Tools for Transformation

Funded Proposals

Management and Engineering Curriculum Transformation

College of Forest Resources

To produce students that can create and manage sustainable forest enterprises requires that their training be enhanced in communication and interdisciplinary team building while maintaining the strength of the technical training they now receive. Accomplishing this task requires that many of these project-based courses be Web based, allowing students to work on projects as teams without excessive physical proximity. For more information, please see CFR's Tech TA Homepage.

Click here to go to 1999-2000 Summary Report for this project.

PROGRESS REPORT

Background
To help with a proposed "Management and Engineering Curriculum Transformation," the College of Forest Resources requested funds for three advanced Graduate Student Service Appointments for three years. When its proposal was approved, the College used funds from its own budget for a fourth Graduate Student Appointment and expanded the program to include the College's Ecosystem Sciences division as well as Forest Management and Engineering.

The graduate appointees' efforts, in the words of the proposal, are to be "dedicated to developing and continuously improving project-based courses that will make heavy use of the Web and other computer applications." The proposal envisioned Web-based classes to help students collaborate on team projects using databases, simulations, and GIS for complex assignments. UWired's Model for Technology TAs , graduate appointees specially trained to support the effective use of technology in teaching, helped define the role and character of CFR's Tech TA team.

Inauguration of Program
The College assigned a large corner office (Room 107B) in its administrative center at Anderson Hall to the Tech TAs, and supplied new computers and software. The first Tech TA (Richard Robohm, an M.S. student at the Center for Urban Horticulture), was hired at the end of October 1998. He interviewed faculty, met with UWired, and took UWired classes to acquaint himself with the people and resources in the College and University. Ke Xue, a senior in Pulp and Paper Science with an extensive technical background, joined the Tech TA team in mid-November. He had already begun working with Prof. Bob Northey on a Web site for a Wood Chemistry class, to support distance learning for students from both UW and the University of Idaho.

Collaboration with and support from UWired, and especially of its Acting Director, Mark Donovan, was essential to the successful launching of the program at CFR. Donovan and his staff were invariably helpful and responsive, and Donovan made presentations on UWired and its Catalyst Project at each of three hands-on workshops for CFR faculty (see below).

In consultation with UWired and CFR administrators, the Tech TAs began to define tasks and wrote a Mission Statement:

• To provide easy-to-use, universally accessible Web tools to enhance teaching and learning.
• To help CFR faculty create and maintain Web sites for their classes.

Initial Activity
In the fall of 1998, Robohm and Xue began a technology audit of CFR teaching faculty, designed a template to be used for class Web pages in the College, and worked with Profs. Bob Northey and Tom Hinckley on Web sites for PSE 406 and ESC 202 , Global Change and Forest Biology.

Tech TA Team
The Tech TA team reached full strength with the hiring in January of Jay Singh, PhD student in Forest Management, and in February of Hakjun Rhee, MS student in Forest Engineering. The team meets weekly to review progress and plan activities. Each TA helps staff a drop-in Web clinic, which is open 24 hours a week and by appointment. The sense of teamwork, collaboration, and shared responsibility among the Tech TAs is high. They are excited about their work and dedicated to responding quickly and effectively to the needs of their clients. They are also proud of their cultural diversity: their countries of birth are China, India, Korea, and the United States.

Workshops for Faculty
The Tech TAs held the first hands-on workshops for CFR faculty on February 12, at the Center for Urban Horticulture and CFR's Bloedel Hall, and repeated the workshop at Bloedel on March 5. A total of 28 faculty and 3 staff attended. The workshops were designed to help faculty launch their class Web sites using the CFR template and Dreamweaver Web development software supported by the Tech TAs. Twenty-eight copies of Dreamweaver have been distributed to faculty members who have either attended workshops or developed class Web pages on their own.

An April 30 workshop on graphics for the Web covered scanning, Web colors and resolution, manipulating images, and minimizing file sizes. Fireworks, a Web graphics application that integrates well with Dreamweaver, was be distributed free to attendees.

