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Author: wrednour@email.gc.cuny.edu
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997
Maura Doherty raises a very inmportant and to me critical point in the development of multimedia, hypertext and website based lessons. While an adjunct, I am still a couple of chapters away from finishing my disseration, and do wonder about the value of investing time and energy into such projects. At City College of NY, a colleague and I have been woefully unfinanced in developing discreet lessons using multimedia and the Internet, as well as a computer based reader which includes texts and images. Not a single tenured faculty member has used the materials and most do not even care that we have developed such materials. When the time comes to seek full-time employment will all of this be a wasted lesson, would the time have been better spent writing and trying to publish? Will other, usually older, faculty at other institutions have the same indifferent response? This is an issue that has really come to light for me having worked the recent AHA conference and seing first hand the frightening prospects of the job market.
Bill Rednour
City College of New York
http://134.79.216.29/history/
Author: Jack M Holl <jackholl@ksu.edu>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997
From my perspective, it is a mistake to assume that "old-timers" do not
care about work that young scholars have put into developing
multi-media, new technology teaching and research sites on the Web and
elsewhere. As chair of the Latin American search committee at Kansas
State
I can report that we have paid attention to such innovations. Still,
conventional teaching and scholarly potential come first in the opinion
of search committees on which I have served. In my opinion, there is no
question where one should place priorities if the choice is between
completing
the dissertation and developing a Web site or a CD-ROM for classroom use.
Jack Holl
Kansas State University
Author: Kelly Woestman, <kwoestma@clandjop.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997
A recent post raises the issue of the value of multimedia (read teaching) materials "versus" more traditional historical scholarship. I'd like to offer a few observations and welcome comments from other H-Teachers.
First, it depends on what type of institution you are interested in working for. The same old issue - teaching vs. research.
Second, colleagues and mentors both in and out of the "multimedia world" have emphasized a very important point - in order to have your multimedia work taken seriously, you first have to work on proving yourself in the traditional arena. Even once you start working on multimedia projects, you have to juggle working on both types of projects. Good research and good teaching go hand in hand - good teachers are always researching and exploring new materials and new methods, it just may not always be "officially" published.
Third, that brings up another important point of contention in the
WWW arena. Since you can put out your own materials without going
through the traditional article/manuscript/textbook editorial and
revision
process, there is more concern about the lack of "review by your peers"
that
is inherent in traditional publishing.
Finally (!) multimedia is still uncharted waters. Even publishers working with historians on multimedia projects are struggling with how this fits into their traditional publishing efforts.
Please keep in mind that I'm only a recent PhD (1993) and that I came out of a teaching background. The bottom line appears to be that you need to prove yourself with the traditional scholarship (and continue!) if you first want to be taken seriously in regard to anything else you do.
What do the rest of you think?
Kelly Woestman, Pittsburg (KS) State
kwoestma@clandjop.com
Author: Raymond James Haberski <rh519685@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997
Bill Rednour makes a very interesting point about the usefulness of pursuing research in and teaching with CD Roms.
I too am an ABD, but have embarked on a CD Rom project with two of
my colleagues here at Ohio University. I wonder if any one has a
sense of how publishing through the CD Rom format is seen when
compared with the more traditional methods of publishing. For the
most part, CDs seem to be used more in high school classrooms than
in college lecture halls and so publishing one of these
things would mean marketing it for the secondary level. Do university
search committees look favorably upon those who publish on both the
college and secondary school levels? This is to suggest that there are
two different forums in which to publish. Are these settings all that
different from each other?
Has CD Rom publishing earned respect yet among the academic mainstream?
Certainly people such as Bill and myself would like to think that options other than the traditional track into academia exists. So I second the question he asks, does a second track exist?
Ray Haberski
Ohio University
Athens OH
Author: "Sherman Dorn (fac)" <dorn@typhoon.coedu.usf.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997
On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, "Kelly Woestman" wrote:
> Third, that brings up another important point of contention in the
> WWW arena. Since you can put out your own materials without going
> through the traditional article/manuscript/textbook editorial and revision
> process, there is more concern about the lack of "review by your peers" that
> is inherent in traditional publishing.
I think one way of asserting the credibility of web-based materials would be to create some peer-review process. If paper journals and editing projects can get space and resources from universities (okay, fewer now), why not multimedia and web-based projects? I'm on the board of an electronic journal, and the editor is able to do it on a relative shoestring -- no paper or mail costs, only the time to make a manuscript blind (minimal), send it to reviewers (using e-mail), and put it on the web site. If the reviewing process exists, I'd still find that credible.
Hey, wait -- isn't that what H-Net is about? :-)
The other route would be to put together outside reviewers on an ad hoc basis as part of the project. In fact, I could imagine a useful service being the coordination of reviews of web-based projects, so faculty members could put some stamp of approval on their projects -- e.g., "peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the 21st Century Historians Publishing Group (or whatever name this group comes up with, probably affiliated with a university)" with an appropriate image on the page.
Sherman Dorn
University of South Florida
http://www.coedu.usf.edu/~dorn/
Author: Eileen Walsh, <Ewalsh@vax1.bemidji.msus.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997
At the Minnesota state universities level (not U of MN) there is a big institutional push toward "The Electronic Acacemy." The legislature put some soft money into administrative coffers (at least at two campuses in the system), part of which is being used to provide trainers, aides, and equipment for faculty who participate voluntarily at 1 of 3 possible levels of using technology in teaching. Faculty also receive stipends for their involvement. Our union contract includes 5 criteria by which faculty are assessed for tenure and promotion, one of which is "creative and scholarly activity." The "creative" reference presumably was put there for those in Music and Visual Arts who perform and produce other-than-traditional research, but we have been promised that creation of a web-based course, etc., is appropriately classified under both "teaching" and "creative activity." Thus we have institutional incentives to try out technology in teaching/learning contexts. Without these incentives, we would be ignoring the assessment system (and arguably, part our job description) if we were to dedicate this much time to incorporating electronic tools into our teaching rather than research.
Eileen Walsh, Ph.D.
Asst. Prof. of History
Bemidji State University
Bemidji MN 56601-2699
(218) 755-4355 office
(218) 755-2822 fax
ewalsh@vax1.bemidji.msus.edu
http://cal.bemidji.msus.edu/history/faculty/walsh.html
Author: HWilliam@carleton.edu
(Harry Williams)
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997
Colleagues:
I'm interesting in locating CD-ROMs about African-American history and culture. Any leads?
Harry McKinley Williams, Ph.D.
hwilliam@Carleton.edu
Associate Professor
Department of History
Carleton College
Northfield, MN 55057
507.6465241
Author: rowen@enc.edu (Nick Rowe)
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997
Harry:
Start first with the folk over at IRC (Instructional Resources Corporation). Tel: 1-800-922-1711. IRC is an outfit that produces teaching media. I have a couple of CD-ROMS from them, and they work quite well for me. They can be slow in sending stuff, but, depending on how you wish to use their products, they can be very helpful. Regards,
Nick
Nicholas Rowe
Eastern Nazarene College
rowen@enc.edu
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