NOTE: The Department of Education cancelled the FIPSE grant competition
in the spring of 1999 before considering this proposal.
Introduction
Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC)
proposes that the Department of Education, Funds for the Improvement of
Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), supports the creation of a world wide
web (web) shared-learning environment in the Virginia Community College
System (VCCS). Dominion-Net will be an innovative, web-based, interdisciplinary,
learning environment of teaching and resource materials for the faculty,
staff, students and communities of the VCCS. The site will provide a variety
of curricular resources
-
online, web-based courses (such as History
of the Contemporary World)
-
course content modules of variable length
(such as Troy Stories from Homer to Virgil)
-
and web resource sites (such as Franklin
Delano Roosevelt).
In addition, the project will provide
-
technology support, such as E-TALK: Technology
Innovations Discussion Forum
-
academic resources, such as ELECTRONIC EXPO:
A Virtual Art Gallery
-
informational materials, such as Grant Activities
in the VCCS
-
and community links and activities.
Problem
In recent years, the growth of the web
has led to an explosion in the availability of, and access to, instructional
materials for faculty and students, and this has fundamentally altered
the scope and nature of post-secondary education. With the rapid development
of the web, college faculty have struggled with the issue of what can and
should be done with the new technology. What are its pedagogical and curricular
uses? Is the web something more than just an expensive and disorganized
electronic encyclopedia? How does one improve the effectiveness of electronic
resources and shape them into sophisticated, creative and engaging approaches
to learning?
To take full advantage of the web:
-
faculty need to rethink the relationship
between course content and course delivery;
-
faculty need to learn how to select and effectively
use appropriate existing software;
-
faculty need access to an attractive, accessible
site design that integrates course materials and resource materials within
a visually-consistent set of pages;
-
faculty, especially those in smaller community
colleges across the state of Virginia, need access to a larger community
of web-savvy faculty.
Proposed Solution
This project will provide time (beginning
in the fall of 1999), structure and guidance for faculty and staff in the
VCCS to develop a web-integrated educational environment (Dominion-NET)
that will link the faculty, staff, students and communities of Virginia.
Based on the work of an earlier grant from the National Endowment of the
Humanities (NEH) and support from Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC)
and the VCCS, the project directors have already developed a basic architecture
for the proposed project site, investigated the appropriate administrative
and budgetary procedures, located potential project collaborators in the
VCCS, prepared the necessary informational notices to recruit faculty participation,
begun to develop training procedures and created sample web courses, modules
and resource sites.
YEAR ONE: fall 1999 through summer
2000
-
In the fall, the three principle project
directors will locate additional project co-directors.
-
In the spring the directors will circulate
"Requests-for-Proposals" (RFPs) for faculty willing to participate in the
project. Each RFP will contain details about the exact components of acceptable
web projects for Dominion.Net. Participants will have the option of creating
an online course, a course component or a web resource site.
-
In the spring, the directors will establish
a technology support staff, finalize training plans, set up the actual
Dominion.Net site (server, software, etc) and begin to create the actual
site's supporting materials, such as tutorials, templates and other general
resources.
-
In the summer, the first set of faculty (25)
will be required to attend a short training session in Richmond before
beginning work on their projects. After completion of the training, the
participants will produce a detailed, prospectus.
YEAR TWO: fall 2000 through summer
2001
-
In the fall, faculty will create the web
projects begun during the summer.
-
In the spring, final projects of the first
participants will be evaluated and revised (as necessary). After final
revisions, the projects will become part of the Dominion.Net site.
-
In the spring, a second round of RFPs will
be circulated.
-
In the spring, the directors will construct
further support components of the Dominion.Net site and begin to consider
the curricular ramifications of the project.
-
In the summer, a second set of faculty (35)
will be required to attend the training session in Richmond before beginning
work on their projects. After completion of the training, the project participants
will produce a detailed, web-based project prospectus .
