Instructional Improvement Grant Proposal, 1998

Introduction Brief Overview of Rationale & Design Use of Web to Develop Instruction Central Project Web Site Technological Resources Departmental Support Evaluation Budget

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Date:	February 12, 1998
To:	Ronald W. Tobin, Assoc. Vice Chancellor Academic Programs
Fr:	English Dept. Transcriptions Project Team—Alan Liu (Dir.), Charles Bazerman, Christopher Newfield, Carol Pasternack, Mark Rose, William Warner
Re:	Proposal for Instructional Improvement Grant

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1. Introduction

We are applying for an instructional development grant to enable us to hire two student assistants for six quarters as part of "Transcriptions: Literary History and the Culture of Information." Below we offer an overview of the intellectual and pedagogical scope of Transcriptions, a project developed by six English department faculty under the leadership of Alan Liu. After this initial overview, we will offer sections devoted to how we are using web computing technology to develop instruction, an outline of the web page creation phase of the project, and a summary of our technological resources, departmental support, and the method for evaluating the project. We anticipate that the instructional development funding we are seeking, by paying for part of two student assistants, will greatly extend the instructional reach of the project.

II. Brief Overview of the Transcriptions Project Rationale and Design

For a number of years, scholars and theorists of literature have begun to recognize that the study of literature and its history offers a powerful way to understand the reciprocal exchange between methods of information transmission and cultural practices. This recognition has helped our project faculty pose questions important for the study of literature in the "information age": How can a literature department integrate information technology (IT) into instruction so as to teach students to think critically about the relation between past cultures of literacy and contemporary information culture? Secondly, how, by enabling students to integrate Web authoring with the study of literature, can we prepare literature students for a future of diverse practical engagement with information technology both in their individual work and in new collaborative, team-based modes of work familiar in the corporate world?

These are the essential questions addressed by "Transcriptions: Literary History and the Culture of Information" project–a three-year, phased curricular development project in the English Dept. that will run from 1998-99 through 2000-2001 (with courses and technological resources to be integrated into the department's continuing curriculum). The National Endowment for the Humanities has granted Transcriptions $30,000 under its Teaching with Technology initiative (part of its Educational Development and Demonstration Program); and UCSB has also committed other resources–a retention package for Professor Liu, a grant from the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and cost-sharing of those faculty participating in the program. However, in order to draw these resources together, we are seeking support for two student assistants, who can work in the project's computing studio and facilitate the development of a Web-based pedagogy.

What is the Transcriptions project? The full description of Transcriptions is contained in the original proposal to the NEH. The project is dedicated to the proposition that a literature department today can most constructively address the immense challenge to traditional literacy posed by "information culture" if it uses IT to create a simultaneously conceptual and practical bridge between (a) historical cultures of literacy and (b) contemporary information society. Transcription's development group is composed of six historically and methodologically diverse tenured faculty with serious interest and experience in IT. Within the frame of this project, these faculty will be teamed with graduate and undergraduate assistants. By using the most advanced contemporary information technologies to teach the richest traditional form of information (literature), we hope to build a dual, cross-linked curricular structure as follows:

a) Along the one track, the project will extend and develop courses that have long been part of English departments: in the history and theory of orality, literacy, manuscript culture, early print culture, the history of the book, the ideas of the archive and library, the technology of the canon (e.g., publishing history), the history of literature as an academic discipline, the evolution of copyright, etc. In all these courses, literature itself is understood as an "information technology" or what a recent movement in literary interpretation calls "materialities of communication." Course modules to be created in this track include: "History of Written Culture," "History of English Language: Oral, Manuscript, Print, and Web Technologies," "The Imperial Text: Texts That Shape Culture and Social Practice," "Genre Theory and Electronic Genres," "Textuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance," "Free Speech and Censorship: From the 17th Century to the Present," "History of Authorship," and "Canon Revision: History, Theory, Practice." ("History of Written Culture" and "The Imperial Text" will be developed/extended in 1998-99.)

b) Along the other track, the project will extend existing courses and develop new ones in the areas of postmodernism, postindustrialism, globalism, mass culture, media history, intellectual property, theory of technology, and online culture–i.e., the related contexts that now make information such a powerful paradigm. The total roster of course "modules" (the basis for both undergraduate- and graduate-level course variants) to be created in this track over three years include "Business Culture," "Postmodernist Culture," "News Media, News Technology, and the American Culture of Politics," "Rethinking Multiculturalism," "The History and Theory of Media Culture" and "Global California." There will also be a "core" course for the project titled "Literature and the Culture of Information." The rhythm of course creation is staggered such that development occurs one year and instruction the next. ("Business Culture," "Rethinking Multiculturalism," and "Literature and the Culture of Information" will be developed/extended with IT in 1998-99 for instruction in 1999-2000.) The total number of such course modules developed over three years will be 15. These will translate into the teaching of a projected 11 different undergraduate courses and 10 graduate courses. The total number of students affected is estimated to be 407 undergraduates and 100 graduates.

