All of the needs assessment responses I received as of May 28, 2001 are now posted. If you submitted your answers to me and do not see them here, please let me know (mhristov@brynmawr.edu). If you have any comments or suggestions, please email me and I will make the changes. Thank you and enjoy the conference!

* Please click on the school link and it will take you directly to the responses from that particular school.
 

School	Information Technologist	Librarian	Professor	Student
Mount Holyoke College:	Aime De Granier	Raven Fonfa	Peter Berek	Andrea LeClair
Vassar College:		Gretchen Lieb	Margo Crawford	Chaney Sims
Hampshire College:	John Gunther	Serena Smith	Eva Rueschmann	Christelle Barber
Amherst College:	Paul Chapin	Michael Kasper
Haverford College:	Sharon Strauss	Margaret Schaus	Maud Burnett McInerney	Ryan Bowman
Swarthmore College:	Eric Behrens		Betsy Bolton
Hamilton College:	Janet Simons	Kristin L. Strohmeyer	John O'Neill	Colleen Fenity
Smith College:		Barbara Polowy
University of Massachusetts		William Thompson	Bill Israel	Mary Grein
Bryn Mawr College:		Arleen Zimmerle	Juana Rodriguez

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need. What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology? What goals do you have for collaboration in this area? What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

I hope to help my students learn to improve their writing by making it easier for them to work together in groups and to work with a writing mentor.

I have used a student writing mentor quite successfully this year in Pasts and Presences in the West-a year-long, writing-intensive humanities course that moves from Greek drama through the Bible and Shakespeare to Laclos, Shaw, Bulgakov, Stoppard and the history of the Mount Holyoke campus landscape. (There are five sections of the course, each with ten to twenty students; there are five instructors, all of whom use writing mentors.) Students and mentors sometimes find it hard to get together because of the complexity of their schedules. I hope to find a way of using technology to make it easier for a student to send a draft of her paper to a writing mentor and to get the draft back with comments. I'd also like my students to take more seriously the idea that they are writing for an audience; one way to do so might be to have a small group of students comment on one another's papers while they are still in draft. Finally, I would like to be able to drop in on the exchanges within a group or between student and mentor so I can observe how students are progressing and take their needs into better account as I plan classes and assignments.

E-mail alone can be used for purposes such as these, but marking up a paper in e-mail is awkward, and sharing multiple texts among a group is also hard. I hope that there is some way of using web technology to achieve my goal, so that a student or a mentor can go to a text and comment on it while leaving clear the distinction between comments or proposed revision and the work of the original author. I'd also like a system that leaves a historical record that can be reviewed and examined for instructive patterns.

The other instructors in P&P have expressed an interest in using the kind of technology I seek if it can be used simply and inexpensively. I already have Web pages for all my courses. Ideally, new technology would be integrated with my existing use of the web.

I also hope that collaboration with a librarian and a technologist will lead to further ideas that can improve this course for my students. For example, can we develop ways of helping students learn to use (and evaluate) resources on the Web? Should students develop their own web pages for the course? Should students collaboratively develop web "modules" relevant to P&P materials that could later be used by other students?

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

Librarians at Mount Holyoke College are responsible for the selection of electronic information and reference resources, e.g. periodical indexes, that are purchased/subscribed to by the Library. Librarians consult with teaching faculty on the selection of new electronic resources and then inform faculty about the acquisition of a new resource. We maintain the subscriptions and monitor the functioning of the resources working closely with vendors, publishers, consortia and network managers.

As part of reference services, we regularly show patrons how to use the online indexes, databases and other electronic resources. In this context, we also frequently show how to use various information technology tools: email, file transfer, networking, word processing, etc. As part of our bibliographic instruction program, we teach workshops and course integrated sessions on how to use electronic resources for research.

Librarians participate in the assessment of some of the software/hardware under consideration for purchase for the college, especially as it impacts information services. The librarians are often one of the first groups to use new software, e.g. web authoring, and give feedback on usability and training. For software directly related to information services or instruction, librarians may participate in teaching the training sessions, e.g. WebCT.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

The key phrase in this question seems to be "in the classroom"; while we have a rich array of humanities resources that support research and critical thinking skills, I am interested in further investigating their application in the classroom beyond bibliographic instruction. We provide access to the core humanities indexing resources, such as Humanities Abstracts, MLA Bibliography, Historical Abstracts, BHA/Bibliography of the History of Art, among many others. The complete list of almost 100 online indexes and databases is available on our library web site: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/databases/titledb.html

A few of the humanities resources especially useful in instruction: Arts & Humanities Index - one of the IS citation indexes through Web of Science. In addition to providing indexing for a substantial database of humanities publications, this resource allows for searching by cited author enabling a user to trace the path of scholarship showing how researchers build on and critique each others work.

Contemporary Literary Criticism - A full-text counterpart to the print CLC introduces representative literary criticism.

Expanded Academic ASAP - Full-text interdisciplinary database covering a range of types of publications, scholarly, popular, news, enables limiting searches to scholarly refereed publications providing an instruction opportunity to discuss the nature of scholarly versus non-scholarly literature.

PCI: Periodical Contents Index - Indexes a range of social sciences and humanities journals back to each journal's beginning publication date. This allows the opportunity to research older scholarship, e.g. literary criticism/book reviews written contemporary to the publication of a classic work.

We also have access to a number of full text book and journal collections, JSTOR, Project Muse, NetLibrary, all of which provide flexible searching and viewing to a wide range of materials. We subscribe to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, an invaluable resource for English language studies. More on E-Text collections here: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/ref/etexts.html

To ease access to the wide range of resources available in different disciplines, the librarians have created Subject Guides describing different types of print and online resources available in a topic area: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/guides These can serve as an efficient gateway to the resources of a discipline.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information? What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

As mentioned above, I am very interested in developing approaches for integrating the use of online resources and information technology into class instruction. In particular, I would like to learn about the potential needs for these resources in the classroom context and the appropriate applications of them in the curriculum.

In general, I hope we can develop mechanisms for improved communication between the different campus groups to increase awareness of each other's needs and practices and thus facilitate the implementation of collaborative programs. 

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

As an Instructional Technologist I am the liaison to Faculty in the Humanities.  I support project development, curriculum development and technology use, research and training.  My role varies with each project.  In some projects I provide the hands on support to make the technology happen, and in some cases it is the technical training to support the project development.  In almost all cases it is troubleshooting--either my work, the work of my colleagues, the work of student support staff or the work of the faculty to make the technology happen.

