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| Date: | February 1, 1999 |
| 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 |
1. Abstract
Literacy and literature have long served as the means by which societies certify certain classes and individuals as knowledgeable and "cultured." But in contemporary society, "information literacy" is ascendant. What do the "well-read" now need to learn from the "well-informed," and vice versa? And how does thinking about the technological underpinnings of literacy–both past and present–help answer this question?
The Transcriptions Project in the English Dept. ("Transcriptions: Literary History and the Culture of Information") is a three-year curriculum initiative that addresses these questions by developing an integrated suite of courses, Web sites, research-and-teaching colloquia, and other resources that use information technology to "transcribe" between literary and information cultures. The project began in Fall 1998 (its first courses will be offered in 1999-2000) and continues through academic year 2000-2001. Courses created by the project will become part of the English Dept.'s permanent curriculum.
Last year, Transcriptions was successful in its application for an Instructional Improvement Grant to supplement a seed grant of $30,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funds from Instructional Improvement are being used to pay for six quarters of half-time graduate-student assistant support (equivalent to two graduate students working for three quarters).
Transcriptions is following up this year by requesting support for an equivalent level of student assistance in 1999-2000. Student assistants have proved to be critical to the project's development; and they will be even more important as the project moves from its initial development year into its production phase (when it teaches its first courses).
2. Overview of Project Rationale and Design
Transcriptions rests on the belief that purely practical rationales for using information technology in humanities instruction (e.g., to facilitate or extend the reach of teaching, to give students skills for employment in a wired world, etc.) are necessary. But such rationales by themselves are also crucially insufficient.
Wiring the humanities requires encouraging humanities students to engage both practically and intellectually with the significance of information technology and the social, political, economic, philosophical, psychological, aesthetic, and other forces IT represents. If the humanities are to engage integrally rather than adventitiously in the great contemporary adventure of IT, in other words, its crucial questions must include the following: what do humanities students have to learn from serious engagement with the culture of information? Reciprocally, how can information culture–as practiced in the corporate, "knowledge work," "service," and other domains in which many students end up–benefit from the perspective of humanists trained in critical and historical inquiry? In short, how can the humanities help humanize the great narratives of "restructuring," "lifelong learning," and "global competition" for which IT now serves as such a powerful and thrilling allegory?
Transcriptions is creating curricular and other resources to address these questions. Its courses will not only "use" information technology but also make such technology an object of thought. The twofold goal will be to study IT as a phenomenon of culture while also simultaneously studying culture (specifically as represented in literature) as itself a kind of evolving "language tech" (the historical technologies of oral, manuscript, early-print, late-print, broadcast, and other literary cultures). Half the emphasis of the courses created by Transcriptions, therefore, will be on the contemporary culture of information and the other half on the cultures of earlier language technology (with some courses spanning from the parchment past to the WWW present, "from scroll to screen"). By seeing IT from the perspective of literature while seeing literature from the perspective of IT, the project will create a common ground of understanding–at once collaborative and critical–between the universes of the "well-read" and "well-informed."
Because the present application for Instructional Improvement funding follows up on last year's, the full project rationale is not reproduced here. The supporting documents listed below offer a more detailed glimpse of the idea behind Transcriptions. They also cover the project's background or context, its departmental support, means of evaluation, etc.:
- The Transcriptions Web Site (now under early development; includes the project rationale; requires Netscape or IE 4.0+): http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/
- Last Year's Instructional Improvement Grant Proposal, Feb. 12, 1998: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/proposals/instructional-improvement-grant-1998.shtml
- Original NEH Proposal of 1996: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/proposals/NEH-proposal.shtml
3. Progress Report
Just initiated in Fall 1998, Transcriptions is dedicating its first year to development work (with its first courses to be taught next year). From August 1998 through January 1999, the project has made progress in the following main categories (for a chronology, see the project log, http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/logs/project-log.shtml):
Planning: whether in part or whole, the Transcriptions team (faculty, research assistants, and staff) met a total of 10 times to plan and design. Besides functioning as a committee-of-the-whole, the team worked in the form of two overlapping sub-groups: one developing instructional resources and the other Web design. In addition, the team convened two public meetings to present the project, its plans, and its resources to the English department and other interested parties. One event, for example, consisted of a demo of the studio's equipment and software for both department and extra-departmental members (including Muriel Zimmerman and the team helping her develop a technical-writing computing lab).
