TO: Dr. Bernice Laden, Director
UWIRED Program
University of Washington

FROM: Gunter Krumme, Professor, Geography [krumme@u; Box: 353550]

URL for this document: http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/uwired/proposal.html

Dear Bernice:

Based on my overall very positive experiences in the Collaboratory and UWIRED environment during this current year I would like to reapply for the use of the Collaboratory during the academic year 1996 - 97 for my classes Geography 207 (Winter 1997) and Geography 350 (Spring 1997). This proposal is still founded on the same basic intentions I had a year ago (Last Year's Application) however modified and expanded by intermittent insights and first-hand student and other feedback.

Apart from covering introductory and intermediate-level economic geography content, I intend to continue experimentation with educational communications technologies focusing on the following seven interdependent focal areas; in other words, I would like to continue to move all of my classes in the direction I started during the past two years, a direction which I am now able to conceptualize more concretely:

1. Project orientation: I plan to integrate my already highly structured student projects even more with the core lectures and class content
2. Collaboration: I plan to tighten student collaborative requirements and incentives both for the "project" as well as for other class experiences (e.g. peer electronic instructions). However, it is hoped that the very fruitful collaboration between students, instructor and Library and UWIRED staff can also continue.
3. Communications: I have learned a great deal about the use of Internet facilities for class communications. I am pleased with the flexibility which the new technology provides: In addition to individual E-mail and class lists, I have had a very successful experience with a three-stage 'cyber discussion' on a non-public "intranet" Web site. During this quarter, I have established Home (away-from-home) Pages for all of my students in my own directory for later transfer to students' own accounts allowing me to direct resource suggestions and comments in a public yet project-specific way for all students to read.
4. Students' Logistic Efficiency: I would like to continue to experiment with ways to permit students to organize their employment and academic lives more efficiently. The asynchronous nature of E-mail and Web page communication is well known. I would like to combine these temporal conveniences with "flexible education spaces" (or partially remote learning environments) into more adaptable educational time-space continua. With increased availability of home modems and computer access at public libraries in the outer fringes of the University's commuter hinterlands, a reduction in commuting needs for students coming from greater distances or subjected to tighter work/study schedules should improve learning climates.
5. Addressing highly diverse student backgrounds: Both Geography 207 (as a day-time class attracting many freshman and even more seniors from a wide variety of different disciplines) and Geography 350 (being an upper-level evening-degree program class with many students typically having no geography background) suffer and benefit from non-homogeneous student backgrounds and skills. While differences in electronic communications skills and access add to the diversity of backgrounds, once mastered and connected electronic communication technologies permit me to address students' diverse needs much more appropriately thereby individualizing as well as "leveling the playing field".
6. Resource Orientation: Economic Geography is an inherently resource dependent discipline, where students do not merely have to comprehend concepts and theories but also have to learn how to access a wide array of resources and data much of which are increasingly available on the WWW.
7. Community Outreach:Roughly 20% of the students in Geography 207 were involved in volunteer "Service Learning" arrangements organized by the Carlson Center. About half of these arrangements involved the researching and creation of Web Sites for non-profit Community Organizations. All of these students had no Internet or HTML experience before starting this class, a truly remarkable accomplishment given the brevity of our 10-week quarter. I plan to continue and expand this boundary-spanning component of Geography 207 particularly.

Not all of these planned emphases are directly dependent on the use of the Collaboratory and UWIRED resources. However, due to the interdependence of these objectives, they all benefit from the UWIRED climate and resources. Like this year, I would again suggest that two (Lab) hours in the Collaboratory are used for Geography 207 (Winter) and that the entire Geography 350 (Spring) be taught there.

Evaluation: During this coming Summer, I am hoping the evaluate the extensive student data base assembled last quarter through initial and exit questionnaire surveys, Lab Sheets, the complete records of the "cyber discussion" (on the use of electronic communication in this academic course context) and other means. In this class (Geography 207), 25 percent of all students had, at the end of the quarter, established their own project pages as Web sites. (See also Web Sites of other students of mine). For the conduct of this research and its continuation during the coming year, I am currently recruiting a volunteer undergraduate student through the "Undergraduate Research Program" (but have, at this time, no other resources at my disposal).

I appreciate your consideration and comments.