To supplement these classes, Tech TAs prepared tutorials and guides for campus computer resources, file transfer, Dreamweaver, and Web graphics.

Tech Audit
Jay Singh completed the technology audit of CFR faculty and prepared a report . The audit not only provided a picture of existing resources and needs, but also helped faculty and Tech TAs get acquainted and learn about each other's activity.

Support of Faculty Web Sites
In addition to the above-mentioned work with Profs. Northey and Hinckley, Tech TAs have assisted many more faculty working on class Web sites. Support has ranged from quick answers to creating Web-page graphics for use in lectures. Classes using a version of the CFR template for class Web sites include ESC 200 , ESC 322 , ESC 502 , UHF 411 , UHF 502 , Other sites are being converted to the new format.

Both Rhee and Singh are also working on creating Web sites for specific programs of the College, the former (with Prof. Fridley) on Capstone Curriculum and the latter on the Forestry and Social Science group.

Tech TA Web Site
With each member making important contributions the Tech TA Team launched its own Web site ( http://www.cfr.washington.edu/cfrweb/ ) on April 13, 1999. This site is designed to distribute information and Web tools to help design, create, and maintain class Web sites.

Plans for the Future
Tech TAs will devote the rest of Spring term to developing and teaching a Web graphics workshop, working one-on-one with faculty on their class Web sites, and enhancing the Tech TA Web site, including more How-To's and FAQs. In the future are classes covering the Catalyst Project's Web-based teaching tools and advanced classes in HTML and graphics.

For more information see this project's web page

Management and Engineering Curriculum Transformation

In the 1998-99 academic year the Tech TAs began the first phase of the "Tools for Transformation" program. This involved development of a framework by which faculty could start building web pages for their classes. Server space was set aside, software was selected and workshops given to train faculty on how to use the software. In addition a web page template was developed to simplify the process of getting a web page put up and provide a uniform user interface and functionality for CFR class pages.

Building on the accomplishments of this first phase the Tech TAs set out in 1999-2000 academic year to develop tools for curriculum analysis and utilization of the web as an educational resource, both within and outside the College. This report summarizes the accomplishments of the Tech TA team towards these goals in the 1999-2000 academic year.

As a model of how to use the web to facilitate curriculum development a demonstration project was developed for the Forest Management Program. The project requires two phases, the first phase was to build a web site with desired functionality and minimal content. The second phase, currently underway is to work with FM faculty to review curriculum goals and objectives while developing content for the web site.

The Forest Management (FM) web site was designed as a curriculum site to serve as an educational resource for faculty, students, and others in the community. Information on topics relevant to forest management and other programs within CFR, such as Ecosystem Science & Conservation and Urban Horticulture would have access to this information

• Prospective Students – are able to learn about the program in terms of curriculum structure, class requirements and career opportunities
• Enrolled Students – can get information on classes to help them decide on electives, choose an area of emphasis and information on jobs/career.
• CFR faculty – can assess their course in relation to other courses. Information is available by topic areas corresponding to curriculum objectives.
• Community – K-12 projects, of general interest on various topic areas.

The site is composed of four main sections:

• General information – contains information about the FM program and career possibilities.
• Classes – geared towards students already in the program, it shows classes in their suggested sequence for each academic year. Class web pages will be linked from this section allowing students to see course content and make decisions for scheduling classes.
• Professional options – five career areas that students can choose from, with short descriptions and links to recommended classes.
• Skills – where information is kept on topic areas for the Forest Management program. There is a page which gives instructions for faculty on how to submit material to the site.

In addition to the main sections of the site, the sidebar on the right of each page has links that are generally useful. These are links to the CFR library, Pack Forest, careers in Forest Management, Newsgroups, and the site index. There is room for more links to be added as the need arises. The site can be navigated in several ways: the navigation bar at the top of each page, the site index page, and links within the body of the page.

Main structure and designing of the site with navigational aids is completed, what remains is for content to be supplied by the faculty. A series of workshops and meetings are planned with faculty members to develop content for this website.

