven. We have identified these frequencies as being related respectively to mental, emotional, and physical functions.

• The mental functioning in people is on a high, fast frequency.
• The emotional functioning is in a middle range.
• The physical functioning of people is, by comparison, on a much slower frequency.

From our experience the fast mental function is probably the most able to accommodate the speed at which new information is being offered and change is taking place. The emotional function will have varied responses- from frustration to elation, and everything in between. However, the physical function is likely to be in great trouble because it operates, as we have mentioned, at a slower rate.

If the physical body is stressed, the mental and emotional systems will also become stressed. The end results can range from less then optimal functioning as a whole system, to complete breakdown.  Since the speed and complexity of outer events and incoming information are unlikely to change, we as educators need to provide training that builds inner capacities to handle them. We need to provide balancing practices that become part of the everyday educational curriculum.

For example, each day can begin quietly with a meditative exercise, relaxation, self-reflection or listening to peaceful music. This quiet activity can be repeated at other natural break times, such as after lunch or at the end of the day. Incorporating such practices has now become common in Swedish schools, where over 20,000 teachers have now received Human Dynamics training.  Some schools in Singapore, where we are now conducting training, are now introducing similar practices into their classrooms. Such practices not only contribute to the overall development and inner stability of students, they also increase the individual’s availability and capacity for learning.  At one exceptional school in China, which we recently visited, the students are given a ten minute break outdoors every forty minutes, during which they engage in some form of organized physical activity.  This may not promote inner reflection, but it does provide relief and exercise for the body, re-vitalizes the brain and allows a space in which new learning can be assimilated.

In short, we believe that educational practice should be based on informed recognition and accommodation of the diversity of human functioning, and have as its goal facilitation of the development of each individual as a whole being- mentally, emotionally, physically; personally, inter-personally and transpersonally.    

Sandra Seagal is founder and president of Human Dynamics International and executive director  of the Human Dynamics foundation.  David Horne is a partner in Human Dynamics International and co-director of Human Dynamics Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to educational and scientific research.  They are co-authors of Human Dynamics:  A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations (Pegasus Communications, 1997)

Professor Jim Sullivan (Developmental Math and SoTL Scholar) from Northern Essex Community College would like to hear from faculty in any discipline about the following:

Please list the math/quantitative abilities you would like your students to have upon entering the courses you teach.

It would be helpful to write the name of the course and then a bullet list of the abilities, perhaps even an example if you have the time.

Responses can be sent directly to Jim at jsullivan@necc.mass.edu

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place."
- Margaret Mead

"But diversity could just as well represent an opportunity as a problem.  Difference is the wellspring of innovation.  People who see the world differently have fresh ideas and see new possibilities."
- Peter Senge

"In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival."
- Rene Dubos

"For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."
- Donald Williams

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.”
- Maya Angelou

" If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."
- John F. Kennedy