I manage a faculty/staff computer lab with 10 high end stations.  I ensure the equipment works, the software works and answer questions.  I provide daily support to faculty, staff and students who encounter a wide array of challenges in many different circumstances.

I support the use of technology by faculty and students in their classwork.  If a professor requires a technical component to the academic work of a course, I often support, advise and discuss the needs of all involved.  I integrate the curricular needs with the other computing areas of our department--ie. networking or helpdesk.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/ teaching/ learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness.

I can think of a number of tools to use to enhance the course.

WebCT--a web-based course management tool could assist in student communication outside of the classtime.  It could facilitate teamwork through virtual group meetings and ongoing dialogue outside of classtime both among the students and with the faculty/staff.

Peer Editing/Writing tools--I would like to investigate software to facilitate collaborative writing.  I believe Office 2000/2001 might have some useful tools and I know of at least one other stand-alone product, Commonspace.  I will investigate other tools.

WebPage Development--I think integrating a web-page assignment into the curriculum could enhance learning and skill-development.  This course often has a large number of first-year students enrolled.  A Web Page project would be a great opportunity for them to pick up new skills that will carry through their undergraduate learning.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

Our team provides training for faculty, staff and students on using web page development tools.  We have a rich schedule of workshops throughout the semester.  We have a number of related software programs already available in the public labs.  I would consider scheduling and conducting training sessions specifically for this course which could integrate the
course needs specifically.

I will research, review, recommend, purchase, learn, train and install a peer editing software program.  ;-)

I am attending the annual WebCT conference this summer to enhance my skill base and to expand our team support for the program.

I am available to work with the team throughout the school year.  I am excited to see where we can go with this collaborative effort!

I'm focused on increasing my ability to help students improve their writing. I would like to make peer and mentor revision of work easier for the students, thus increasing the helpfulness of the sessions and giving the students further opportunity to improve their work.

I am looking forward to the opportunity to make Internet technology less remote and to place it as an integral part of the lessons in the class. My faculty-memeber's goals for the class focus around using the course web page. If we can use a course web page to facilitate work with the students, then both the students and I are using the web page as a tool rather than simply a reference source - and learning how to do the same with other encounters with the Internet. The Internet will no longer be a quick reference that does everything for us.

Overall, I would like to find a way to make revision and group work easier and more beneficial to the students, and to be able to be as helpful a mentor in person as over email-message board-web page.

I will be participating in and researching a class on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance period. For our project, we plan on collaborating with Bryan Carter, Assistant Professor of English at Central Missouri State University and creator of Virtual Harlem. Virtual Harlem is a Virtual Reality program that enables students to experience Harlem at its cultural and artistic height, from the 1920s-40s. Through this program, students studying the Harlem Renaissance can visually interact with and experience its culture, music, performances, art, architecture, etc.

I am very excited about this collaboration. I hope that we can provide a stimulating environment for students, such as myself, to visualize and conceptualize what influenced the great prose and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance by expanding on the print, audio, and visual media in Virtual Harlem. Perhaps, we might get other students to contribute to our collaboration by lending their skills, in the sciences and humanities, to help continue building the world of Virtual Harlem after our official project is over. Most of all I hope to bring interesting, interactive, creative resources into the classroom through advanced computer technology, blending the old with the new.

Resources, and access to resources is the basis for learning in any context. The following should be the basics 1) A good teacher who can introduce you to new ideas, guide you in the right direction and leave enough space for students to be critical, independent, creative thinkers. 2) Access to print, video and audio media 4) Access to a variety of personal and/or political and social perspectives on the same subject 3) Anything that can be accessed from the computer is extremely beneficial. I can access information from web pages or reading rooms at all times either from my PC or Vassar's public computer clusters.

For my class on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance Virtual Harlem will be a wonderful resource. Students will be able to access and download articles, text excerpts in the form of print or audio media. I will be able to walk down the streets of Harlem as they existed 70 years ago, I will be able to hear the music of the age (Jazz and Blues) and actually view a performance in, say, The Cotton Club. However, I would also like a web page for our class with reliable links on the World Wide Web concerning The Harlem Renaissance that might not exist in Virtual Harlem. The web page might include current museum exhibitions, plays and/or performances concerning the subject matter. A List of films and/or documentaries, online Journals and/or periodicals would also be extremely helpful.

As a student, who cannot always find relevant materials, I think all the above mentioned aspects are crucial to creating a successful learning environment and I am happy to contribute my thoughts and ideas to make it happen.

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

In order to add a visual and musical component to the Harlem Renaissance course that is cross-listed in Vassar's English department and the Africana Studies program, we will contribute technological resources and research to Bryan Carter's "Virtual Harlem" project. Carter has asked the Vassar team to become collaborators on this "Virtual Harlem" project.

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

The center of the Harlem Renaissance course will be literary analysis, but it will also be a cultural study of Harlem in the 1920's. Using Bryan Carter's "Virtual Harlem" project, and contributing to it, will enable me to create a real balance between the cultural study of Harlem and the literary analysis.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

At this point, I do not use any technology in my courses.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

I intend to continue to work with the Vassar team in order to use even more technology in the Harlem Renaissance course.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

I hope the conference will help us identify other resources. 

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

Librarians teach classes as requested by faculty. These classes typically introduce a number of databases useful for a particular subject area or specific project. We also work individually with students and occasionally faculty to show them how to use various electronic resources. Several faculty members are interested in having librarians work on a more ongoing basis with specific classes. We also take a primary role in reviewing electronic resources for purchase or subscription, and work with the teaching faculty and students to make sure we get their assessments of resources under consideration.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

There are many resources in the humanities that support students' learning in the classroom. Their coverage often overlaps. None of the resources per se will increase students' critical skills; only they can do that through experience and reflection on their approaches to research. The resources only increase the range of information available to them.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

Collaborating with faculty, students and information technologists helps me understand what faculty expectations of students' use of the library are. It also gives me the opportunity to promote resources that might otherwise go unused.

Describe the course your team will be working on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

The Hampshire College team will be working on an introductory, multidisciplinary course in the humanities and arts, tentatively entitled "Image-Music-Text: Fashioning Gender in the Arts," offered in spring 2002. Co-taught by me and Jay Pillay, a world music professor, this course centers on the ways in which gender is articulated and constructed through music and narratives in different cultural contexts, Caribbean, African American, Native American cultures, South Asia and its Diaspora, South Africa and Western classical and popular traditions. Our approach will be intertextual and interdisciplinary, drawing on a number of fields including ethnomusicology, literary and film studies, anthropology, women's studies, ethnic studies, queer theory and dance studies.

