1. Course Development: Transcriptions passed its most important milestone in fall 1999 by initiating a full roster of instruction—including:

• Fall 1999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  • The Culture of Information (undergrad) (instructor: Alan Liu)
    http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english165/
    
    
• Winter 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  • Scroll to Screen (undergrad) (Carol Pasternack)
    http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/pasternack/english165/
  • Weaving Webs: Native-American Literature, Oral Tradition, and Internet (undergrad) (Christopher Schedler)
    http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/schedler/english134NA/
  • The Culture of Information (graduate) (Alan Liu)
    http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english236/
    
    
• Spring 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  • Techno-Gothic: Imagining the Cyborg (undergrad) (William Warner)
    http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english122tg/

• Web-authoring
• Creating an online, interactive database (a chronology database and relationally-linked resources database edited through Web forms)
• Participating in a threaded discussion forum
• Participating in an e-mail list

Course assessment is conducted through both the normal campus student course evaluation forms (ESCI) and a supplementary survey focusing on the students' experience of instructional technology. For the one project course that has been completed at the time of this proposal (the fall, undergraduate version of "The Culture of Information," enrollment: 35), student reaction was favorable. The ESCI instructor's mean was 1.4 (dept. mean over time, 1.7; campus mean over time, 2.0—where the lower numbers indicate better scores); and the course mean was 1.8 (dept. mean over time, 1.8; campus mean over time, 2.1). Student comments on the exit survey about instructional technology were highly positive (the survey is discursive and cannot be summarized easily here; responses are available on request.) The main weakness that Transcriptions has discovered in its curricular design is that it needs to consolidate and make more efficient its teaching of specific technology skills (see Plans for Third Year of Project below). In general, student interest and enrollment in the project's courses have been high at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

3. Colloquium Series: Transcriptions initiated a colloquium series in Spring 1999 on the research and pedagogical dimensions of information technology. In Fall 1999, the colloquia became a credit-bearing graduate course. The colloquium has been very active and productive in the current reporting period. In general, the colloquium series has been one of the real strengths of the project. It is a flexible venue that features both UCSB and extramural speakers, theoretical and practical topics, and formal and informal presentation formats. Held in the Transcriptions computing studio, the colloquia generate a "workshop" atmosphere in which speakers engage students and faculty in conversations that modulate between the philosophical and the technical. A recent speaker, for example, was Matt Kirschenbaum from the University of Kentucky, who first gave a formal talk on the visual experience of information technology (an area in which he is one of the world's experts) and then followed up with an informal workshop on professional opportunities in the "digital humanities" field. Another significant participant was J. Hillis Miller from U. California, Irvine, who gave both a talk and a workshop on the relation between literary studies and information culture. The Principal Investigator of Transcriptions, Alan Liu, also gave a colloquium that related information culture to the recent turn of the humanities toward historicism and cultural studies.

5. Publicity, Dissemination, and Fund-Raising: Transcriptions has actively publicized and disseminated its work as it has proceeded. For students, the project produced descriptive materials, flyers, and posters that explained its idea and advertised its courses. For graduate students and faculty within the English department, the project held workshops and introductory sessions. For interested members of other UCSB departments as well as for administrators, the project held briefing sessions. Similar presentations of the project were made to faculty from other UC campuses at a planning meeting for the new "Digital Cultures" Multi-Campus Research Group (see below) and for alumni and community members (organized in collaboration with the offices of the Dean of Humanities, the Chancellor, Development, and the Friends of English). Transcriptions has also engaged in outreach by presenting its work at an area high school.

Following up on similar fund-raising presentations in the previous reporting period, the Transcriptions PI presented the project at a donor event (the UCSB Chancellor's Community Breakfast on "The New Literacy: Arts and Humanities in the Information Age"). While Transcriptions has made slow progress on raising matching funds from small, individual donations, it has yet to achieve any results from its more high-profile fund-raising presentations.

6. Long-Term Initiatives:Transcriptions has taken two key steps in extending and expanding its work beyond its NEH-funded incubation period. These steps will ensure that Transcriptions has long-term results that realize its initial value as a demonstration project.

(1) Transcriptions will become part of the restructured undergraduate major in English at UCSB. The major was recently revised to include elective "concentrations" or tracks in particular areas. Transcriptions will use the courses it has developed to start a concentration in "literature and information culture" (fielding 4-5 courses each year).

(2) Transcriptions has initiated a new UC-system "Digital Cultures Project " Multi-Campus Research Group (MRG). Proposed to the UC Office of the President by Transcriptions member William Warner (who will be principal investigator), The Digital Cultures Project was approved in January 2000 and funded by the UC system (with additional funding from UCSB) at the level of approximately $80,000 per year for an initial five-year term. The project will knit together humanities faculty and graduate students from all the UC campuses (except UC San Francisco) in the following activities: an annual summer institute (seminars led by distinguished scholars in the field of humanities computing), an annual conference, an annual graduate-student conference, an ongoing inter-campus research and teaching information network, and a casebook series on the use of information technology specifically in humanities teaching and research (to be edited by the Transcriptions PI, Alan Liu, who serves on the steering committee of the new project). Digital Cultures will also explore the possibility of inter-campus, information-technology-assisted courses. The project will be headquartered at UCSB and will utilize the precedents, resources, and equipment developed by Transcriptions. (For more information, see http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/) The launching of the Digital Cultures Project advances and supersedes the more limited, original plan for Transcriptions to create an interdisciplinary program in information culture at UCSB.

