Project Mercury
Project Number Thirteen – 1992
PROJECT MERCURY
A Pilot for Networking Teaching and Learning Resources in the Maricopa Community Colleges
The Maricopa Community College District is a multi-campus system serving over 170,000 students from 10 colleges. Maricopa, like other multi-site organizations, is commited to a variety of networked information technology applications. In order to maximize the resource potentials of these various networked technologies, MCCD is undertaking a pilot program to create a strategic model with the following goals in mind:
- to network faculty so that the information gathered in their class development and the software they have created can be made available through a district wide Faculty Course Information Repository, an electronic database that allows faculty to post, retrieve and download course information in an object-oriented programming architecture;
- to network course information so that every MCCD course has an interdisciplinary potential by virtue of how course information is structured;
- to network common access to wide-area information service systems and various information networks (NSFNET, Internet, etc)so that Maricopa students and faculty can retrieve information relevant to course material that because of initial course design limitation could not be included originally. The goal here is to network in such a way as to foster individual student navigation into course materials not directly covered in class.
To create this strategic model of information retrieval for maximum teaching and learning effectiveness, MCCD has developed a committee of representatives from five of the colleges to produce such a model for implementation thereby addressing the Coalition emphases of collaboration and “doing more with less” in a networked teaching and learning environment. The committee’s plans and directions would be presented at EDUCOM.
Key Contacts
Dr. Paul Privateer is the assistant to the President for Instructional Technology at Rio Salado Community College and is the Odyssey Project Director and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Arizona State University. Dr. Privateer has published on information and educational technologies and has a Cambridge University Press book being released this fall entitled Literature, Science and Technology: New Theories, New Perspectives. His Odyssey Project has been the subject of national and international interest from such media as CNN and ABC television, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, T.H.E. Journal, National Public Radio, Apple Television and The London Times.
Janet Whitaker is Director of Instructional Technology for the Maricopa Community College District. Her major reponsbilities include development of applications using the MCCD voice/video/data networks for the delivery and support of instructional programs, and international education project development using technology.
Karen Schwalm is a faculty member in the Department of English at Glendale Community College. She is co-developer of an instructional computer conferencing system called the Electronic Forum in use throughout the Maricopa Community College District and at Arizona State University. Last year, over 100 faculty members used instructional computer conferencing to support conventional classroom instruction; several campuses also use the forum for instructional delivery. She has presented the results of her research at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, at the Computers and Writing Conference, and at meetings of the League for Innovation in the Community College.
Karen Schwalm Glendale Community College 6000 West Olive Avenue Glendale, Arizona 85302 schwalm@gc.bitnet