Subject: Revised WWWIC Technology Fee Proposal
This proposal is a revision to an action plan originally submitted for Technology Fee funding. Partial funding was awarded for a new server. These revisions are divided into four sequential components.
They are: 1) additional equipment for web page development, 2) development of new web instructional tools, 3) beta testing the new web based tools in a small set of courses, and 4) preparing the new web tools for distribution among NDSU faculty. The number of courses, faculty, and departments using the world wide web is rapidly expanding at NDSU.| Semester | 100's | 200's | 300's | 400's | 700's | Total # Classes | # Departments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 1995 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 14 | 7 |
| Spring 1996 | 10 | 5 | 8 | 17 | 5 | 45 | 16 |
| Summer 1996 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 11 | 14 | 5 |
| Fall 1996 | 23 | 13 | 19 | 34 | 14 | 103 | 26 |
An important qualifier to this growth is that most course web pages are in their infancy. A faculty member may need two or three cycles of teaching a course before most of their materials meet their needs. Furthermore, few courses are using interactive web material or using advanced features such as conferencing.
Efforts by individual faculty members led to the development of the first set of course web pages at NDSU. Funding through a PPRC grant in 1995-96, led to the development of web instructional tools. Funding for a second PPRC grant in 1996-97 and several other grants has led to wider deployment of course web pages at NDSU. However, most of these web pages continue to be at a fundamental level (or little more than an on-line syllabus). While some web-based tools are available at NDSU (Quizmaker and Slidegen) and others are being developed or purchased (Opscan reading and conferencing), these tools are finding limited usage in NDSU course web pages. Given present work loads, most faculty simply do not have the time to develop their web page beyond a fundamental level. The three factors limiting the development of course web pages beyond a syllabus are: 1) most faculty have a limited understanding of course web page capabilities, 2) there is limited support for faculty development and 3) there is limited student assistant time for web page development.As instructional web use increases at NDSU, two general types of sites are emerging -- basic syllabus-type web sites, and more advanced, interactive sites. It would be easy to view the situation hierarchically with advanced-type site development taking precedence over, and resources away from, more basic entry-level site development. This is an apples vs. oranges approach. A more productive approach is to view the process of basic instructional web site development as planting apple seeds that, with careful cultivation and support, can yield large quantities of apples -- more advanced instructional web applications. Most faculty must learn to "walk" on the web before testing the starting blocks for the 100m dash. We must support those faculty who are taking their first steps while also providing the tools and resources needed by those who are up and running.
The limited PPRC funds are being stretched to support both the starting syllabus type effects and the more advanced interactive types of efforts. It is unfortunate to limit these efforts at a time when whole departments are seeking training and committing to Web development. In short, while significant progress has been accomplished with web page development, we still face tremendous challenges. Additional resources and web tools will help keep NDSU at the forefront and better serve the students.The fourteen students hired by the Instructional Web Group have been instrumental in more than doubling the number of classes and departments using the Web for instructional purposes. The Multimedia Center has become a work space for these students, in addition to the seventeen students employed by the Multimedia Center. The Center is also gaining popularity as a specialty use area for student presentations, due to Student Technology Fee support for extended hours and support. Because of this heightened usage, the Multimedia Center is often filled to capacity, and visitors cannot find an open workstation. It is also the only public use area without a printer.
Last spring the Instructional Web Group submitted an action plan proposal to the Student Technology Fee Committee that requested six workstations to be placed in the colleges for the student employees. Disbursement of the equipment across the campus is no longer preferred. The student employees from the web project and the Multimedia Center have discovered that they can increase their expertise sharply by interacting with each other. A visitor can feel the synergy in the room! To allow this to continue, we request two more workstations and a printer for the Multimedia Center. Optimally we would request six workstations, but the Multimedia Center does not have the space to house that many. The benefits of additional workstations and a printer are obvious: There will be more workstations available for the student employees funded by the Student Technology Fee and by a PPRC internal grant. Students and faculty who want to use the Multimedia Center as a specialty cluster will be able to find present workstations open more often. Faculty members will be able to assign presentation and web authoring assignments to their students, confident that the needed equipment is in place. Please consider funding the following equipment:| 1 PowerMac Workstation | $4,250 |
| 1 Windows95 Workstation | $3,300 | Software | $3,000 |
| 2 Zip Drives and Cartridges | $500 |
| Postscript Laser Printer | $1,500 |
| Total | $12,550 |
Significant progress has been made over the past 12 months in integrating WWW technology into teaching and student learning. However the PPRC funds received do not allow for much development of general support tools that could be used in various courses. The WWWIC students have developed several tools such as slide-gen and quiz maker. These allow the faculty member to create sophisticated Web pages with a limited investment in development time. This portion of the action plan requests additional resources to develop general purpose tools for wide spread use. The following list identifies some of the tools we hope to develop with resources provided by this section of the proposal. It is expected that the personnel under this section would also identify tools and obtain or develop general purpose Web tools in addition to this list.