Plans for Third Year of the Project, 2000-2001 (Final Development Year): In the next academic year (which marks the formal end of its development stage), Transcriptions will continue the activities described above in its progress report. In addition, the project plans to address the following high-priority development needs:

(I) Creating New Courses

To achieve the critical mass of courses necessary to become one of the new tracks in the English major, Transcriptions will have to add several courses to those it has already developed. For 2000-2001, the following six new Transcriptions courses have been approved by the English Dept.:

• History of Written Culture (undergrad) (instructor: Charles Bazerman)
• Hypertext Literature (undergrad) (instructor: Alan Liu)
• Hypertext Literature and Literary Theory (graduate) (instructor: Alan Liu)
• Business Culture (undergrad) (Christopher Newfield)
• The Imperial Text (graduate) (Carol Pasternack)
• Enlightenment Communications in England and America (undergrad) (William Warner)
• Cyborg Genealogies: The Gothic (graduate) (William Warner)

(In addition, two courses first taught in 1999-2000—The Culture of Information and Scroll to Screen—will be repeated. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a repertory of about 12-14 courses total.)

(II) Creating Lab Sections

Transcriptions has discovered a significant weakness in its curricular design: the need to consolidate and make more efficient the training of students in the technology skills necessary for class assignments.

As may be expected, the project takes great care to ensure that its students are adequately prepared for practical work with information technology. Each course gathers information about students's IT skills and access through an online course entrance survey (see http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/project/student-surveys/index.shtml). Knowledge gathered from this survey becomes the basis for devising a plan for technical training. But while some training is available through central campus resources (especially the UCSB Instructional Computing facility), Transcriptions instructors have so far not found it practical simply to outsource the task because of the need to familiarize students with specific Web-authoring procedures, Web-page templates, Filemaker Web forms, and messaging environments needed for Transcriptions class assignments. Instructors have therefore devoted regular class time to this purpose and also scheduled extra technology workshops. This puts a substantial strain on instructors, who cannot devote too much instructional time to training without diluting course content (and diverting their time from other kinds of student advising). Nor is it fair to students to expect them to attend extra technology workshops in addition to regular classes (though many are eager to do so).

Transcriptions thus plans to revise its curricular structure by creating a regular series of technology "lab sections" (approximately three per quarter) that will be staffed by research assistants and taken for extra course credit by students. (The English Dept. Undergraduate Committee is currently working out the details for such an arrangement.) To maximize resources, these lab sections will be shared by concurrent courses. Two or three courses each quarter, in other words, would share the same lab sections. Some labs would occur in Instructional Computing and some in the Transcriptions computing studio. Research assistants funded by Instructional Improvement would develop the curriculum and online resources necessary for these labs. In addition, research assistants would develop the means and liasions necessary to increase the project's use of central campus resources. For example, they would coach students on the campus UWeb system, HTML-editing programs available in Instructional Computing, etc. (Pilot technology "workshops" were conducted in 1999-2000 by research assistants to prove the concept.)

(III) Acquiring a Collection of Hypertext Literature on CD-ROM

Two courses scheduled for 2000-2001 focus on the single most important genre of contemporary literature to study in understanding the relation of literary study to information technology: hypertext literature (hypertext fiction, poetry, and theory). However, there are practical impediments to the study of hypertext literature in the collaborative, team-oriented teaching environments fostered by Transcriptions courses. While some hypertext fiction and poetry is beginning to appear online on the Web, the field is still dominated by works created on CD-ROMs—both because of the historical precedence of the Storyspace hypertext-authoring environment and of the technical limitiations of HTML on the Web. In particular, the world's major collection of hypertext literature is consolidated in the publications of a single company: Eastgate Systems, Inc. (http://www.eastgate.com/). Included in Eastgate's collection, for example, are such now canonical works as Michael Joyce's Afternoon, A Story, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.

Transcriptions would like to acquire a single copy of each work in the Eastgate library of hypertext literature for the development of courses on hypertext. There is no other practical way for instructors in the project to research the field, design instruction on the topic, and create assignments that encourage students to explore a wide range of hypertext fiction/poetry in the collaborative learning environment of the project's computing studio. The resources need to be physically present at the location where students are not just reading but also authoring their own hypertext assignments (it would thus not be possible just to send the students to the library).

(IV) Implementation of Long-Term Initiatives (creating new concentration in English major; helping launch the new U. California Multi-Campus Research Group on "Digital Cultures") See Long-Term Initiatives above