This will be a reading, listening and viewing intensive course and we hope to introduce students to a variety of texts in the arts-music, literature and film-as they reflect on the role of gender and identity in various cultures. For example, we will read Toni Morrison's novel Jazz and listen to the intricate structure of blues and jazz music, paying particular attention to women blues singers of the 1920s. Here the interplay of music, language and narrative will be at the forefront of our consideration. As another example, we will discuss the hybrid music of Bhangra, a mix of South Asian and British pop music, and its role in the film Bhaji on the Beach. We may also compare the image and self-fashioning of women in classical opera, Madonna's music videos and the musical/play My Fair Lady/Pygmalion. We hope to be able to use instructional technology to present the different media to students both in and outside the classroom, and to assist them in becoming critical readers of literary, music and electronic texts. A course website would be particularly useful to incorporate clips from songs, music, films, as well as important references to particular cultural traditions in the arts. Here I am thinking, for instance, of links to the history of jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, Toni Morrison as a writer, jazz in the pictorial arts etc. It would also be wonderful to find ways to use instructional technology as a more interactive tool, and perhaps incorporate an on-line discussion or a collective reading and listening journal. We might think about using the call-and-response structure of jazz or other musical structures as a writing tool as well. I am interested in finding ways to use instructional technology in the teaching of writing in introductory interdisciplinary courses.

In order to build and maintain this website I would need instruction in internet site construction and assistance in researching some of this material on line and in other more conventional venues. I would also require help in using this technology in the classroom and teaching students to employ the technology in their own writing and research.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

I teach comparative literature and film (primarily 20th century), and have mainly used video cassette recorders, slide and film projectors as technology in my courses. Recently, I designed my first website for the spring 2001 course, "Traveling Identities: Immigrants, Exiles, and Sojourners in Film, Literature and Culture." (http://helios.hampshire.edu/~erHA/hacu234/index.html). The site served as an information clearinghouse with an expanded weekly syllabus, research resources, links to other relevant sites on filmmakers, cultural references and more. I have not yet integrated web instructional technology into my course in any expanded or interactive way.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

I hope to establish closer links between my teaching, library instruction and imaging technology at Hampshire College through our collaboration on this course. I would like the Humanities and Arts at Hampshire College to take advantage of the many resources available on the internet and instructional technology in order to develop richly diverse courses that lead students to exciting scholarship and class projects in the arts and humanities. I can envision courses in the future that would be co-taught by faculty, librarians, writing instructors and digital technology advisors and teachers.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

I would like to become more proficient in creating exciting and useful websites for students which will enhance the conventional course format and assist students in their independent projects, an important component of Hampshire College's liberal arts education. I also plan to incorporate instructional technology into the classroom more efficiently and creatively, as much as our resources permit. I expect to devote time and energy to this project in summer 2001 and more intensively in fall 2001. Hopefully we will be able to continue our collaboration on future projects and courses that integrate the humanities and technology at Hampshire College. 

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

I hope to gain a greater understanding of what is available and possible in the area of technological resources, as well as new ways to use those technologies.

What are your learning and research needs as defined by course assignments in both this course (if you have taken it) and in others? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

There is a wide variety of research needs for the course at Hampshire. The needs of most of the classes I have participated in have been fairly basic and minimal, relying mostly on books or articles available through our library or the libraries of the five colleges. Often film screenings have been used as either the focus of a class or as an aid to understanding the subject matter. I have been required to use either email, or some web-based class interaction - such as CourseInfo postings at Smith - in a few classes, but those have been focused on student-student-profesor interaction rather than research. I have had occasion to use online search engines, such as Lexis-Nexis, to research projects for classes.

This particular class has not been taught before, but based on it's description, I anticipate that it will be more diverse in it's research needs. It will almost certainly require more use of websites than most of the classes I have participated in, but it will also be designed to do so.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area, both as a student-learner and student-assistant?

My primary goals for this collaboration are based on the idea that, as an older student with a better than average amount of computer savvy, I have a unique perspective on the learning experience. I both have the perspective of the student who has no idea what's going on (me several years ago) and the perspective of the student who has experienced a lot both academically and technologically (me now). I hope to impart this perspective both to the faculty and staff members involved, and to the students when the class is being taught. I think that this aspect of my participation will be a useful link between the students and those setting up the class.

What roles and responsibilities to librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

1. Teaching students to use electronic resources is a major part of our work as librarians at Hampshire. As more and more research materials appear in electronic format and the Internet becomes more pervasive in students' lives, we have made a corresponding shift in the content and format of our teaching, now focussing on the library's web page as the beginning of the research process.

In addition to course-based classes and reference desk encounters, we have a new program to match up all new students with a library advisor in order to familiarize students with the library's homepage and to show them appropriate electronic resources from the get-go rather than having them do random web-surfing.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

2. Image-based resources: The various resources and web sites for images in art and architecture, the Grove Dictionary of Art Online, for example, are a boon to students in the visual arts and art history, who would otherwise have to rely on slide presentations in class or find images in various print sources. Free web sites also offer a wealth of new material to humanities students: the Levy collection of 18th to 20th century American sheet music, the AdAccess archive of print advertisements from the first half of the 20th century, and the photographic collection in the Library of Congress' American Memory site are all now featured on our home page as source materials for student research projects.

Online indexes: Online journal indexes have expanded the range of students' information gathering skills tremendously. In MLA, for example, being able to identify material from the early 1960s to the present in a simple search or two brings to the student a history of critical opinion as well as a sense of the scholarly output on the subject. With access points to online journal indexes on almost any topic, students can tap into the flow of serious scholarly work and feel part of the dialog.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

3. Our hope is that the use of more conventional research tools and newer electronic resources will eventually become seamless for students and faculty in the humanities and arts. At the moment there is a wide range of skill levels among students and faculty, as some people struggle to become conversant with technological advances. The staff in instructional technology, most of whom work in the library building, teach and assist students and faculty on demand, but the integration of IT and library staff with faculty and students in the development of courses could be a very potent catalyst for incorporating technology into the classroom among the faculty in humanities and arts in general.

Here's our response to the team question: What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

Resistance to technology and the internet exists among both students and  faculty at Hampshire College, but we hope to discover a model for using  instructional technology in arts and humanities classrooms that will prove to be sound pedagogically and that will address and overcome skepticism and  inexperience.

