This interim report to the George Mason University Technology Across the Curriculum co-ordinator and the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences includes:-

• extensive background to the assignments' collaboration and subsequent workshops
  
• details of our working process, and reflections on the value of that process
  
• first indications of the impact of the project

We shall post data from the assessment phase (underway as of March, 2003) and the final report as we complete it.

I Introduction
II The Design Process
III The Workshops
IV The First Ripples

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I Introduction

a) With this portion of the grant, the TAC program funded a group of New Century College faculty to:-

• create five to six technology-enriched assignments suitable for upper-level interdisciplinary study
• teach workshops to help other faculty integrate the assignments into their learning communities
• assess the integration of assignments into learning communities and help individual faculty assess the value of the assignments in their specific learning communities
• develop electronic portfolio guidelines and a pilot electronic presentations and portfolio course

b) In fall, 2001, the NCC Council nominated Lesley Smith, Virginia Montecino and James Young as the core group for the implementation of the TAC grant. Council charged them to recruit three further faculty to develop the assignment project, and to select a committee to execute the e-portfolio elements of the grant.

c) The core group agreed that the richest path to designing faculty-friendly, multivalent technology-enriched assignments required:

• a mix of faculty experienced in teaching and learning with technology and experienced, student-focused faculty enthusiastic about, but not at all expert in, technology-enriched learning.
  
• a wide spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds to build genuinely interdisciplinary assignments
  
• an open application process whereby interested NCC faculty would apply to participate in the work funded by the grant

d) From the applications, the core group selected Lisa Gring-Pemble (Communications) and Susan Scott (Art and Visual Culture) to join the assignment project, and Ashley Williams and John O'Connor to join the e-portfolio project. We invited Kimberly Eby (Psychology) to join the assignment group, and Tom Wood (Biology) to join the portfolio group. We also invited Karen Misencik, an experienced portfolio evaluator, to join the portfolio group.

II The Design Process

a) Both groups began substantive work in the Spring 2002 semester. James Young, who belongs to both the assignment group and the e-portfolio group, provided one point of exchange between the groups. In addition, Lesley and Ginger sometimes attended e-portfolio group meetings while everyone regularly participated in 'water cooler' conversations about grant projects, an informal collaboration facilitated by the intimate, on-campus culture of NCC. Finally, Lesley and Ginger also discussed in detail with Jim the final rubric, syllabus, and assessment plan for the e-portfolio segment of the grant.

As the e-portfolio group has now submitted its work to Dean Holisky, TAC Coordinator Susan Warshauer and Associate Dean Muir, the remainder of this report will cover the design of the technology-enriched assignments, the workshops to introduce them to faculty, and the planned assessment process for the fall.

b) The assignment group held regular, two-hour planning meetings with the goals of:

• the completing of the design of assignments by the end of April
  
• the running of a three-hour workshop for each assignment during May 2002 to allow faculty time over the summer to integrate assignments into their Fall syllabi
  
• the building of a townhall archive of the assignment discussions and of resources to facilitate their implementation

c) During its first meetings, the group decided on the parameters for the assignments, knowing that it would have to sell the integration of technology into many upper-level assignments aggressively to faculty. The group initially decided the assignments should:

• build on the integrated technology program in the first-year curriculum in NCC
• insure that as many as possible of NCC upper-level students met all the basic TAC goals for CAS students, plus the advanced goals appropriate for each concentration
• accord with the faculty preferences drawn from the May 2001 survey (link) in which NCC faculty itemized their 'most wanted' technology-enriched assignments (and their reasons for those choices)
• require, for equitable learning, no software outside the Microsoft Office Suite (available on university computers), free software available via the World Wide Web (i.e. Netscape Composer for hypertext writing and web page management, tkmoo light for access to web-based MOOs) and easy-access licensed software, such as Web-Crossing
• include tangible 'take-aways' (such as assignments designed for different levels of student/faculty expertise and courage, notes drawn directly from faculty classroom experiences on the teaching of both the assignment and the relevant technologies, etc.)

d) From Lesley Smith's tabulations of the May 2001 survey results and animated discussion ("But why would we want to teach that?") the group decided on the following set of assignments, and responsibilities:-

• Web Publishing and Hypertext Writing (Lesley Smith and Virginia Montecino
• Perspectives on Evidence (James Young)
• Virtual Worlds & Role-playing Online (Lisa Gring-Pemble)
• E-Publishing (Suzanne Scott)
• Data Analysis for Decision-Making (Kimberly Eby)

In addition, Lesley and Ginger agreed to teach in August a workshop (now postponed until early in the Fall 2002 semester) on the use of 'ready-mades' (Townhall, Critical Tools, Scrapbook, My Library, various survey-makers, etc.) which would provide faculty with low-fear, low-time-investment complements/supplements to the above sequences of assignments, thus enriching (we hope) their teaching and learning outcomes.

e) In the latter half of the semester, the group critiqued, rewrote and critiqued again the assignments. Through this process, drawing on examples in individual assignments, the group agreed on additional criteria for each assignment: They should:-

