Abstract:

Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) requests funding to support the Dogwood Project (www.nvcc.edu/dogwood/), a faculty-designed initiative intended to create a unique, web-based learning environment at the college. The project will consist of interdisciplinary, content-centered, resource sites developed by faculty and a virtual "commons" area in which students will be able to interact with each other and with faculty. Students will benefit from this project as they will have access to a rich set of learning resources in a stimulating web environment and to new assignments leading to the creation of their own web-based, academic materials. The project will lead to improved instruction at the college and provide a replicable model for other academic institutions.

Introduction
Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) requests funding to support the Dogwood Project (www.nvcc.edu/dogwood/), a faculty-designed initiative intended to create a unique, web-based learning environment at the college. The project will consist of interdisciplinary, content-centered, resource sites developed by faculty and a virtual "commons" area in which students will be able to interact with each other and with faculty. Students will benefit from this project as they will have access to a rich set of learning resources in a stimulating web environment and to new assignments leading to the creation of their own web-based, academic materials. The project will lead to improved instruction at the college and provide a replicable model for other academic institutions.

Problem
In recent years, educators have struggled with the use of the computer and the world wide web (web): What can and should be done with these technologies? How can we improve the effectiveness of electronic resources and shape them into sophisticated, creative and engaging approaches to learning? Students are sitting in front of computers, surfing the web, chatting with friends, but are they learning in an environment designed to promote sound educational objectives? Have faculty produced effective resources using these technologies for students and provided an engaging, web-based environment in which to use them?

Faculty are especially concerned with the need for training to use the web to improve student learning and the critical use of web resources. However, many colleges lack the support staff necessary to assist faculty in the development of web materials. Still, administrators have often required that faculty produce web sites with course information--and some have even demanded that faculty adapt classroom courses for web-based education--while providing little assistance. The results--poorly-designed web-based, curricular materials-- simply do not enhance student learning.

There have been some modest efforts to address some of these concerns about using technology, for example, the national Teaching, Learning and Technology Roundtable, MERLOT and the Wisconsin History Network. Other projects, such as "EdSitement" from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), or "Teaching with Technology" by the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), are intended to stimulate development of web-based content, but these projects are either limited in scope or lacking in resources. There have been some large-scale developments of web-based courses, such as by the Dallas County Community College District, but the Dogwood project is not just intended to put some courses or sites on the web, nor is it designed to link to available web resources or simply provide an evaluative service, such as MERLOT. Dogwood goes further by providing mentoring support for faculty to publish content on the web and then using the web to support the development of a truly interdisciplinary curriculum. With its virtual commons area, Dogwood seeks to support a web-enhanced curricular environment and also provide students with the requisite skills to add their own research to that environment. The Dogwood directors have presented at community colleges across the country and have not found any substantive effort at a community college to address the dual purpose of providing systematic training for, and mentoring of, faculty to develop web-based content (not courses) and then using that content to foster interdisciplinary instruction within an engaging, web learning environment.

Solution
Faculty and staff at NVCC have already done much work on Dogwood as a result of an earlier focus study grant from the NEH (spring 1998) and seed money from NVCC (fall 1998 through spring 2001). The focus study grant enabled a small group of faculty to examine trends in the development of technology-supported pedagogy and to identify a central web-based location for resources at the college. An initial small grant from our college president provided release time to recruit faculty with web expertise to develop course and content resources, to develop a mentoring and peer review process for constructive feedback, as faculty develop web sites, and to create a simple search engine. With ensuing small grants, the project has been able to recruit additional faculty, refine the web site, institute a one-on-one mentoring system, improve the peer review process, produce a searchable database of resources and develop a series of instructional presentations and hands-on workshops in cooperation with the college's Technical Applications Center (TAC).

But Dogwood has not been able to enlist faculty and staff on a large enough scale to make innovative curricular reform possible, nor have we been able to include adjunct faculty and students because of time and resource constraints. The project also lacks a suitable technological infrastructure to undertake development of a virtual commons area (described below). Finally, substantial support is necessary for a comprehensive evaluation of the project's fulfillment of goals and objectives and the dissemination of results. Funding from FIPSE will support a three-phase development of the Dogwood project, as well as its continuing evaluation and dissemination.

In Phase 1, which will begin in year one and be repeated in successive years, a group of twenty-five faculty will receive reassigned time to take part in a faculty-designed technology mentoring program to develop web-based resources. The mentoring/training component of this project includes a variety of hands-on and informational activities, and there will also be one-on-one mentoring support, led by web-experienced faculty. The outcome of this phase will be a rich curricular environment of web resource sites, such as Troy Stories (novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/Troy/troysites.html), Paris Peace Conference (www.nvcc.edu/home/cevans/Versailles/Index.html), Effective Internet Searching www.nvcc.edu/home/nveganj/LBR110/lbr110index.htm) and College Study Skills (www.nvcc.edu/home/nmctaggart/dogwood/dogwood/default.htm). These curricular materials will become part of the Dogwood database.

In Phase 2, begun in the second year of the project and continuing into the third year, to support the use of these web resources at the college, Dogwood will provide for the design and creation of a "virtual commons," or meeting area. The initial elements will include inNOVAtions, an online electronic journal devoted to teaching and pedagogy, and LET'S TALK, a cluster of web-based synchronous and asynchronous discussion areas where faculty, staff and students can interact.

In Phase 3, while work on phases 1 and 2 continues, project participants will actively engage in the development of a new curricular learning environment at the college. Instructors will promote the interdisciplinary use of Dogwood resources in their courses, providing more engaging learning experiences for students. For example, in a History of Western Civilization course, an instructor might use such resource sites as Troy Stories and College Study Skills-both of which are already developed. Thus, a web resource site developed by Dogwood, such as the Troy Stories, might be used by instructors and students in history, language, literature and philosophy classes, and the students from those classes can be sharing their ideas in the virtual commons. Also in this phase, the project will explore ways to replicate the mentoring/peer review system for use with adjuncts and students, and students will be invited to develop further resources as part of the Dogwood learning environment.

This project will establish NVCC as a national leader in the application of web technology to the educational process and will provide a replicable model for other community colleges across the country. The project provides an effective strategy for meeting the technology support crisis and helping faculty develop effective web resources for use in an instructional setting. Faculty will directly benefit from the project because of the appropriate training and mentoring support, peer review and a web location for their content-rich resource web sites. The ultimate beneficiaries, however, will be students who will have access to a far richer set of web resources in a stimulating virtual environment and who will work with faculty who are far more comfortable using technology. Dogwood will also make available to students the faculty's more specialized knowledge, which, in a two-year college, often remains under-utilized; and, because of both the mentoring and peer review processes, the Dogwood sites will meet high standards of quality and usability. Students will be encouraged to contribute to the web resource sites and will be invited to participate in the virtual commons area.

Evaluation and dissemination
The Dogwood project will use both internal and external evaluation to measure achievement of goals and objectives. Dr. Sara Tucker, professor of history at Washburn University and a moderator of the H-Teach discussion list, will be the external evaluator and will monitor project implementation. She will compare, and assess, the learning experiences of students exposed to Dogwood materials with those of students who have not been exposed during their enrollment at NVCC.

With regard to dissemination, the directors will present results of this project at state and national conferences, such as the American Association of Community Colleges and the League for Innovation. As with earlier projects, the directors will encourage the submission of articles to journals, such as the Community College Humanities Association Review. Finally, the Dogwood web site itself (www.nvcc.edu/dogwood/) will serve as a means of dissemination of information about the project. The directors will register the site with major search engines, and descriptions of all project activities will be published on the site.