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

(Personal answer): I hope to gain an understanding of what different constituencies view as problems.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

I administer several small digital/video/media labs based in the library. The department that I supervise (Advanced Media Workgroup: manager - myself, senior electronic engineer - Bob Toth, and new media technician - John Bruner) installs and maintains most of the audio/visual/digital equipment on campus. John Bruner and I provide workshops to students and individual instruction to faculty on the use of advanced media software and processes. I advise the Film/Photo faculty on their facilities and perform standard maintenance on their digital facilities.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/teaching/learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness.

I believe that most "technology of the week" proposals really involve the "Hawthorne Effect" - any time you pay enough attention to a group of people you enhance their performance. You could tie cinder blocks to people's legs and get enhanced performance in teaching and learning. They just need to be talked to and feel noticed. The reliance on pushing technology for its own sake seems misplaced. I shy away from talking about specific technologies and rely more on discussing what experiences a student should have to promote a learning environment and then think about how to facilitate that. Often it's a method, not an item that makes a useful difference. If you decide that you really do need a new tool then the problems are only finding the cash and implementing or integrating deployment. So what really does help learning and the development of knowledge? I think it comes down to interactions, the quality of interactions, and the psychological sense of "finding or losing your way" a student feels. We need to interact with students in a class - at different times of the day in both terse and verbose ways. Some are initial and expository. Others are timed and responsive. We need to interact with the material - in scope (seeing the semester before us and contracting as time moves us through the year) and in depth - the readings, the footnotes and annotations, and the references. We need to see what others have done, what they think, what they are working on, and what they think should be done in the future. We need to be able to discuss problems - to point out what might be coming at us, to state our problems when we have them, and to exchange approaches to solving them. Finally, we need to track our own progress and work as it unfolds and to document our experience and results in a conclusion to our study. And all of this needs to progress in a timely fashion. In film terms - the stakes need to be high enough to be exciting, the journey needs to be intricate enough to be absorbing but not daunting, we need to feel changed by the process, and we need to feel rewarded at the conclusion.

So what helps us do that? Hey, meet people after class and talk with them. Much later call people up on the telephone and talk with them. Leave them messages on answering machines. Use pencils and paper in class to take notes. Xerox pages. Use e-mail to go back and forth with individuals or groups. Web pages are good for dispersing large volumes of information. CDs are good for repetitive viewing of small increments of information S yack, yack, yack S DVDs S yack, yack, yack S streaming video S yack, yack, yack S tetra-bite storage S yack, yack, yack S wireless S yack, yack, yack S rich-media web-based data-bases S yack, yack, yack. Hey, remember there are always books.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

I try to think - hustle some money - and try stuff out.

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

We select and catalog full-text and bibliographical databases, and instruct students, staff, and faculty in their use, both one-on-one at the Reference Desk, and in class presentations at the invitation of faculty. We also mount and maintain discipline- and course-specific World Wide Web links and teach users how to do effective information-gathering on the Web.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

More for students' research than for their classroom learning as such: Online indexes in religion, art, and popular culture (i.e. ATLA Religion Index, Art Index, Expanded Academic Index, LEXIS-NEXIS); students can learn generic searching techniques, how to read citations, and how to track down materials in a library. World Wide Web sites; students can learn to rely on meta-sites when appropriate, how to use search-engines effectively, and how to critically evaluate sites' legitimacy.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

To make sure team members know that a librarian's often the appropriate person to turn to for help in finding "content" in the electronic environment. To understand faculty and student informational needs, generally, and to provide specific and adequate course support.

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

First, there is the project itself. See the answers submitted by Jamal Elias for more detail about what he's trying to accomplish.

Second, this represents a chance to explore the collaborative process. Collaboration should allow us to expand the range of pedagogical possibilities to include projects that are too complex, and involve too much specific experience and knowledge, to be undertaken by a single individual. In exporting this process, we can hope to come to a better understanding of the limits and overlap of our individual areas of expertise and responsibility.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

As a Curricular Computing Specialist, by task is to help and advise the faculty on the use of technology in their classes. This includes suggesting appropriate technology and providing recommendations on its use, supporting specialized curricular applications that fall outside of list of software supported by Desktop Services, and acting as a liaison between faculty and the rest of the IT department. My person area of responsibility is with the humanities faculty including foreign languages.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/teaching/learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness.

There are four areas that I see a real need to start or expand capabilities. 1) Increase in the availability of electronic reserves. 2) Increase in use of various electronic communications capabilities, including file transfer, discussion groups, and student group features. All these abilities exist in current course management software, but integrating them into actual courses is happening slowly since they would require faculty to rethink how they teach their courses so as to use these features in a meaningful way. 3) Increase in the use of video and audio. Audio-only is already beginning to become used in the languages. Video serves two functions. One is to provide on-demand demonstrations. The second is to provide the user the ability to put information in context. 4) Increase in the availability of projection equipment. The use of computers in the classroom changes significantly when the faculty member no longer has to arrange for projection equipment before each class.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

What is "it"?

What are your learning and research needs as defined by course assignments in both this course (if you have taken it) and in others? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

As a student, I am interested in technology as an alternative medium of expression, a different mode of communication than the traditional student-writes-paper-professor-comments-on-it model. Obviously, it is an invaluable research tool and this aspect needs to be examined but I think it is underestimated as a unique approach to both entire class dynamics (through web forums, etc.) and single student communication (e-mail, papers on-line, the web can be used as additional class meeting place, multimedia presentation outside the internet, etc). Also important is the insistence that each student acquire the requisite, base skills necessary to make a real technologically savvy class work.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area, both as a student-learner and student-assistant?

As far as general goals are concerned, it is important that we, as a group, focus on each other's views as this is a rare opportunity for extended and dedicated communication. On this note, my goal is to better understand the faculty's relationship to technology as a teaching tool while attempting to communicate the "student" view. Hopefully, we can mesh our different sides into a coherent set of initiatives that will allow the student/faculty relationship to a complete collaboration. 

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

I wrote up an answer, but I think others on my team may want to enhance it, or completely rewrite it. My answer:
The main advantage of the collaboration I see is given us time and space to get together, talk about the project, learn about how it looks from others perspectives, and work together toward a better end result. Ideally we would all collaborate in some way without TTTP, but I think this gives a space and structure to improve our coordination, better understand each other, and get more work done.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

I have a variety of roles. My favorite role is to work with faculty on planning how technology can be used in their work. I also teach and documenting available technologies. This is done via workshops, phone calls, one-on-one visits, conversations over lunch, and of course lots of time writing handouts and emails. Much time is also spent working out the day-to-day problems which come with technology.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/teaching/learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness.