YEAR THREE: fall 2001 through summer
2002
-
In the fall, faculty will create the web
projects begun during the summer.
-
In the fall, the grant directors will search
for continuing grant and corporate funding.
- In the spring, final projects of the second
set of participants will be evaluated and revised (if necessary). After
final revisions, the projects will become part of the Dominion.Net site.
-
In the spring, a third round of RFPs will
be circulated.
-
In the spring, the directors will finish
construction of the support components of the Dominion.Net site and propose
appropriate curricular changes to take advantage of the Dominion.Net resources.
-
In the summer, a third set of faculty (35)
will be required to attend the training session in Richmond before beginning
work on their projects. After completion of the training, the project participants
will produce a detailed, web-based project prospectus .
Rationale
This project will allow the VCCS to develop
an innovative, cross-disciplinary, virtual learning environment that takes
advantage of the work begun under earlier state-funded programs, such as
the Technology Initiative and the Courseware Project. This project will
benefit students by leading to improved instruction throughout the VCCS:
-
exposing students, in an orderly fashion,
to images, texts and sounds previously unavailable;
-
making available to students the specialized
knowledge of faculty, which has often gone un-disseminated on a broad scale;
-
offering specialized courses and instructional
modules that are not now offered because of time, space and administrative
constraints;
-
expanding course offerings and increasing
access to post-secondary education across the commonwealth;
-
designing courses and resources that allow
students to draw on materials common to many disciplines and that allow
students to engage in far more systematic and penetrating study;
-
improving student technology skills;
-
providing a cross-campus learning environment
for students.
This project will benefit the faculty and
staff of the VCCS by:
-
maximizing statewide personnel and budgetary
resources;
-
providing faculty training and encouraging
faculty professional development;
-
improving faculty technology skills;
-
aiding communication within and between discipline(s)
and within and between individual faculty members across the Commonwealth;
-
providing access to pedagogical support for
using technology;
-
allowing faculty to take a leading role in
determining the future development of statewide instructional and curricular
resources.
This project will benefit the community colleges
of the VCCS by:
-
creating a useful marketing mechanism for
the courses and resources of the VCCS;
-
establishing the VCCS as a leader in the
application of technology to the educational process and providing a model
for other community colleges across the country.
This project will benefit the communities
of the commonwealth of the Virginia by:
-
promoting the creation of a true virtual
community;
-
allowing Virginia's community colleges to
more closely link with their constituent communities.
NVCC and the VCCS will allocate substantial
material (hardware and software infrastructure) and personnel resources
to the project. Project directors will include: Dr. Charles Evans, associate
professor of history and former director of three faculty study projects
funded by the NEH; Dr. Agatha Taormina, professor of English and former
assistant director of NEH and FIPSE grants that promoted interdisciplinary
approaches to the humanities and science curriculum; and Dr. Diane Thompson,
professor of English, assistant director of two NEH grants and former NVCC
site director for a three-year Annenberg/CPB grant that studied the use
of interactive networks in and between classrooms.
Evaluation and dissemination
This project will use both formative and
summative evaluation instruments during, for example, surveys after training
sessions and after student use of web resources. The continuous evaluation,
summarized in interim and final reports, will help to monitor project implementation,
allow for modifications (as necessary) and assure that project objectives
have been met. The success of the project will most directly be measured
by the actual implementation of the Dominion-Net site during the course
of grant funding. Professor David Berry, Executive Director of the Community
College Humanities Association, will serve as an outside evaluator.
Faculty presentation of the results of
this project at state and national conferences will be encouraged. The
directors themselves will propose panels for inclusion at various meetings
such as the New Horizons conference of the VCCS, Virginia Community College
Association (VCCA), the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA)
and the American Historical Association, as well as VCCS discipline meetings.
As with earlier projects, the directors will also encourage the submission
of articles to various journals, including the Inquiry: The Journal
of the VCCA, the Community College Humanities Association Review,
Teaching History and the NVCC Review.
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