Course modules developed in both tracks will make extensive use of the Web as an instrument of instruction and of student authoring assignments (both individual and "team"-based). At the same time, the Web as a new communications medium will itself be a topic of discussion. These activities will be facilitated by the creation of a project-wide online conferencing medium (through Web-based discussion forums) that will allow students in one course to "talk" to those in concurrent or previous courses asynchronously. Each course module with its ongoing and final student contributions, course materials (where copyright restrictions permit), and other apparatus will be put on the Web. This will make our work available to other English and UCSB faculty, and allow us to establish links with similar work going forward around the world.

III. Use of Web to Develop Instruction

Crucial to this wave of new and revised courses is the creation of a Computing Studio within our department: a networked NT server linked to approximately eight multi-media machines and various peripheral devices (e.g., projection and sound equipment). Working together in this Computing Studio, faculty and students will experiment with various ways to move teaching to the Web. Groups of faculty, grad students, and selected undergraduate students will share the research, writing, and technical work needed to put up Web pages on an assigned topic. Last year Professor Alan Liu developed one prototype for Web based graduate teaching in his "Canon Revision: History, Theory, Practice." This year Professor Carol Pasternack is using "framed" Web-pages to assemble several files together on the same screen as an aid in teaching students how to write and revise criticism in her English 10 course. Future courses will develop collaborative forms of online discussion and conferencing beyond the use of Listservs and aliases. This computing environment will supplement in-class discussion with the assignment of online discussion with students in related courses not just in the project but elsewhere in the nation and world (e. g., through the Palinurus project that Alan Liu has recently started in collaboration with other U.S. scholars). By teaching web authoring and design within the Transcriptions courses, we will be augmenting the model of "finished" essays or exams restricted to an audience of one (the instructor) with a model in which "continuous quality improvement" (in Web idiom: "under construction") and engagement with a global audience is the norm. As project faculty have already learned from past courses utilizing the Web, student commitment intensifies when it is perceived that the pedagogical situation has shifted from one in which the instructor and student face only each other (for intense to-and-fro conversation) to one in which they also turn outwards together to a broader audience. The goal is not to supplant, but supplement, traditional humanities instruction with the online model.

What role will our student assistants have in such a changed teaching and learning environment? And how will their role be crucial to the changes in the form of instruction we envision within this project? Here are some of the main activities we envision for the advanced graduate students we seek to recruit to this role: they will learn software (from HTML-editing to NT server software); they will help translate the course material of faculty into fully-designed Web pages; they will help develop central Web sites listed in our proposal; they will support the development of new courses to be taught in 1999-2000; they will do research in the library, gathering books, images, video, bibliographies associated with each of the research areas outlined in the proposal; and, finally, and perhaps most crucially, they will take shifts in the evolving department computing studio so that participating faculty and graduate and undergraduate students will benefit from their assistance. It is envisioned that student assistants will not just work on assigned or delegated tasks but also participate in decision-making and independent research. They will sit at meetings of the project faculty and, depending on their expertise, will write top- level content for the project's central web pages (including introductions or narrative on such topics as "postmodernism," "history of technology," etc.). From this description, it should be apparent that these graduate student assistants play a critical role in enabling the Transcriptions Project to go beyond an all-faculty research effort and become a vital part of the department's teaching program. Because this project will strain already over-burdened faculty (who will receive no stipend, course relief, or other benefits for adding technical development to their usual work of course development), these student assistants are crucial if Transcriptions is to demonstrate the nature of distributed, collaborative humanities work (rather than work centered solely or primarily on one course and its instructor). To support these two students, we are asking for an Instructional Improvement Grant for 1998-99 of $21,336.66. This will be sufficient to fund the salary portion of six quarters of half-time student assistant support. In order to make up the shortfall between this amount and those graduate student support packages that include tuition fees and health benefits, we will supplement money from an Instructional Development Grant with resources we already have for the Transcription Project. This will enable us to recruit from among the best advanced graduate students without inflicting any decrease in student support relative to that normally set for TA's in our department.