That's hard to answer. There are so many technologies, and technology is rarely an answer in itself. The trick is to find whatever solution works for a given situation.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

This is a broad question, and I need more of a focus to answer. ACC tries to make equipment and support available. However, there are a lot of types of equipment, and a lot of ways to support it. 

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

I hope the team will be able to help me overhaul the technological aspects of the class I will be teaching next fall, English 201: Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. I developed a course website the last time I taught the course (http://www.haverford.edu/engl/chaucer/canterbury.html), but ideally I'd like to make it more interactive, particularly with regard to student work. I would like to encourage more students to develop web-pages to be linked to the course as a partial fulfillment of requirements, for instance, and I'd like to fine-tune the way that the webforum is used. In the past, only students who already knew how to use Claris (or something similar) developed pages; it would be terrific if we could provide a course-oriented workshop on how to do this. I have actually done something of the sort in another class (English 301) but Chaucer will have 30 students, which both makes it more difficult to provide instruction on technology as well as ordinary instruction, and makes it more useful to have alternative forms of interaction (other than class discussion) available to students.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

I have in the past resumed total responsibility for all use and instruction of technology in the classes which employ it, with mixed results. I had a student assistant one year, but I'd love to have more help when it comes to introducing students to the potential of technology (especially web-page creation) for class assignments. I cannot run workshops in Claris and teach Middle English to 30 people at the same time. The one class for which I did run such a workshop was limited to 15, and even that was really too many. I'd love it if I could insist that those students who did not already understand the basics of web work attend a tutorial of some sort run by someone more competent than me, in order to get started on a web-based project.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

See above.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

I'm not sure what this question means! The only resources I have are time and energy, and too few of either. 

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

At Haverford College there is a very rough divide with content being the responsibility of librarians while technology (i.e., software and hardware) belongs to the computing center staff.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

I believe that librarians and faculty need to make the current scholarship as easily available as possible to students. Electronic indexes with links to full texts of journal articles need to be promoted. At the same time both faculty and librarians need to help students develop critical and evaluative skills, so that they can make intelligent choices among the many materials available.

For the humanities it is especially important to take into account the scholarship produced beyond the English-speaking world. Librarians need to make sure that the research tools they introduce to students include the wider world. Contact with scholars' worldworldwide helps students avoid a narrow parochialism in their unstated assumptions as well as their formulated theses.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

I hope to learn both in terms of technical detail and affective mood. I want to hear the viewpoints of students, faculty, and computer staff because I rarely have the opportunity for detailed feedback from library users.

I also hope to gain insights regarding the Web site that I edit, the Medieval Feminist Index (http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html). It is a
database indexing recent scholarship (journal articles, essays, and book reviews) on women, gender, and sexuality. It currently has over 5 thousand records and 1200 hits per week.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

Our team is charged with responsibility for technology across the spectrum of curricular and research uses, although in reality our scope is both smaller and larger than that. Smaller in the sense that there are some natural fiefdoms in which we are not very much involved except in a liaison role. Larger in the sense that what works for the curriculum tends to drive technology decisions for the entire campus. Therefore, I have my hands in most major technology streams on campus. Sometimes I'm the primary technologist, at other times a technologist within a broader team of IT/IS professionals from across the campus.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/teaching/learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness. What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

Pardon me. I'm about to avoid answering the question.

I have a roster full of potentially useful technologies. Virtually any of them could enhance research, teaching, learning. It's not the technology which will really provides the payoff--it's the strategy for using the technology that's at the crux. We have classes that use every kind of digital media format, palm pilots, wireless networking, GIS, course management systems, database-driven web exercises, group-designed web projects, parallel processing computing clusters, etc. It's all about the context.

Technology of any kind--hi-tech, low-tech--shouldn't be treated like a solution in search of a problem. The learning/teaching objective is the starting point, and then I can start showing some possibilities to faculty and students. Nothing makes me happier than a faculty member who will start a conversation something like this: "My students in Religion ___ always seem to get a good grasp on the secondary source readings, but they don't seem to make much sense of the primary materials, particularly the visual resources."

I can devote a lot of resources to enhancing academic IT. The only resource I can't manufacture in abundance is time--particularly the time of faculty project partners.

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

I'm attaching a syllabus for my seminar on Romantic Poetry: it's open to change.  I think this is a really hard seminar, and I'm hoping this workshop (and subsequent use of technology) will help me find ways of making the material more accessible for students.

The course is hard because students have to learn too many new things simultaneously.  Many honors students are still refining their writing and close-reading skills; most are at least a little uncomfortable with poetic form (Shakespeare at least can be read in terms of drama rather than poetry); all are unfamiliar with the historical period, and most are uncomfortable or uncertain how to explore historical  difference. Finally, romanticism has been a realm where high theory reigns: from deconstruction to new historicism, the field has been repeatedly redefined by dense and difficult writers.

History
I'm hoping that a searchable database of contemporary caricatures will help make the history more interesting and accessible to students: we're hoping to have this up and running for next year.

If there were a high-quality, searchable timeline of the period accessible on-line, that might also make it easier for students to consider historical context for particular poems.

Annotated links to and descriptions of online historical sources--web pages, texts, etc.--would also (I think) be very helpful.

Poetic form
Are there any programs out there that might help students recognize different poetic forms?  I'm thinking particularly of the difficulty students have grappling both with specific metrical feet (iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, pyrrhic) and the way a particular medium allows for substitution without losing its essential form (i.e., a sonnet, in iambic pentameter, will have lots of non-iambic feet, without losing its basic iambic character).

It would also be helpful to have a summary of the basic associations of each common Romantic form (sonnet, ballad, romance, verse drama, ode, song, epic, etc.)

Close reading/essay writing
On-line examples of successful essays?

Criticism/shape of the field
E-reserve list?
Annotated links to relevant web pages?

Writing assignments
I think I'd want to craft assignments that would force students to use whatever resources we manage to find/create. I'd want to assign two 6-10 essays that could be revised into students' SHS offerings: both of these might require a combination of close reading and historical contextualization.  I might ask students to start one paper from the perspective of a particular poem and work out toward historical context, and to start the other from a historical incident or issue, working in toward a particular poem.

