The overriding goal of this project is to enable faculty in non-quantitative areas of the curriculum to take their initial steps towards the use of instructional technologies with the assistance of departmental colleagues acting as peer mentors. We seek to enhance teaching and learning through technology in departments that have not yet taken full advantage of the opportunities afforded by electronic resources, such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, multimedia software, and classroom projection facilities. The disciplines we intend to focus on include English, classics, philosophy, religion, history, art history, political science, and economics.

While the technologies we wish to emphasize are likely to change during the three years of the project, preliminary activities will include:

• development of web-based course syllabi
• techniques for locating and evaluating Internet/web resources
• use of multimedia software
• access to electronic texts
• use of classroom presentation facilities

  Project Components

Support that will be provided within this project includes the following:

Peer mentors - Summer stipends are provided to faculty members who wish to devote more attention to learning about instructional technology and sharing such knowledge with their colleagues. The role of peer mentor includes:

• exploring information resources on the Internet/Web, multimedia software, and other technologies that might be useful in their teaching;
• holding one or more workshops to share information with other Reed faculty members;
• incorporating instructional technology into one or more of their own courses.

Between four and six awards are made annually and recipients are notified by the middle of April so they can make their summer plans accordingly. In addition to a summer stipend of $2,500, mentors may request funding for student assistants, travel, workshops, or related items.

Workshops - After spending the summer exploring or implementing curricular technologies, mentors are expected to schedule a workshop to present their work to other faculty in their department or division.

Travel to conferences & other schools - A limited amount of funding is available to faculty who wish to attend a conference or visit another college in order to learn more about current uses of instructional technology.

Instructional technology specialist - As part of the Culpeper Project, the College has hired technology specialist Fred Lifton. His office is located in Greywood 08, and he is available to help faculty find new software applications, learn how to use software and hardware, locate resources on the Internet, etc. His extension is 7297.

Student assistants - Funds are available to hire students to assist mentors (and other faculty) to find, install, configure, or test new software pacakges; to help faculty learn how to use new packages; and other tasks related to the goals of the Culpeper Project.

Faculty Multimedia Lab- This facility, located in Greywood 08, is intended exclusively for the use of faculty. The lab, which houses the Instructional Technology Specialist, includes several high-powered Macintosh and PC workstations and other equipment to allow faculty to explore ways of incorporating technology in their teaching. In addition to scheduled tutorials on hardware and software, faculty can use the lab for developing information sources and practicing with different packages for authoring, presentation, Web design, and so forth. For more information, visit the FML website.

For more information about the Culpeper Project, please contact: Marty Ringle (ext. 7254).