IV. Central Project Web Site

Since the aim of Transcriptions is to bring together the two above-mentioned course "tracks" as much as possible both intellectually and practically, the project will disseminate its rationale, curricular resources, and pedagogical and other innovations through the creation of a large-scale, unified Web site devoted to the topic of "Literature and the Culture of Information." This site, which will stand in addition to sites created for individual courses, will consist of a suite of Web pages focused upon the two focal points of the Transcriptions project: contemporary information culture and historical information culture. Each page will address a particular topic (e.g., post- industrialism, minority cultures and information culture, technologies of literature, literacy and media literacy, history of authorship, copyright, and intellectual property) by providing an overview of issues, online resources, and relevant course syllabi. One Web page will be dedicated to documenting the instructional innovations of the project in the company of other such innovations around the nation. Much of this material will be created by student assistants or combinations of student assistants, RA's, TA's, faculty, and undergraduates. The outline for the Web site is as follows:

• (Home Page:)
  TRANSCRIPTIONS: LITERATURE & THE CULTURE OF INFORMATION PROJECT
  
• (Sub-Pages:)
  1. DESCRIPTION & RATIONALE
  2. TEACHING THE CULTURE OF INFORMATION:
     1. Postmodernism
     2. Postindustrialism
     3. Globalism (World Communications, Economies, Cultures)
     4. Technologism (Theory and Sociology of Technology)
     5. Mass Culture
     6. Minority Cultures & Information Culture
     7. Intellectual Property and Information Law
  3. TEACHING THE RELATION OF LITERARY HISTORY TO THE CULTURE OF INFORMATION:
     1. The Ages of the Word (I): Orality and Literacy
     2. The Ages of the Word (II): Literacy and Media Literacy
     3. The Economics of Literature
     4. National Literatures and Global Literatures
     5. Technologies of Literature (From Scroll to Screen)
     6. Mass Literatures and Minority Literatures
     7. History of Authorship and Copyright
  4. PARADIGMS: EXHIBITS IN THE HISTORY OF INFORMATION CULTURE:
     1. History of the "Page"
     2. "What is an Author"?
     3. What is "Reading"?
     4. The Idea of the "Archive"
     5. The Canon and the Web
  5. PROGRAMS IN LITERATURE AND THE CULTURE OF INFORMATION: (links to relevant departments or programs around the nation and world.) (Note: Because the department has built up a very extensive national and world network of contributors to its existing Web pages (see, for example, the link to "contributors" in "Voice of the Shuttle"), the project will be especially advantaged in soliciting contributions of course syllabi and related resources from other institutions. Special attention will be paid to cultivating a relationship with several, differently focused pilot programs elsewhere.)
     
  6. DEMONSTRATION COURSES: (links to relevant online course syllabi)
  7. PEDAGOGICAL METHODS (see explanation)

Each of the topical pages in sections 2, 3, and 4 of this outline will consist of a main narrative introduction to the topic, bibliography, links to online resources, cross-links to other parts of the project, and a set of critical "questions" for thought (the sorts of basic but powerful questions that the topic raises in our current educational and social context). Much of the first year of the project will be devoted to research for the site as well as development of technical resources (see below), protocols for collaboration, site format, and other matters that place a premium on the extra development assistance we are requesting from Instructional Improvement.

V. Technological Resources

Part of the NEH funding plus UCSB cost-sharing will go toward creating a small computing studio in the English department. Though we have had to scale back, the plan remains roughly as outlined section B.iii of the original NEH proposal. On this front, Transcriptions sets out to demonstrate the viability of a new vision of the future humanities department–one centered around a small, locally-controlled computing studio (a WWW server plus several high-end personal computers, multimedia projectors, etc.) that is designed from the ground up for collaborative work in intimate connection with ongoing course work. Both the project's development team and its students will thus make use of the new department computing studio (supplemented by computing resources elsewhere on campus). The server in the studio, as per present plans, will run Windows NT in order to complement (rather than compete with) the Unix machine hosting Humanitas; and it will allow for locally-controlled access (so as to give undergraduates in our courses Web space). In brief, Transcriptions will test the hypothesis that folding IT integrally into the practical and conceptual heart of a humanities discipline requires an on-site Web-authoring environment integrated into the full teaching and research life of the individual department.