NB: I feel my own technological ignorance keeps me from seeing possibilities for using technology more intelligently in the class.  I know a lot of folks who use web pages and links extensively--I hope that exploring possibilities in this workshop will help me be more creative in my teaching methods more generally.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

Not much responsibility.  I've given Donny Smith material to put on the e-reserve; I've passed on instructions to the students about how to access it.  I've pointed students toward the (out-of-date) web page for the course; I've instructed them in using the MLA bibliography (new to 5 of my 7 senior English majors!) Papers have been posted on a class server for distribution.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

No specific goals: I'd like to get technology and instruction therein working effectively to support the course, and am eager to collaborate to that end.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

We're working on the caricatures database (Anne mostly); I'm open to suggestions about future development and necessary resources....

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

Librarians have the responsibility to be aware of emerging information resources that will help both faculty and students in their research needs.  Our role is to make these resources available to the campus, and provide instruction in their use.  We provide access to most electronic resources via the library catalog, by cataloging e-journals, bibliographic databases, and noteworthy web pages.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills?

I feel that the best resources in the library for all disciplines are the Reference Librarians.  Resources alone do not help build skills, but with the guidance and instruction provided by a Reference Librarian, students and faculty can improve their information literacy and become lifelong learners.  Reference Librarians help with the identification and selection of resources, then with the critical thinking skills used to evaluate information.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

My goal is to come back to Hamilton with a plan for not only John O'Neill's course, but also with ideas regarding the implementation of technology in coursework that would be transferable to other courses on campus.  We are also in the embryonic stages of a new collaborative organization on campus, HILLgroup:  Hamilton Information and Learning Liaisons, consisting of members from both the Reference Department of the Library and Instructional Technologies Services.  The goal of the group is to support faculty in the identification, selection, and use of technologies and content applicable to their teaching or research needs.

Here's our response to the team question: What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

This project is an opportunity to combine our independent perspectives and resources. Hopefully, the resulting course will reflect the most effective methods and approaches to achieve John's goals in teaching this seminar, and will help to foster further collaborative efforts on campus.

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

The course is a seminar in the novels of Jane Austen and the film and television treatments of them. At Hamilton, a seminar is limited to 12 students. In the English department, seminars are limited to juniors and seniors. Not all the students who take the course will be English majors.

I have not taught this course before. I'm developing it de novo and using TTTP 2001 to get me started on it.

In my own ideas about this seminar, the following points seem most significant:

a. A seminar differs from other courses primarily because the students and the instructor are involved in the same way. The instructor does not "present" the course to the students; instead, the instructor and students take part in a semester-long conversation. We all make presentations, and we all respond to the presentations we hear and read. The papers students write and the presentations they prepare are statements in this dialogue.

b. The students in a seminar take part not just in dialogue with one another, but also in the critical and theoretical discourse of the discipline. We will read the work of professional critics and scholars and discuss whether their ideas seem illuminating or persuasive. All members of the seminar should be prepared to discuss these articles.

c. Because this seminar has film and television drama as an important secondary focus, we will spend a considerable time outside of class watching films. We will also create and evaluate class presentations, which incorporate excerpts from films and television dramas.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

The only thing I can think of is that I expect students to word-process their papers. I do not use technology much, nor am I prepared to instruct students in its use.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

I have two goals: first, I hope to learn to use new resources in course development. Second, I hope to learn more about working in collaboration, thanks to the talented people I'll be working with.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

Beyond the workshop? I hope to teach students to do presentations in PowerPoint involving films -- I hope every student in the seminar will be able to do at least one, and I intend to learn first to do it and do the first presentation. But I need to learn more about what is available and possible before I can go farther.

What are your learning and research needs as defined by course assignments in both this course (if you have taken it) and in others? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

In general, the resources I have used in the context of the courses I have taken have ranged from statistical programs such as Stata, to database search engines, to Microsoft office(Word, PowerPoint, Excel). In addition, various books, magazines, videos, etc. have proved useful. What I have found extremely helpful is when the professor knows various research tools that might be useful to me and can not only point me in the right direction, but also guide me through them if necessary.

I imagine that this course will ensure that I fully learn PowerPoint and that I receive a smattering of film editing, etc.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area, both as a student-learner and student-assistant?

I hope to learn the tools well enough to aid my peers in learning them. I am very excited to see how technology can be incorporated into a traditionally book-dependent class!

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

My role as Faculty Support Specialist is to be informed about and actively research the technological tools available for use by faculty and students to enhance specific learning and research goals. I assist faculty in identifying, testing, and implementing technological tools that facilitate teaching and learning. This may include using tools that increase the convenience of conveying information and/or technology that provides multi-dimensional learning experiences.

What technologies could enhance student and faculty research/teaching/learning? Include a brief description of the technology and a brief explanation of its potential usefulness.

There are multiple ways to use technology to enhance activities in an academic environment. The specific technology used should be determined after clear goals are established. Then, a dialogue may occur between the most appropriate technological tools to reach the educational goals and the depth/breadth of the goals. Further, every attempt should be made to incorporate the user-friendliest tool that will effectively reach the goals.

The technological tools available run a continuum: from the use of list-serves, course management systems (CMS), power-point presentations, specialized subject applications (i.e. SPSS, foreign language software, etc.), through multimedia applications, force-feedback and 3-D virtual realities. The potential use of the technology is closely tied to the educational goals it can facilitate. This in turn is related to the ease of its incorporation, and the degree to which it may give the learner power over their learning process. Many tools (email/CMS) are useful in that they make information and communication multidirectional and
asynchronous. Applications like Power point, iMovie, etc. are easy to learn to use and can give the user creative power over information. 3-D virtual worlds as collaborative or independent creations require greater technological skills of users but are potentially very useful in illustrating/experiencing concepts. My opinion is that all technology is potentially useful. Empowering technology, that that creates multiple learning experiences for the user, has the potential to dialogue with educational goals and expand learning.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

John O'Neill's Jane Austin seminar will incorporate technology in ways that reinforce the students understanding of the material and their creative interpretations of it. The subject matter and his goals to consider the treatment of these literary works in film allow the students the potential to manipulate the information and present it in the role of a “Director”. Participants in this class will be instructed in the use of PowerPoint and potentially Final Cut Pro dependent upon the amount of technological effort they wish to put into their presentations. We are considering digitizing specific film excerpts and preparing a CD of "clips" that everyone may select from to create presentations that illustrate their perception of the work. We have all the physical resources necessary and will be supporting their use with workshops and tutorial sessions.

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?