• mix as seamlessly as possible familiar and unfamiliar technologies or the more unusual aspects of familiar programs (and thus allow the old to support the new)
• model the interdependency of multiple technologies in the accomplishment of complex tasks
• capitalize on the 'teachers teaching teachers' scenario to include classroom notes, warnings of potential pitfalls, common student responses and problems, and tried-and-tested troubleshooting tips
• contain examples of ways in which each assignment might be integrated into existing and upcoming upper-level learning communities
• itemize the teaching and learning advantages of each assignment to both faculty and students in such a way that technology-enriched work supported and enhanced existing learning objectives

f) The assignments rapidly developed into multi-stage, multi-page sequences which would allow faculty:

• to begin with the most basic version of the assignment and move in subsequent semesters, as their confidence increases, to the more sophisticated iterations of the assignment
• to choose a level of complexity suited to their expertise, confidence and learning community's objectives
• to 'pick and mix' or adapt each assignment as their teaching needs dictate (See, for example, Web Publishing & Hypertext Writing, or E-Publishing)

While the assignments completed earliest received the most extensive revision, the general availability of NCC faculty encouraged most productive informal discussion on all assignments. For example, Lesley (who knew very little about role-playing assignments before the TAC grant work began) and Lisa (who entered the project with little technological experience) brainstormed vital aspects of the technology-enhanced role-playing assignment. Kim Eby drew on the expertise of Betsy Gunn and Randy Gabel in developing the quantitative analysis assignments.

g) As suggested above, the mix of technological expertise and neophyte enthusiasm proved particularly dynamic throughout this process. Faculty used to teaching with technology were jolted from their accustomed 'ruts' by the questions, comments and arguments of the neophytes. The neophytes speedily discovered radical ways, via the integration of technology, to reshape existing assignments and enhance existing learning objectives for their students.

In addition, the focus on the designing of assignments (not on the transferring of technological skills) reinvigorated the learning of the group as a whole. Everyone discovered new assignments for their learning communities, and understood new concepts with which to deepen their students' critical thinking, collaboration and communication competencies.

Although the purpose of the TAC grant is the integration of technology into general education courses, this unanticipated (at least to the grant participants) consequence of such wide-ranging interdisciplinary support proved very important. The deepening of faculty experience directly influenced the quality of the technology-enriched assignments themselves, and led each member of the group to agree to attend as many of the workshops as possible to continue the learning process.

III The Workshops

a) The design team facilitated the following workshops two-hour workshops (with an additional hour for further hands-on experimentation) between 7 May, 2002 and 12 June, 2002. Twelve NCC faculty attended at least one workshop, and two additional faculty wish to attend 'make-up' workshops which the core group hope to arrange early in the Fall 2002 semester.

b) The team agreed that workshops should be as interactive as possible and involved participants via:-

• the brainstorming of uses for assignments in specific learning communities · the integration of hands-on exercises of increasing complexity
• the recourse to attending faculty's expertise to show how existing knowledge and ideas illuminate the application of new technologies
• the one-to-one response to specific faculty concerns · the on-the-spot adaptation of workshop exercises to faculty needs
• the sharing of work created in the workshops

As research on the integration of technology into teaching and learning agrees that informal, unpressured experimentation is vital to the building of self-confident technology learning and application, the team also integrated low-key 'play time' into the body of the workshops.

d) The design team co-facilitated workshops where necessary. In the Role-Playing workshop, Lesley, for example, provided written instructions for access to, and basic navigation in, Connections MOO (after her participation in a six-class course in MOOing in the Spring), while Ginger supplied online coordination in the MOO.

Team members also attended each others' workshops, demonstrating to new participants that apparent 'experts' in some forms of technology-enriched learning were still beginners in others. Team support established an atmosphere of active learning and experimentation and, perhaps most importantly, demonstrated that the making of basic mistakes and recourse to inspired trial-and-error underpinned successful learning.

Finally, participants shared their knowledge with facilitators and other learners. For example, in the E-Publishing workshop, Mick Beltz's considerable familiarity with Word accelerated others' learning to balance pre-programmed and original elements in brochures and postcards. This emphasis in the workshops on non-hierarchical collaboration firmly established that the transfer of familiar knowledge into new contexts was at least as important as developing software skills in teaching and learning with technology.

Fear of 'knowing less than students' or 'making mistakes in front of the class' frequently bar teachers from experimenting with potentially useful technologies. The design team hoped that by emphasizing open, community-based collaboration within each workshop, it would also provide a model new 'teachers with technology' could follow with their students in their own classrooms.

d) Although anecdotal evidence and individual faculty follow-up questions suggest how successful the workshops were, the design team regrets not collecting on-the-spot responses at the end of each workshop. Should individuals, or the team as a whole, present the workshops again, they would definitely collect end-of-session surveys and follow up with a more detailed electronic questionnaire.

IV The First Ripples

a) While faculty attended workshops to learn how to integrate specific assignments into their learning communities during the Fall 2002 semester, we noticed that even in workshops faculty were already applying the skills they were learning to ancillary tasks. For example, Andrew Wingfield, Robert Furey and AshleyWilliams began to create online syllabi for upcoming courses in the later stages of the Hypertext workshop.

As the teaching faculty for NCLC110, the first course in NCC's common curriculum, planned their course, they relied far more on their own technological knowledge, and far less on the technological expertise of Virginia Montecino and Lesley Smith, in planning & staffing the first five crucial workshops of the integrated information technology curriculum.

b) The Assessment phase now begins, and we look forward to reporting the results early next year.

Lesley Smith, Virginia Montecino, James Young, Suzanne Scott, Kimberley Eby, Lisa Gring-Pemble