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In my sabbatical proposal of September 1997, I outlined three career shifts:
research: from writing linear
novels to also constructing hypermedia
teaching: from teaching verbal
literacy with paper-based course materials to also teaching visual literacy and
hypermedia literacy in the paperless classroom
service: from serving as a
curriculum and program developer to also serving as a content developer
To summarize what happened, I would take the "also" out of the first two and then say that I have made the first shift completely, the second almost, and the third about halfway.
a conventional linear story turned into hypertext and
then hypermedia
After a month of such turning (and twisting), I saw two directions. The narrative would end up like a comic book, an illustration, or it would end up like a movie, an enactment. In either case, it would be linear because the underlying narrative was linear. Also, both illustrated and enacted stories were already coming to the Web from folks with far better visual skills than I would ever have.
Next, I devised a story that was non-linear to begin with. It had a start and a stop, if not a beginning and an end. In between became a question of how much control the author gives to the reader. At one extreme, let's say the narrative reaches Tom Arriola's crime scene. He can let you choose to examine the evidence in any order by letting you click from one item to the other. So what? It's a parlor trick and he has ceded hardly any control.
At the other extreme, Georgia Tech professor Janet Murray describes a whole new medium in Hamlet on the Holodeck. This reader-controlled immersive story space makes the reader a character (but sole human) in a real-time drama. Murray shows what my ideas would take: a large team of skilled workers.
In the world bounded by Arriola and Murray, what will happen to the traditional linear novel, the 100,000-word story, words only? Very little will happen to it even though a lot will happen to the medium through which it is delivered. The dead-tree version won't survive. The text will appear on the sharp screen of a lightweight leather-bound gizmo called an e-book. But I won't be writing it.
In my proposal, I listed my objectives as being better able to:
read and write hypertext and hypermedia
What compels me online is the hypertext itself. If we define hypermedia as text and 2D images -- leaving out sound, animation, and 3D images -- then I am far more literate.
publish either what I made or an article about what I
learned making it
The beginning of Gypsy Blue is an example of my first attempt at illustrating narrative.
decide whether to pursue hypertext or to return to
linear narratives
I definitely made the move to hypertext. I don't plan on writing traditional fiction again.
a pedagogically sound paperless classroom to supplement
the physical classroom
I had been using email since 1993 and the Web since 1995 but always on a course-by-course and ad hoc basis. Now I would use it as an organizing principle.
As a product type, the paperless classroom is called an instructional management system (IMS). WebCT boasts of 1.4 million accounts at 1,000 institutions. Blackboard, eCollege, and Lotus's Learning Space are other popular products. They're proprietary, expensive, only partially customizable, and not very extensible. I surveyed dozens of them and listed their features. I studied the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative guidelines:
to create a set of non-proprietary, Internet-based tools and standards to enable software developers, faculty, publishers, and learners to create, integrate, access and manage web-based instructional software and to customize and manage the instructional process in a distributed environment
Then I set out to make my own IMS with most of the commercial products' features. Following the NLII guidelines, I made a site on the World Wide Web using software tools that were open-standard, (almost) free, completely customizable, and extensible.
In addition to HTML and style sheets, which I already knew, I needed to learn enough:
JavaScript to make simple interactivity like In the Loop and wizbang displays like the Clear Light Studio splash
page. (Note: If you view the Clear Light splash page with Netscape's browser,
you may get two pages -- one still and one moving.)
PERL to install and tweak complex scripts like the TALK discussion forum (to be
remodeled in January 2000 as Ground Zero Bistro)
graphics to make a splash page for my fiction or
to make the Ricci Street logos, for example,
the flag at the top of this Web page.
visual design to brand the site
information design to make navigation easy and to
make the site scalable and extensible
The key to a site as scalable and as extensible as I had in mind was the metaphor. It took me a couple of months to work out the whole Ricci Street metaphor and then a couple more months to design the look and feel and to produce the graphics and style sheets.
The result is Ricci Street, a site on the World Wide Web to provide learning materials and interactive services for my students. You are welcome to explore it yourself. Personally, I think it looks better with Microsoft's browser than with Netscape's. You'll find the standard navigation area at the bottom of this page.
It supplements the classroom, not replaces it. However, it can most easily replace all the paper: the textbooks and handouts going from teacher to student as well as the homework, tests, projects, and term papers going from student to teacher.
A dozen of its other features are explained on the Principles pages: the ideals, the trade-offs, and the realites about pedagogy, usability, aesthetics, and technology that guided my choices.
