Summary and Preliminary Findings

Five collaborative faculty projects have been funded. The program has funded other faculty efforts on shared visual resources for teaching and geographical information systems to support joint projects in environmental studies and economics. The Program has gathered many resources in a frequently visited web site and funded a facility for shared electronic course reserves.

Remote collaboration classrooms funded by the program were opened in November, 1998. Four jointly offered courses using these facilities are being taught between our campuses during the fall 1999 semester. Early reports from faculty of remote teaching and learning have been good. Our faculty has easily mastered the technology. The facilities are used daily in some classes ("Beginning Japanese" and "Clash of Civilizations") and as an important supplement to other courses (environmental studies). Our initial classrooms designs were good but have needed some improvements. Administrative procedures have been put in place to facilitate student registration in jointly offered courses. Support for telecommunications on which the facilities depend has been a challenge.

Other collaborative, faculty-led projects have begun to produce new curricular materials to be shared over the web or in class with software now used in common between the campuses.

We have initiated a student liaison program for academic departments in order that front-line support and encouragement to use appropriate technologies in the classroom is situated in faculty spaces. Personal contacts are beginning to engage the more reluctant faculty participants with program opportunities.

Initial assessments of faculty experience and of students' perceptions of the role of technology in learning have been completed. The program's symposium on collaboration is being scheduled for the second rather than first year of the program.

The greatest challenge faced by the program is engaging faculty who have limited time beyond their commitments to teaching and scholarship. It is too early in the curricular experiments to comment on means of sustaining our collaborative efforts beyond the grant.