 - Librarians have responsibility for selecting and instructing patrons (in tutorial, reference desk, and classroom settings) in the use of bibliographic and full-text research resources
 - Librarians create and maintain simple Web pages to present discipline-specific resources to library users and to support  classroom bibliographic instruction on specific topics or research methods
 - Librarians participate in semi-annual ITS-sponsored programs for faculty and staff presenting an "Internet Research Series" on non-discipline-related topics such as basic WWW searching techniques, finding and using e-journals, finding and evaluating images available on the WWW
 - The libraries will implement a pilot e-reserve program for text materials this summer and a pilot e-reserve program for audio music materials in the fall of 2001
 - Librarians have participated in adding content to Blackboard CourseInfo sites maintained by faculty

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.

Not quite clear on the meaning of this one, but I think images of all types can greatly enhance teaching and learning in all humanities disciplines.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?

I hope to gain greater insight into how student and faculty library users now look for and use electronic information. I'd like to be able to apply this information as I work with them and our IT colleagues to design systems for finding and delivering electronic information (including the redesign of the SC libraries web site this summer)--even making new kinds of information available electronically--that meet their needs better than our existing services and resources. I'm also hoping to be able to integrate some of the new electronic resources we now have at Smith--our CourseInfo/Blackboard software, our e-reserve system, our Insight (Luna Imaging) system.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Presently the library provides assistance in the use of databases in the pursuit of information in various fields of interest.  The primary access point for the databases is the reference area and the reference librarians are the providers of the assistance.  There are also terminals in the government documents reference area on a separate floor of the library and the librarians and assistants there provide assistance as needed. There are two science libraries where assistance with searching scientific databases is provided.

There is also a Multimedia Center in the library that provides equipment and assistance in scanning images, text, film, and slides; modify and enhance course web pages; digitize and edit video and audio; develop multimedia presentations; incorporate library resources into a multimedia project. This curriculum lab has a staff of trained individuals.

Subject specialists routinely instruct students and faculty in the use databases and the techniques of searching in a particular academic field.

In the Map Collection GIS is available and assistance is provided as requested.

The Library does not support word processing at this time.

RESOURCES IN THE HUMANITIES

As you may have guessed from my title as Head of Government Documents, I am not an humanities specialist.  The reason that I was selected to come to TTTP 2001 is that I have worked with the journalism professor who is coming to the conference from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.  He has worked with the person from information technology on a curriculum
development project.

I can list the resources that the library offers in the area of electronic resources but I am not up on the paper resources that are available in the humanities.  The electronic resources are: African American Biographical Database, America: History and Life, Archives USA, Art Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Avery Index, Biblio. of Asian Studies, Bib. of the History of Art, Book Review Digest, Center for Research Libraries, Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Environmental Knowledgebase, Ethnic Newswatch, HAPI, Historical Abstracts, Info-Latinoamerica, Int'l Index to Music Periodicals, Int'l Index to the Performing Arts, Linguistics Absts. online, MLA, OED, Philosopher's Index, Project Muse, Renaissance Center Catalog, RILM Abstracts to Music Lit., Web of Science.

GOALS FOR COLLABORATION

There is no question that I need to learn how to better collaborate with faculty in the preparation of curricular materials and assignments.  I think that I can offer certain faculty (journalism, political science, sociology, economics, and others) information that would be useful to their students as they prepare for classes and assignments.  How is this best accomplished? How do I approach faculty when the planning is being done?  Is it all marketing?  I have worked with faculty in the past but not as intensively as I think might be necessary.  There are a lot of questions that need answers.

The main problem in a large institution such as UMass is just the sheer number of faculty and students who could be contacted and assisted by an individual librarian.

Question for the Team: What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?

Consultation and collaboration along two possible lines of inquiry: analysis and support (1) for a specific course I'll be team-teaching in the fall, as part of the university's new Information Technology program; and (2) analysis, support and brain-storming as to the most appropriate means to support the University's entire IT program (see: http://www.umass.edu/itprogram/), for which I'm assuming a leading role.

Questions for Faculty
a. Course team will be working on;
b. pedagogical approaches for which technological resources will be useful;
c. range and variation as to content and kinds of resources encountered and
needed
d. roles/responsibilities I currently assume for use and instruction of
technology
e. Goals for the collaboration
f. Resources devoting to its future development
 

a. "Information Technology in Social and Historical Perspective" is a new course in the new Information Technology program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The course is a broad, survey readings-and-lectures course exploring IT's social, economic, political, psychological, and cultural effects. The University's IT Task Force is seeking to equip undergraduates with essential knowledge sets tocompete in the IT sector. One knowledge set faculty articulated is IT's broader social significance - from profound changes in work and culture to "The Digital Divide." The course is one of some 20 being given in calendar 2001 as part of the
University's new IT program. The support for the entire program is a key issue for me, and for scores of faculty and potentially multi-thousands of students, on our campus, and throughout the Massachusetts Commonwealth.

b. For the single course, seven instructors from three campuses will participate, mostly "live." Two sessions with one of the instructors will be by distance video arrangement. We're ramping up use of WebCT in support.

c. range and variation as to content and kinds of resources encountered and needed:

For the single course:

Because social changes wrought by IT are so broad, they have yet even to be adequately assessed. Consequently, the course will address two questions: 1) What is the nature of the IT revolution? 2) What changes in culture and society can we attribute to IT; and which are extensions of earlier social and historical forces?

For example, IT workshop speaker Dr. Cheryl Harris (Harris, 2000) argues that the new graduate be schooled in media history and criticism, because the history of media is the history of information technology (Czitrom, 1982). In turn, Historian Donald Shaw (1991) argues that succeeding media, like IT, surge and peak, then fade. So, newspapers by the 1910s lost circulation to magazines; magazines, by the '20s, to radio; radio, by the '30s, to film; film, by the '50s, to network television.; network t.v., by the '70s, to cable t.v.; cable t.v., by the '90s, to satellite t.v., etc. While no medium dies out entirely, each has a predictable peak, and fall; each successor begins with the content of the old; and so, with the Internet. But scholar Barry Vacker (2000) argues that the reach, immediacy, encyclopedic potential, and interactivity of the Web represent not a change in media/technology succession, but a change in argument. The impact of the Web, he argues, is akin to the revolution of Gutenberg and the printing press.

Among the social changes we will examine:

-Production of a new culture, benefited by digital communication and communities, yet altered. The new culture focuses more on the entertaining (Postman, 1985), and the efficient - in musical performance, book production, even to using e-mail to communicate with those who work three or four feet away (Houston, 2000). It's richer financially, and, in ways, intellectually; yet perhaps more isolating. In reaction, some argue for a neo-Luddism to defeat the machines, and increase human connection. Others note that the new culture reflects a nexus of science, information, and media technologies in a larger political economy that indicates policymaker
and industry interests, with clear and important impact for the future of local communities.