On the Lantern Lane Welcome page, I explain:
Ricci Street will be done by you, not to you. It's not a software program, it's not a pedagogical system, it's not a finished project. Ricci Street is a toolkit of technologies and the beginnings of an online community.
In my proposal, I listed my objectives as being better able to:
use digital networks as a delivery system for my courses
make learner-centered digital projects
In Fall 1999, all of my courses are paperless, all of my students have Web and email access, and I have used them as an extended usability test for my design. According to Mike Lillis, my department chair, many students are enthusiastic. According to the site stats, in November the site had almost 5,000 unique visits and over 130,000 page requests.
Even discounting for the novelty of the medium, I believe that Ricci Street is a powerful learning tool for most students. Based on my experience using Ricci Street this fall, I have a lot to learn about how to integrate it into my classroom. Because it so extends the traditional classroom, it's more useful to think of it as customer service instead of "teaching".
a learning space to support the knowledge, skills, and
attitudes in the Medaille curriculum
Mindful of the politics of getting a sabbatical, I hedged a little here in the proposal, but I wrote more directly under Evaluation: When I return from sabbatical I expect to have the ability to serve other faculty who are learning to develop the virtual classroom.
I developed Ricci Street not only for myself, but also for the collaborative efforts of as many faculty colleagues who want to contribute. Of all the trade-offs, this was the toughest. To summarize the principles behind Ricci Street, I imposed the following design requirements.
It should be able to get very big, that is, be able to scale up in terms of traffic and quantity of content. We should be able to extend the site, that is, add new things as they come along in the rapidly changing future. By contrast, the commercial IMS products are scalable, but they are extensible only by the software company as it sees fit when it sees fit.
By separating content, structure, presentation, and behavior, I took the first step. Only for the discussion forum and search function did I take the second step toward databases.
This last requirement caused me more effort than all the others combined. I dropped many features, especially those involving scripted interactivity. Finally, I had to distinguish three roles:
the technician who keeps the electricity plugged in
and the operating system humming. The technician part of Ricci Street, I hire
out, as you can read in the Colophon.
The land owner who puts four stakes in the ground and runs the utilities to the property line.
the instructional designer who configures and
maintains the server and the site, scripts the interactivity, trains the
faculty, and helps them build their learning spaces. The instructional designer
part of Ricci Street, I do myself. In spite of the presence of computers, it is
a job for an educator, not a computer person.
The strip mall developer who builds the storefronts in collaboration with the shop owners according to their business plans.
the faculty member who integrates a course web into
the teaching mix.
The shop owner who makes a living in the storefront.
Is that integration of a course web all or nothing? No.
The models below describe a traditional classroom on the left and a web-centric classroom on the right. At the traditional extreme, Ricci Street can still be used as a repository for documents, that is, as a simple password-protected page linked to Word and Excel documents ready for downloading and printing.
At the web-centric extreme is a complex public web site like Ricci Street that simulates the physical classroom more completely. It is for teachers and students who can thrive in a learning-centered and learner-centered environment.
While I try to be that thriving faculty member, I find it difficult to adjust and I can sympathize with my colleagues who fear it. Between these two extremes is a slippery slope, which many of my colleagues realize as they watch all the TV ads for new dot-coms.
Ricci Street at its best is not for the students who want to sit in the back of the room, take lecture notes, take a multiple-choice test, and get credentialled. Nor is it best for teachers who want to stand in the front of the room, lecture, give objective tests, and grade students like eggs. At its best, Ricci Street is for the students -- and the teachers -- who learn by doing, taking chances, and making the ocassional mess.
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In my proposal, I listed my objectives as being better able to:
theorize about learning, instructional design, and web
making
serve other faculty who are learning to develop the
virtual classroom
Few of my colleagues want to move their course materials to the Web. Fewer still seem enthusiastic about Ricci Street. Repeatedly, I hear four restraining forces:
The Web is yet another fad in education.
The Web-based classroom is too impersonal.
Putting lectures on the Web gives away the store; why would students
come to class?
Webmaking is too hard to learn.
However, Ricci Street is now where I teach. I'm fully prepared with both theory and practice to assist any of my colleagues in any way they wish either to join me or to make their own instructional management systems.
I accomplished a lot during my sabbatical and I'm banking courses with the idea of taking off more time soon to learn more. I found a new medium, hypertext; I created a virtual classroom, Ricci Street; and I learned enough about computers to function as an instructional designer to help others.
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