Project Number 32 – 1993

Network Resources: A Hands-On Workshop

Project Number 32 – 1993

Abstract

In the Spring of 1993 Northwestern University’s Academic Computing and Network Services unit, with cooperation and assistance from Cornell University and support from Apple Computer, Inc., undertook the offering of a faculty development program designed and executed originally at Cornell University called the Learning Technologies Program (LTP). As its unique addition to the program, Northwestern agreed to design, execute, and offer to other LTP sites (Cornell, Berkeley, and three community colleges funded by Apple to extend LTP training to faculty throughout the U.S.) a course session on Network Resources. This module, taught in a two-hour hands-on session within the three-day Learning Technologies for Educators experience, offers faculty direct experience participating in electronic discussions (listservs and netnews) and using telnet and ftp, and engages them to share their ideas about how such technologies may be incorporated into their teaching activities. The workshop teaching itself was conducted in team fashion by a librarian and a computing center staff member, and several staff from both units of the University were involved in critiquing and extending the basic workshop design and class materials. The Network Resources session was taught three times during the LTP experience at Northwestern June 15-17, will be offered again September 1-3. Written evaluations by faculty participants in the workshop were very positive, and it is Northwestern’s intent to extend this unit within the LTP to two sessions rather than one, and to offer it again to the NU Medical School in connection with their curriculum redesign efforts. The course materials for the workshop are appended with this description. (delivered separately via FAX)

The Network Resources Workshop addresses CNI interests in a number of ways. First, the workshop content focuses strictly on TCP/IP-based tools of key importance to the Internet and NSFNet community, and provides as well a general introduction to the current direction of the emerging NREN. Second, the workshop content pays considerable attention to library resources on the Internet, providing a hands-on exercise in telnetting to online catalogs and conveying throughout the teaching that both libraries and computing centers have a shared stake in Internet development. Thirdly, the development of the workshop involved a computing center/library collaboration (library staff served as instructors in other segments of the Learning Technologies for Educators workshops as well), and a higher education/industry collaboration with the extensive involvement of Apple Computer as both funder and consultant on the LTP project. The workshop content was mindful of the need to economize by concentrating strictly on tools freely available within the higher education community (and distributable to students at no cost). The workshop was designed to be easily replicable, as it is already being shared with Cornell, Berkeley, and three community colleges for their adoption as part of the national Apple-sponsored Learning Technologies Program.

Audio-visual requirements

If a presentation on the Network Resources Workshop is to be made at the upcoming EDUCOM Conference, a Macintosh and screen projection system would be used to illustrate the course materials prepared. Northwestern can likely bring along a PowerBook; a projection system adequate for the size of room would be all that would be needed.