Creation of Computing Studio and Collaborative Online Work Environment: Transcriptions researched, purchased, and set up from scratch a new computing studio in the English department. The studio is a dual-use facility where computing work occurs on high-end personal computers and ancillary equipment stationed at one end of the room while meetings and small classes can occupy a seminar table at the other end. (Currently, equipment consists of four 450Mhz PCs with large monitors, a scanner, a black-and- white printer, a color printer, a multimedia projector. Plans call for the addition of another 4-6 PCs by next year. The PCs run Windows 98 and are networked to a dedicated Windows NT server running Microsoft's Backoffice suite. Besides providing Web service, the Backoffice suite allows for Web access to the Exchange Server messaging environment–a medium for threaded discussions and other permission- controlled collaborative forums that the project plans to use in its courses.)
Since the project's rationale commits humanists to engaging as fully as possible with IT, members of the Transcriptions team–including its director–dedicated an intense amount of time in November and December 1998 to setting up the server themselves, learning to administrate it, upgrading components of its operating system, configuring the Exchange Server messaging environment, networking the client computers, and so on.
The studio and its equipment became fully operational in late December 1998. Even before the server came online, faculty and students in the project worked to familiarize themselves with the new Web-authoring and image-editing software in the studio–including the project's primary production programs: Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Fireworks, SoftQuad's HotMetal, and Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator.
Web Authoring: Since the computing studio became operational, the project has committed itself to developing its central Web site (with work on individual course Web sites to follow). Because this phase of the project is only one month old at the time of the writing of this proposal (in late January 1999), the Web site is clearly–as they say–"under construction." Progress, however, has been rapid and intense. Work on the site consists of researching/creating content, planning the site architecture, designing standard page templates, and–perhaps most exciting–inventing protocols for collaborative Web authoring. The site may be seen at http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/
Course Development: Transcriptions will not teach its first courses until academic year 1999-2000, and development work for such courses will not begin in earnest until Spring 1999 (when the project's Web design will be in place). Nevertheless, Transcriptions has already made a substantial start on planning for courses:
It has scheduled (and secured approval from the English Dept. for) the following courses next year:
- Alan Liu, "The Culture of Information" (undergraduate)
- Alan Liu, "The Culture of Information" (graduate)
- Carol Pasternack, "Scroll to Screen" (undergraduate)
- William Warner, "Free Speech and Censorship" (undergraduate)
- Christopher Newfield, "Global California" (undergraduate)
In addition, it is currently arranging for one of its research assistants, Chris Schedler, to teach a course on "Native American Literature, Oral tradition, and the Internet." Courses planned for future years include (in addition to repetitions of courses already mentioned):
- Charles Bazerman, "History of Written Culture"
- Carol Pasternack, "The Imperial Text"
- Alan Liu, "Canon Revision"
- Christopher Newfield, "Business Culture"
- Mark Rose, "History of Authorship"
- William Warner, "Digital Media Culture"
- William Warner, "Techno-Gothic"
- Alan Liu, "Postmodern Theory"
The project has also done considerable research on the instructional use of information technology, and has collected resources exemplifying interesting paradigms of instructional IT and/or useful essays on the topic on a set of annotated Web pages: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/resources.shtml
It is estimated that Transcriptions courses will enroll 407 undergraduates and 100 graduate students over the life of the project (not counting courses to be repeated as part of the department's regular curriculum afterwards).
Organizing Colloquia: Transcriptions will initiate a series of workshops/colloquia in Spring 1999 on topics that bear both on the internal interests of its team and on the research interests of a broader audience. The idea is to begin with a semi-regular series of workshops this year that will eventually be formalized as a full-scale colloquium series (featuring both UCSB and extramural presenters; hosting an audience consisting of a combination of faculty, graduate students, and–in specially designed events–undergraduates). The colloquium in its formal guise will allow graduate students to attend for credit. Though plans for the colloquium are at an early stage, the project has already lined up extramural and intramural presenters on the topics of Native Americans and the Internet, hypertext fiction, and technical fiction. In addition, the extramural scholars who will visit the program for the combined purpose of speaking/refereeing will play a part in the colloquium (Kathleen Biddick, Martin Irvine, Jerome McGann, J. Hillis Miller, Allucquere Rosanne Stone).
