FCN News 26 June 1998

Don't read this by e-mail! Instead, read the hypertext version of this newsletter: <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/current.html>. Contents:

Do you have UO colleagues who would find this newsletter useful? Call their attention to the html version, or they can subscribe by sending email to jqj@darkwing.uoregon.edu.

Upcoming Events

Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also upcoming conferences below):

IT Curriculum. The summer IT Curriculum is available at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. The summer curriculum tends to be a bit more "advanced" than during other terms. For FCN members, some of the more interesting workshops in the next few weeks include:

Seen on the Net

USING TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING: WE NEED TO EXERCISE HEALTHY SKEPTICISM. Check out an excellent article by Ed Neal (UNC Chapel Hill) in the Chronicle of Higher Ed., June 19. <http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-41.dir/41b00401.htm>

WHO OWNS ON-LINE COURSES? "Faculty members who create on-line courses anticipate debates with their universities over who owns the course materials." It's becoming a critical issue on many campuses, and an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education explores the issues in depth. <http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/ownership/background.shtml>

TEXTBOOKS ON-LINE. The web gives professors the ability to publish their own textbooks on line, but so far it hasn't given them the marketing savvy they need to sell their books to colleagues elsewhere. Now a professor has opened a web site, the ConnectText Catalog, that he hopes will help authors of such textbooks spread the word about their work. <http://www.connectext.com/>

DISTANCE ED. In February 1998, the Dept. of Education released a 2-year survey of higher education distance ed. <http://www.nces.ed.gov/> The report of the National Center for Education Statistics notes that a full third of U.S. post secondary schools offered DE courses in Fall 1995. Another quarter planned to offer courses within the next three years. One of the many issues posed by distance education is how to provide the standard university auxiliary services, notably library access, to off-campus students. A bibliography from UI focuses on this and other distance ed issues. <http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~sloan/libdist.htm>.

THE LIFE OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. An exemplary web site focused on a medieval manuscript, <http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Ee.3.59/>. Non-medievalists should check it out too as an example how the web can present scholarly information in ways that print can not.

GALILEO. Another important early manuscript, one that is available only in cyberspace, is Galileo's "Notes on Motion," published for the first time last month. Every historian of science -- and anyone interested in the history of physics -- should see this one. <http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Galileo_Prototype/>.

BIOLOGY RESOURCES FOR INSTRUCTION. The Biology Project from the University of Arizona is an interactive online resource for learning biology. Designed for high school and college-level biology students, the site includes tutorials, problem sets, and activities that help prepare students studying biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, human biology, Mendelian genetics, microbiology and immunology, and molecular biology. <http://www.biology.arizona.edu/>

INTERACTIVE CALCULUS. Students taking calculus at Penn State have the option to purchase a traditional calculus textbook or choose an alternative, online version of the same text published by Houghton Mifflin. The online version includes a chat room as well as a central location where students can post questions to professors. <http://hmco.tdlc.com/ICALC.html>

SOCRATES CAFE. Socrates is a commercial site offering fee-based hosting for web-enhanced instruction. But it's "learning center" also includes a carefully reviewed collection of links to over 600 high quality educational sites. <http://www.esocrates.com/>

CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES ARE BIG BUSINESS. Ten years ago there were about 400 corporate universities -- comprehensive training institutions operated by corporations -- and that number has now grown to 1,600. Several of them, such as the Arthur D. Little School in Boston, have formal degree-granting powers, and many have forged alliances with nearby colleges and universities to enable students taking their courses to receive credits that count toward external degrees. But now that cozy relationship is crumbling, as corporate universities increasingly are under pressure from their companies to become self-supporting. That puts the corporate schools in direct competition with conventional universities in the fundraising arena. A recent survey of 100 corporate universities showed that 10% planned to be self-funded by 2000. "As the funding model changes to be more self-funded, these universities are going to brand what they are doing and use their significant resources to go to the external market. At that point they are a significant threat," says a spokeswoman at Corporate University Xchange. (Financial Times 18 Jun 98; quoted in Edupage, 18 June 1998)

ONLINE CHAT INVADES THE CORPORATE OFFICE. Chat rooms and similar technology called instant messaging are finding their way into the workplace, offering an alternative to phone calls and face-to-face meetings. Gregory Jackson, associate provost for information technology at the University of Chicago, uses instant messaging to keep up with his staff, and thinks the technology will find a niche in the business world, too: "It will take time for corporate America to fully embrace it, but this is not one of those things that's going to go away."(Wall Street Journal, 29 May 98; quoted from Edupage, 31 May 98)

LIBRARY START PAGE. If Janus doesn't fill all your needs as a place to start for finding online reference information, try LibrarySpot.. <http://www.libraryspot.com>.

How To -- Advisors and DuckWeb

Did you know that your students can look at their grades, print a transcript, review their class schedules, and find out what they owe the UO, all using a web browser? They have access to a substantial amount of information about themselves through DuckWeb, <http://duckweb.uoregon.edu>. We faculty can't see the information about our students (yet. There are plans to eventually provide online data for advisors), but it's still useful to us to know what the students can see, and to be able to help them get started.

To access DuckWeb, students use a web browser that supports secure transactions (modern versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer). They get an opening screen with a button labeled "CLICK to log in" and when they do are given the chance to enter their student identification number (usually their SSN) and "personal access code" (PAC), a numeric password that they receive as part of their registration materials. If the PAC matches, they see a menu that includes a wide variety of information resources:

For entering Freshmen, DuckWeb is also the way to find out the username and initial password for their Gladstone accounts.

Conferences and Workshops, Real and Virtual

An idiosyncratic list of upcoming conferences relevant to educational tech., both "virtual" (online) and traditional. For conferences that require physical travel, my emphasis is on conferences in the Northwest and on those I find personally interesting. The Educom and CAUSE calendars, <http://educom.edu/web/calendar/calendarHome.html> and <http://cause-www.colorado.edu/information-resources/events.html>, contain a more extensive list of mainstream conferences. Virtual conferences and tutorials:

Traditional conferences and workshops:

The Lighter Side -- liberal education

Seen on a bumper sticker in Cambridge, MA:

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes.1

Administrativa

The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately) twice a month. If you have materials for inclusion in the newsletter you can send them to <mailto:jqj@darkwing>. This newsletter (as well as other FCN-related material) is available on line in <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/>.