The Digital Divide. The information technology-literate now dominate, partly by producing substantial new wealth held in fewer, and newer, hands (Lemann, 2000). A persistent digital divide now exists between the information rich (Whites, Asians/Pacific Islanders, those with higher incomes, the more educated, and dual-parent households) and the information poor (those who are younger, those with lower incomes and education levels, minorities, and those in rural areas or central cities). Urban households with incomes of $75,000 and higher are 20 times more likely to have access to the Internet than rural households at the lowest income levels, and more than 9 times as likely to have a computer at home. Whites are more likely to have access to the Internet from home than Blacks or Hispanics from any location. Black and Hispanic households are about a third as likely to have home Internet access as households of Asian/Pacific Islander descent, and roughly two-fifths as likely as White households. And regardless of income level, Americans living in rural areas are lagging behind. At the lowest income levels, those in urban areas are more than twice as likely to have Internet access than those earning the same income in rural areas. For many, the digital divide has widened. (Falling, 1999).

An urban social and political revolution. Spending 60-80 hours a week on the job, IT professionals focus on work, where employers furnish coffee bars, free food, drink, entertainment, and a concierge, to dent the pressures of overwork. Meanwhile, some surrounding communities, homogeneous in design and construction, resemble the milltowns of 18th-19th century New England: functional supports to the company. Labor unions have been displaced by the lures of higher salaries and stock options. The power structure of the community has shifted (Lemann, 2000); the new power is more global, and less community-focused or concerned. Consequently, the technopolis of Austin, Texas, just defeated a tax levy for a light rail mass transit system; and Silicon San Francisco defeated a measure to slow
dot-coms displacing artists, musicians, and the poor from housing. Yet for now, in India and Bulgaria, high-tech industries are bringing vital
development, and producing a new international connection, to areas that otherwise teeter economically.
 

For the IT program as a whole: an enormous range of content and resources, best encapsulated in the web site noted above.
 

d. roles/responsibilties I currently assume for use and instruction of technology.

In the Journalism Department, I was hired as the first full-time staff member whose assignment focuses on computer-assisted reporting, digital journalism, and support for the faculty in the use of technologies.

In addition, I've been a member of the University's Information Technology Task Force, and am just now assuming its chair. Our responsibilities will be to broaden the base of information technology use across the curriculum, create an IT minor, and bring focus and shape to university efforts to advance along this curricular line.
 

e. goals for the collaboration: Greater appreciation for our various units' ideas, inputs, and suggestions of improvement of my course and the IT program as a whole.

f. for the course: summer development time, some grant money, student assistance (including Mary Grein, who's part of our team)

For the IT program: reconfiguring of my work-time; dropping three teaching units to devote sufficient time to the effort.

What are your learning and research needs as defined by course assignments in both this course (if you have taken it) and in others? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

I have taken a great interest in the new technology that is becoming an increasingly important role in society as well as the academic world. Up until this point, many of my courses have drawn very little on this technology, focusing assignments instead on texts in books and journals. Currently, the University is moving in the direction of this new technology, especially through the IT Program and specifically this course, which is new this fall. More and more I feel it is important for everyone to utilize the Internet/Web and other programs that use new technology including for example WebCT and other websites that take advantage of bulletin boards, discussion forums and faster communication in general.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area, both as a student-learner and student-assistant?

I would like to gain a better understanding of what new technology is available and how that can enhance learning. In addition I would like to be able to assist in bringing this new technology into University courses. Many times students already have an understanding of the technology from using it outside their classes, but haven't yet connected that with their coursework and by using these sources as tools so much more will be gained.

Describe the course your team will be working with on. What are the pedagogical approaches for which you want to draw on technological resources? Map out the range and variation, including both the content and the kinds of resources you encounter and need.

The course is entitled Latino Literature and Culture. Because of the far reaching scope of the course, I want to use a variety of visual and musical resources to make evident the vast cultural differences between different Latino ethnic groups within the United States. Examining the cultural context in which the various novels take place will provide students with a more well-rounded understanding of the diverse economic, historical, geographic and political issues addressed in these texts.
Specifically, I want to:

1. Expand my current (very small) Power Point Presentation on Chicano Mural and Arts Movements. I want to be more comfortable with this application, and make my presentations more sophisticated and extensive.
2. I want to have digital music files available so that students can access the music we listen to and discuss in class. I would also like the words (with translations when necessary) to be available as well, perhaps with liner notes or web links on the artists.
3. I want to integrate both of these aspects (the visual and auditory) into a fire-walled web page, so that student's can access these materials and refer to them throughout the course. The web page would also be linked to the E-Reserves, relevant research pages, and a class chat list.

What roles and responsibilities do you currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology?

So far I have taught myself very rudimentary Power Point and HTML, I would like to expand my knowledge base and develop more sophisticated presentation packages. I would also like to become more familiar with maintaining web sites.

What goals do you have for collaboration in this area?

Ideally I would like to be able to have a student that can help me prepare presentations (scan, type in text as needed, upload materials, etc.). During class, this student would help me with both the technical and content aspects of these tools, and would also serve as a resource for other students wishing to incorporate this technology into their group presentations or individual projects.

What resources are you considering devoting to its future development?

My time. Also if I find these platforms useful, flexible and viable, I will expand these tools into other aspects of both my teaching, and my research (in terms of conference presentations for example). 

What do you hope to gain from this collaboration?
 

The chance to meet new people, and find out what they are working on and interested in. Maybe a
chance to learn new ways of looking at things.

What roles and responsibilities do librarians on your campus currently assume regarding the use and instruction of technology and electronic resources?
 

We assist students and faculty with learning how to successfully select and use databases and web information sources for their research. We teach in classroom sessions as well as one on one.

Are there specific resources in the humanities that you think contribute to or support student learning in the classroom? For each, explain briefly how
it could help expand the students' critical information gathering skills.
 

There are many resources that support student learning in the classroom; it seems like all of our proprietary databases in some way or another teaching information gathering skills. Some examples would be MLA Bibliography which allows students to refine their search strategy, or Literature Online, which leads students to critical resources, discussion lists, reference works and bibliographies.

What goals do you have for collaboration with faculty, students, and information technologists in the field of electronic information?
 

To learn more about the possibilities for interaction with each group and see if there are projects we should be working on together. To be included in planning for courses, and consulted when research needs arise.