North Dakota State University
Federal Relations Team Sponsored Project - One Page Prospectus

Title: The Center for Innovative Virtual Distance Education Research

Executive Summary: The NDSU Worldwide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC) proposes an initiative to establish NDSU as a national leader in innovative virtual distance education research. This faculty initiative would cut across colleges and would address distance learning issues on the research horizon. In particular, we propose a center for research and development of advanced educational media; pedagogical systems that are hosted on the Internet and are role-based, goal oriented, immersive, exploratory, spatially described, and highly interactive.

The challenge is to create educational systems that deliver principles and teach important content in meaningful ways. Meanwhile, the need for distance learning systems is increasingly obvious, as the value of "active" versus "passive" learning becomes increasingly clear. Virtual environments help solve many of the problems: learner diversity is better accommodated (both in terms of learning styles and life styles), and the curriculum becomes more self-paced and "learn by doing" rather than "learn by listening."

We foresee a day when courses are taught in both real and virtual laboratories, and where students take virtual field trips to prepare for the real thing. By employing "time shifting" and "place shifting," we capitalize on the affordances provided by virtual environments to: 1) control virtual time and collapse virtual distance, 2) create shared spaces that are physical or practical impossibilities, 3) support shared experiences for participants in different physical locations, 4) implement shared agents and artifacts in support of pedagogical goals, and 5) support multi-user cooperation, collaboration and competition.

WWWIC proposes to administer a center for the design and implementation of virtual educational worlds, such as just described, with additional goals to include the development of mechanisms for assessment, tools for virtual software development, and eventual software publishing. Further, the center will capitalize on the national Internet2 initiative by sponsoring highly graphical and simulation-intensive educational research applications involving massive genomic and geophysical datasets, and satellite imagery. Finally, we propose to introduce an interdisciplinary graduate program in Virtual Distance Education, in order to train new scientists.

The Center for Innovative Virtual Distance Education Research will be managed by a steering committee composed of active researchers with a director elected from the committee who will report to the NDSU Vice President for Research, Creative Activities and Technology Transfer. Permanent staff will be minimal at first: one half-time administrative assistant. Steering committee members will be responsible for evaluating, managing, and assigning resources to projects. Projects will be staffed primarily by students who will participate in both design and implementation. A 30% cost-sharing release program will enable faculty to develop their research ideas during the academic year, in addition to a summer stipend program. In exchange for this support, faculty will be required to actively pursue external funding.

Principle Department(s): Botany/Biology, Computer Science, Geosciences, Plant Science (Adjunct Departments: Business/MIS and Sociology/Anthropology).

Project Contacts: The WorldWide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC) Brian Slator, Paul Juell (Computer Science), Phil McClean, Chair (Plant Science), Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat, Don Schwert (Geosciences), Alan White (Botany/Biology)

Project Duration: Ten Years

Total Direct Cost: The yearly cost of the center will be $390,000/year: $80,000 for student salaries; $200,000 for faculty release, stipends, and fringes; $110,000 for operating expenses.

Funding History: WWWIC is an ad hoc group of faculty dedicated to the development of virtual environments for education. Founded in 1994 with NDSU Planning, Priorities and Resources Committee (PPRC) funds, WWWIC principally functioned as a Worldwide Web facilitating organization. The 1995-96 WWWIC efforts were also funded ($40,000) by a grant from the PPRC. These funds were used to create a development team that consisted of faculty and students. Additional technical support was provided by the staff in the NDSU Multimedia Center. In its second year (1996-97), WWWIC became more of a facilitating and evangelizing group. These efforts were also supported ($42,080) by the PPRC to train the second wave of faculty and place their course materials on the campus WWW server. However, as the Web became institutionalized at NDSU, WWWIC transferred its vision to the 21st century and began research into innovative distance education.

WWWIC currently has three NSF-funded innovative virtual distance education research projects (DUE-9752548, EAR-9809761): the Geology Explorer, the Virtual Cell, and the Visual Program. In addition to this science emphasis, WWWIC is engaged in educational projects dealing with principles of microeconomics, history, and anthropology. In total, WWWIC projects involve faculty from four NDSU colleges: S&M, Ag., Bus., and AHSS. Further information on WWWIC is available at http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/wwwic/

Targeted Agency: The United States Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education: FIPSE program (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education), $30 million per year available.

Last Modified: November 12, 1999. Contact: slator@badlands.nodak.edu