• Classes – As class pages are created, they will be linked from this section.
• Professional options - Faculty will make class web pages that can be linked here. Now the classes are linked to descriptions in the UW course catalog, and the few that have class pages are linked from a button.
• Skills - Faculty will contribute material which is in their area of expertise.
• Newsgroups – There is a link to newsgroups in the right sidebar of each page. These newsgroups will be based on topic areas, rather than classes. It would be possible for students from different classes to exchange ideas and work together. Upper division students can act as mentors to lower division students, thereby improving their teaching and communication skills. Also, the newsgroup can be a place for people in the community to get advice and information.

This site can be adapted by other programs within the College for use with their curriculum. Material in the "Skills" section can be shared by several programs with overlapping requirements.

During the 1999-2000 academic year the Tech TAs began supporting a series of projects to utilize the internet in new ways within CFR. The projects served to expand the scope and nature of how the Web can be used within the College as an educational tool and also as means of supporting research and community outreach programs within CFR.

Support began on four projects that were initiated by faculty members who wished to publish the results of their research and accomplishments on the Web. The Tech TAs provided training and technical support as needed to allow faculty members and their graduate assistants to turn their ideas into a finished product. The support provided by the Tech TAs included the following areas:

• Training in use of software (Dreamweaver & Fireworks)
• Efficient design of Website hierarchical structure.
• Programming support for Javascript
• Development of navigational tools to facilitate user/web-friendly environment

Three faculty members, Linda Brubaker, Claire Ryan and John Marzluff, from CFR suggested a new use of the Web as both a teaching and research tool for use by students, faculty and the community. The proposal was to develop an Interdisciplinary Website that would bring together knowledge of wildlife, policy and ecology in an integrated framework.

In winter quarter a Research Assistant was hired by the College to help in developing content for the site. Tech TAs working in conjunction with the RA developed necessary javascript, templates, navigational devices, web site structure, graphics and user-interface. Site navigation was an important issue in developing this site. This project involves a complex network of inter-related knowledge that must be seamlessly joined together, and joined in a manner that allows the user to quickly find the information needed while not getting lost in a maze of hyperlinks and web-pages.

The site is divided into three main sections: Issues, Concepts and Case Studies. Information within each section is cross-referenced with appropriate web pages in the other two sections. Page layout and navigation techniques were designed by the Tech TAs to make it easier for users to recognize what section they were currently in, and to move between sections. Once again, extensive effort was placed on site directory structure to simplify site maintainence and upkeep.

During Spring Quarter, 2000 the ESC 459 class, Wildlife Conservation in NW Ecosystems, is working on adding content to the "Issues" and "Yellowstone Case Study" section of the web site. Students are working in conjunction with Tech TAs to transfer information on National Park Management and images from a one week field trip to Yellowstone National Park.

The UW-REN serves as a regional center to integrate student, faculty and community interests in ecological restoration and conservation. At the University, UW-REN is creating new interdisciplinary curricula and undergraduate research /capstone experiences in the realm of restoration that bridges across the three UW campuses. A number of specific UW-REN initiatives will create links among academic endeavors, community groups and active restoration professionals. Community interaction through student internships, service learning and K-12 involvement forms another highlight of network activities. Clients submit Requests For Proposals (RFPs) which are posted on the website. Students determine which of these proposals they would like to use for their capstone project.

Web page templates designed by the Tech TAs for class pages were used for the UW-REN after being customized to meet their needs. Extensive work was done by the Tech TAs on the site directory structure to simplify the process of updating and maintaining the website.

Capstone classes enable students to face "real world" problems in their senior year. There are capstone classes in CFR which can provide multiple benefits for students, faculty, and clients. Clients in the community provide an opportunity to contribute directly to education of forestry students. Also, clients have real problems that might not be well suited for in-house effort that could be addressed by a team of young professionals under the guidance of University faculty. A faculty member is responsible for the class and for general guidance, and is made available to the teams as technical consultants when appropriate.

Using conventional communication methods such as client meetings and email were found to be inadequate by Forest Engineering faculty, prompting development of a capstone web site. The capstone web pages functions as an information exchange between students, faculty and clients.