Publicizing the Project: Though Transcriptions is in early development, it has already begun to design a publicity initiative that will disseminate its ideas more broadly. It is planning publicity literature to announce its suite of connected courses to undergraduates. It is planning similar literature to attract graduate students with interests in online work to the English Dept. Its director (Alan Liu) will be presenting the project this coming spring to the Friends of the English Department (a group of local-community supporters of UCSB). And Liu will also be showcasing the project, among other English Dept. Web developments, at a presentation at Wesleyan U. in April 1999.
4. The Role Played by Student Assistants
The graduate-student research assistants in Transcriptions have acted as full partners in the project. They sit on the project's planning and design meetings and have been given a high degree of initiative in researching content for the project's Web site, collecting background and critical resources on the use of IT in teaching, designing Web pages, and learning the project's new software and network environments (both for the practical purpose of facilitating future work and the intellectual purpose of imagining how these environments will make a difference in future teaching and research). Since Transcription's faculty receive no course relief, stipend, or other benefits for their participation in the project, the assistance of the students has been critical. In addition, it should be noted that the combined practical and intellectual nature of the work means that it makes for excellent professional training for the students. The students who worked on the project in Fall 1998, for example (Laurie Ellinghausen and Vincent Willoughby), have developed a new area of expertise as they researched the instructional use of IT.
Broken down into specific categories, the work of the student assistants during this first development year of the project has consisted of the following tasks (for a sample of the assistants' weekly activity logs, see http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/logs/RA-logs.shtml):
- Learning new software (including reading manuals, using interactive tutorials, etc.)
- Participating in planning/design sessions.
- Researching/collecting material for the project's Web site
- Authoring/Editing Web pages
- Scanning/Editing images for the Web site
- Attending Transcriptions meetings
5. Plans for Second Year of the Project, 1999-2000
As stated in more detail in the original NEH proposal as well as last year's Instructional Improvement grant proposal, Transcriptions will in 1999-2000 continue development work on its Web site and curriculum (broadening participation in the project to other interested English department members who have expertise on particular topics). The project will also teach its first suite of courses. And it will begin to formalize its colloquium series (as described above). In all these activities, Transcriptions will need to depend on the initiative and labor of research assistants. The assistants will be instrumental in Web development: they will take charge of Web pages on particular topics, and they will aid faculty in creating course sites. In addition, the assistants will help in the roll-out of the project's first courses. They will not only work behind the scenes by creating/maintaining instructional technology (Web pages, discussion forums, undergraduate accounts on the Exchange Server, undergraduate assignments posted to the Web server) but also in the foreground by holding office hours in the project's computing studio for participants in the project's courses who require technological "coaching.".
6. Departmental Support
See the statement in the 1998 Transcriptions proposal for Instructional Improvement funding on continuing departmental support (http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/proposals/instructional-improvement-grant-1998.shtml#6).
7. Evaluation
See the statement in the 1998 Transcriptions proposal for Instructional Improvement funding on plans for evaluation (http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/proposals/instructional-improvement-grant-1998.shtml#7).
8. Budget
As indicated in the following table, Transcriptions is requesting funding for two graduate-student assistants during 1999-2000 at a level of compensation (including fee remission, benefits, and insurance) commensurate with the figures for normal Teaching Assistants in the English Dept. Such parity is a high priority because the English Dept. runs a graduate program in which all students receive 4-5 years of continuous support either in the form of TAships or (in some years) fellowships. This means that Transcriptions cannot recruit excellent assistants if it pays the flat University "research-assistant" rate without supplement--a rate that would be seriously uncompetitive with the totality of a normal TA package.
In general, Transcriptions is committed to the principle that its assistantships are fully on a par with Teaching Assistantships in providing graduate students with professional expertise and intellectual enrichment. The work that Transcriptions assistants accomplish contributes directly not only to the development of the project but also to their own careers as researchers and instructors. The initiative and expertise required of assistants is high.
For these reasons, the project would like to treat its"RAs" financially as "TAs." Transcriptions much appreciates the flexibility that last year's Instructional Improvement Grant provided in allocating funding for student support.
| Salary for Two Student Assistants | 20 hrs per week | 30 weeks | $27,191 |
| Partial Tuition Remission | $4,350 | ||
| Benefits | $593 | ||
| Grad Student Insurance | $1,626 | ||
| Total | $33,760 |