VI. Departmental Support

Departmental support for Transcriptions is quite deep. Not only will a fifth of the department's faculty as well as a goodly number of its graduate students be participating, but the department has committed .25 staff FTE (one-quarter of Terri Jo Ortega's) time for continuing technical support, a permanent room in South Hall for the computing studio, and cost-sharing of $159,756. The department is giving this project such high priority for many reasons. Besides the centrality of the "information culture" issue now facing the discipline of literary studies, for example, there is also the fact that few other conceivable scenarios could configure faculty ranging from medievalists to postmodemists within a single intellectual-cum-instructional concern. This project cuts across all the normal field-divisions in the department to direct the attention of the department as a whole on a major social and cultural issue of our time. It may also be noted that the department has informally but effectively built up a critical mass of both faculty and graduate students who use IT in their research and instruction. Several of the project participants, for example, have already experimented with courses that involve substantial amounts of WWW and other online work. And the synergy with such large-scale WWW projects initiated by department members (e.g., Voice of the Shuttle, the Affirmative Action and Diversity page) will be considerable, since these earlier projects provide deep reserves of links as well as networks of national and international correspondents.

VII. Evaluation

The project plans to piggy-back evaluation for the purposes of the Instructional Improvement Grant on top of evaluation procedures for the NEH. Since the NEH requires several formal reports, the project will create a special adaptation of the relevant reports for Instructional Improvement. Evaluation will be based upon on-site visits by five extramural scholars who have already agreed to come to UCSB for the dual purpose of giving a lecture (and/or sitting in on a planning workshop) and writing a letter of review. During the visits, referees will have a chance to see facilities and course materials, consult with the development group (including student assistants), read the original and revised plans, talk to others in the department and campus at large, and (where possible) look at the work students are currently doing in project classes as well as student evaluations of classes. Since courses developed in 1998-99 would first be given in 1999-2000, the first evaluation would be in the latter year. Referees will be asked to evaluate the project on the following criteria:

• The soundness and clarity of the project's underlying rationale
• The quality and quantity of curricular resources developed
• The success of the project's pedagogical and infrastructural innovations
• Tthe quality of the project's integrated Web site, specifically whether the site combines these elements: clarity of overview, breadth of coverage, depth of knowledge and resources in defined topics.

Pending final arrangements (and provided funding will actually stretch to cover all of these speakers), the intended order of appearance is as follows (two will visit in year 2 of the project to offer formative review; and 3 will visit in year 3 for formative and surnmative review):

1. J. Hillis Miller. One of the most widely-known and influential of literary scholars, Miller has been a leader in positioning the humanities relative to general culture (e.g., through his Presidency of the Modem Language Assoc.) and has recently focused on the relation between literary culture and information culture. His forthcoming book explores this topic under the title Black Holes.
2. Jerome McGann. McGann is one of most influential cultural critics of the past two decades, and has polymath achievements in theory, criticism, and scholarship. Highly relevant to the UCSB project is his dual competence in the revisionary theory/practice of textual editing and online hypermedia development (he is the author of the technically-sophisticated and rigorously edited "Dante Gabriel Rossetti Archive" on the Web and a major participant in the U. Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities).
3. Martin Irvine. Irvine is a medievalist who is coauthor (with Deborah Everhart of Georgetown U.) of the best-known site for medieval studies on the Web: "Labyrinth." He will bring to the UCSB project the twin perspectives of the contemporary culture of information and historical "information technology" (manuscript culture, the history of literacy, etc.). Because he is also director of the innovative Georgetown Communication, Culture, and Technology Program.3, he is also especially well suited to judging the programmatic effectiveness of the compatible, but differently focused, UCSB project.
4. Kathleen Biddick. Biddick is a historian of the medieval period who also writes on the history and theory of technology and cybernetics. She is currently finishing a book titled Medieval Writing Lessons: Technology/Ethnography/Mourning. Her visit to the UCSB project will be informed by her expertise in both older and new technologies of information. In addition, her background in history suits her to emphasizing the interdisciplinary vector of the project in its final year.
5. Allucquere Rosanne Stone. One of the most celebrated critics of cyberculture in the academy as well as general society, Stone is a scholar, theorist, and performance artist in the Radio-TV- Film dept. of U. Texas at Austin. Her latest book from MIT Press is The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. She will be the final evaluator of the project in the year when it moves toward generalizing its Innovations in the form of an interdisciplinary program.

VIII. Budget

Two Student Assistants	16.95/hour	20 hrs per week	30 weeks	$20340.00
Benefits @4.9%				996.66
Total				$21,336.66

This page created by Alan Liu for the Transcriptions Team, 1/20/99 (revised 1/27/99)