The Multiple World Views Project was developed to help meet the challenges of curriculum transformation related to the diversity of socio-cultural perspectives in natural resources and environmental studies. The project focused on generating consensus about what students should learn in order to live and work in a diverse world. Flexible learning modes to attain competencies and skills were defined by diverse community spokespersons that participated in the DACUM (Develop-A-Curriculum) workshops.

These results were organized into a descriptive matrix representing alternative educational and instructive avenues for students and faculty. This matrix was then used to develop a web site to distribute the results to the community at large.

Essential to the success of this project was to structure the information in a manner that made it easy to navigate on the web and still presented the information in a logical manner. Tech TA’s were able to provide guidance and technical support in designing the conceptual framework from which to construct the site.

This section of the report summarizes on-going efforts by Tech TAs to help faculty create and maintain their class web sites.

In the 1998-99 academic year the Tech TAs developed a preliminary template that faculty could use to build their class web pages with. The template made it easier to build web pages by incorporating commonly used components of class web pages. This year, the Tech TAs built upon the preliminary template by adding features that would simplify site maintainence and allow for better site directory structure. This results in greatly improved and easier to update class web sites. The concept of this template is now being expanded to cover new tools being considered by the Tech TAs for the third year of the "Tools for Transformation" project.

Web-based tutorials were developed for workshops to teach faculty how to set up a class website on CFR using Dreamweaver and Fireworks. These tutorials are available on the website and contain CFR-specific information. There are links to websites with more general information at C & C and UWired. Other tutorials on subjects such as Javascript, web page design, and graphics are available on the site. They are rated according to difficulty level.

Tech TAs are working with Linda Brubaker and UWired to develop a new Catalyst tool to help students enter and manipulate data for class projects on the web. The students would:

• enter raw data into a table for distribution to the class,
• enter summarized data into a table that would be plotted as a histogram,
• information would then go to a TA to be checked
• the response from the TA would then go directly to the class or to the student(s) entering the information.

Such a tool could allow students to have immediate access to the data or immediate feed back on their (in)ability to make simple graphs and captions. They will be sure they have done this correctly before writing the report. The tool would be widely used by forestry and other science disciplines with entry-level courses that stress active data-gathering assignments.

The main focus for Tech TA’s this year was to demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of utilizing Web-based Tools for Curriculum Development and as an Educational Resource. These efforts were concentrated on specific programs to facilitate the process of developing the tools. The next step is to make these demonstration tools available to the CFR community at large, and the broader University community. What we propose is to "package" the demonstration projects discussed above in a manner that allows for easy replication of these web sites for other programs.

The packaging would encompass development of templates, tutorials and workshops for faculty and graduate assistants. The aim is not to remove Tech TAs from the process, but to transition the work of building content for a web site to the individuals with the knowledge. Tech TAs will continue to provide technical support and guidance as needed to assist faculty. This allows Tech TAs the time and opportunity to continue developing new "Tools" for faculty to use.

In the past two years the Tech TA’s have made significant progress in building a strong technical foundation from which to improve the quality of education offered by the College. The technical tools are only part of the process however. In order for an effort such as "Tools for Transformation" to work effectively there needs to be more interaction between Tech TAs, Faculty and Administration to utilize the tools effectively.

Understandably, faculty are often extremely busy or lack motivation to enter into the web. In some cases faculty members have web sites that would be of value to others within CFR and the external community, but are not linked from the CFR web site. Motivating faculty to use resources developed by Tech TAs and/or work together with the College will help greatly towards furthering the goals of the "Tools for Transformation" program.

A project such as "Tools for Transformation" can provide many benefits to the College, however it may be difficult for faculty to recognize those benefits or the ways in which technology can be used to benefit their classes and research work. Improving channels of communication and increasing interaction between faculty members will allow for exchange of ideas to realize the full potential of this program.

Tools for Transformation Funded Proposals

The Provost's Office
provost@u.washington.edu
Modified: July 11, 2000