The process of even obtaining, testing, and documenting existing programs for general use is labor intensive. The WWWIC group will continue to attempt to meet the need for general purpose tools even without additional funds. However, the number and quality of the resultant products will be limited. This, in turn, will slow down and limit the overall effectiveness of the Web effort. Some of the tools identified at this time are: 1) Software to serve Opscan test grades directly to the WWW.Currently, instructors of large classes that use the Opscan reader for grading can download the grades to their desktop, and manually post grades onto a web site after changing student NAID's into class codes. We propose to automate this process and to make it possible for test grades to be available to students over the WWW as soon as the test has been run through the Opscan reader. A magic number encoding scheme will be used to protect student identity. This tool will allow the instructors of large classes to be able to post grades in less time than currently required.
2) A database tool for cataloging imagesAn increasing number of instructional web sites at NDSU use images as teaching tools, indeed, this is one of the exciting aspects of the WWW. We propose to implement a database that will support the storage of and searching for images on instructional WWW sites. We expect to use a real data base system, such as PostGress, with a HTML interface. This will allow sophisticated indexing, and retrieval of images.
3) A Search Engine for the NDSU homepageCurrently a student or visitor looking for particular information on NDSU Web pages must manually search using trial and error methods. A keyword earchable search engine on the NDSU homepage should be implemented to assist in the efficient location of information. A number of such tools are available, but it is a significant effort to obtain, evaluate and field such programs.
4) Interactive simulations or modelsIn many fields, mathematical models have been constructed that simulate processes such as population variation or behavior of market indices. We propose to assist in the implementation of interactive simulation software on instructional web sites. Students will be able to actively investigate the effects of changing input variables, perform sensitivity analyses, and incorporate these experiments into their analysis of the system under study.
These tools will provide an interface that would invoke the programs to do the simulation or modeling and then would serve the resultant information back in both text and graphical forms. This tool should then permit building a variety of interactive programs. In addition to developing the tools mentioned above, documentation needs to be developed of the WWW tools already implemented (Quizmaker, Slide-Gen). For instructors just beginning to incorporate WWW into their classes, templates of typical web pages that can be modified as needed should be constructed and made available. In addition, this part of the project will undertake to conduct a campus-wide scientific survey of the student body on the state of instructional technology at NDSU. We have collected student survey data from particular classes but have little other than anecdotal evidence to judge student sentiment to our web efforts in general. We would like to evaluate a more general sampling of attitudes and effects. We would also evaluate current accessibility of the resources and recommend remedies to problems found.| 2 (10hr week) RA's as Programmers | $7000 |
| Software | $2000 |
| Local Publicity Costs and Surveys | $1500 | Total | $10500 |
Each professor in WWWIC will choose one element from the list below and implement it in one course during Spring 1997. To maximize the development effort, no two faculty members will implement the same elements. WWWIC will assign a graduate student, funded by the Tech. Fee and working under the direction and guidance of the Multimedia Center, to develop and document the use of each of the following:
* a search engine| 2 (10hr week) RA's Programmers | $7000 |
| 2 (10hr week) Undergraduate Programmers | $6700 | Travel Funds for Faculty | $1000 |
| Total | $14700 |
Before the new generation of web instructional tools developed in parts 2 and 3 can be broadly distributed for use by all NDSU faculty, three additional steps are necessary. First, documentation materials (most likely as a web page) will be required. Second, sessions for faculty training and development will be needed. Finally, these tools will require ongoing support.
The experience of the beta testers in part will judge the effectiveness of the new web tools. For example, modifications continue to be made to the documentation for Quizmaker to ease its adoption by more faculty members. Some of the documentation cannot be developed until we have the experience of the first users. Faculty development workshops will be held in a variety of formats. Faculty involved in the beta testing will be asked to make presentations sharing their experiences with the various new tools. This might be either through faculty development workshops or seminars for particular departments or colleges. Finally, most of the faculty responsible for initially developing these new web tools are intimately familiar with web authoring and usage. However, other faculty members will need assistance to show them which types of web instructional tools make the most sense in their class. One alternative would be to use students as web teaching assistants. These students could evaluate a specified number of courses, and then make recommendations to the faculty member on modifications they might consider for their course.| 2 (10 Hr. week) Undergraduates | $6500 |
| Local Publication Costs | $500 |
| Total | $7000 |
| I. | Total | $12550 |
| II. | Total | $10500 |
| III. | Total | $14700 |
| IV. | Total | $7000 |
| Grand Total | $44750 |