![\fbox{ \rule[-0.5\baselineskip]{0pt}{1.5\baselineskip}
{\large\it First Year Science HyperTextBook~ }}](img1.gif){kind=small}
Total Budget Requested (not to exceed $50,000)
-- include detailed information on salaries and benefits,
supplies, equipment, etc.:
The entire budget for the initial year (the term of this application)
will be for salaries:
Statement showing student support:
A poll of the 68 students currently registered in Science 1
registered virtually unanimous enthusiasm for this project.
Students are particularly excited at the prospect of helping build the resource themselves -- the refinement of the MetaIndex (a true community project) is at the very heart of the process of creating a HyperTextBook, and we will all participate equally in that task.
Especially interesting is the potential for students to
"build their own notes" by linking and annotating
the learning quanta that define their individual
"paths of learning." Software to do this is available
at UBC through Dr. R. Goldman-Segal's Learning Constellations.
Number of students
who will benefit from the project
and enrollment in the classes affected:
Science 1 usually has an enrollment of about 70 students.
They will be the initial beneficiaries (and co-creators) of the project,
but we intend to offer the First Year Science HyperTextBook
to the Coordinated Science program
(currently over 160 students and growing)
as soon as possible, and then to all Science programs at UBC.
If (as we expect) this HyperTextBook
exemplifies a new educational paradigm,
it will eventually benefit thousands of others at UBC and elsewhere,
including students in more conventional Science courses
which might be supplemented by such a resource.
The design of the MetaIndex may also make a thesis project
for a UBC Computer Science student.
Statement about sustainability of the project
at the completion of TLEF funding:
It is an essential feature of the proposed implementation
that addition of new learning quanta modules
and their integration into the hierarchical MetaIndex
must be simple and convenient.
This will allow continuous, "adiabatic" refinement
of the HyperTextBook indefinitely.
Best of all, everyone connected with the course
will in a real sense be a "co-author" of the result.
The initial stage of "content capture" is tedious and time-consuming, but straightforward; it is essential, however, to begin with enough "raw materials" to constitute a meaningful database of information. The hard part is really the design and implementation of an indexing scheme that goes beyond mere cross-linking. We are presently discussing this project with Murray Goldberg and the WebCT development team, who have precisely the required expertise and interests. If we can provide support for additional personnel to implement the MetaIndex, its incorporation into WebCT should be a logical (and substantial) permanent extension of the capabilities of that impressive "made-at-UBC" educational resource.
One-page summary of the proposal
(addressing the TLEF guidelines):
We will address the guidelines in the order given:
Essential Elements for Approval
Important Considerations
The Science 1 program at UBC is one of the first of its kind: a rigourous, integrated learning environment for First Year Science students, combining the spirit of a "learning community" with an emphasis on interdisciplinary integration that encourages the development of cross-disciplinary thinking in students who we hope will later utilize these habits to create new fields of research. After the first five years of Science 1, there is evidence that these hopes are indeed being realized. However, those who teach Science 1 are confronted by numerous challenges. One problem is that normal First Year textbooks in the individual subjects have a linear pedagogy, the result of centuries of refinement, which does not (and probably cannot) address the interdisciplinarity emphasized by Science 1 and other integrated Science programs.
Meanwhile a new tool has become available: the multimedia computer with its ubiquitous Web browser. While this tool is generally thought of as primarily a means for accessing the World Wide Web on the Internet, it also offers a standardized way of displaying massive amounts of information stored on a CD-ROM.2 Many thousands of multimedia CD-ROM's have been produced for games, entertainment and certain types of references, but the potential for post-secondary education remains largely untapped. Moreover, at UBC we have an impressive pool of expertise in the adaptation of this tool for educational purposes: The WebCT team. Hundreds of courses have been developed with "on-line" components at UBC using WebCT.3
We propose to apply the methods of WebCT (as well as simpler hypertext tools) initially in the Science 1 environment to create a new type of informational resource that will be especially useful for interdisciplinary educational programs like Science 1 and should also serve as a supplementary resource for more conventional, restricted-focus courses: the HyperTextBook.4
The initial stage of capturing the essential content from Science 1 lectures into HTML files (with student assistance) is straightforward though time-consuming; the next stage (designing and then implementing the MetaIndex) represents a sophisticated challenge (and a possible thesis) in Computer Science, plus a major undertaking for a WebCT specialist. Once the tools are ready (especially a convenient way of specifying new links when content quanta are added or old ones upgraded) there is no reason why the gradual refinement of the First Year Science HyperTextBook should not continue indefinitely with no additional funding. It would by then have become an integral part of Science 1 and its continued development would be a natural adjunct to the presentation of the course. The present teaching team is very enthusiastic about this prospect. Another delightful aspect of developing the HyperTextBook within WebCT is the prospect of directly involving all the students in the refinement of its essential MetaIndex -- the cross-linking tool with which we record, retrieve and discover the connections between learning quanta. In addition, students can "put together their own books" by collating and cross-linking quanta to design individualized "learning paths."
Once the First Year Science HyperTextBook is ready for release, it can be offered both as a self-contained CD-ROM for the students to use at home (or anywhere else they can access a multimedia computer) and as part of a Science 1 on-line course in WebCT. We may also wish to distribute the First Year Science HyperTextBook to other institutions on CD-ROM and/or to the public on the Web.
A HyperTextBook is a reference work that is not meant to be
read from beginning to end, but from wherever you start
to wherever that leads you. In fact there is no particular reason
for a HyperTextBook to have a beginning or end,
or a "table of contents" specifying the sequence in which its
components are meant to be read, because there is no such intended
sequence. It is best approached from
a highly sophisticated search engine
that might be called a "MetaIndex."
Why do it this way? Because, if you think about it, the whole idea of a reference work is that you suddenly conceive a need to know about something in particular, and so you go look it up.5 This is the difference between a HyperTextBook and a "normal" textbook: the latter may have valid pedagogical reasons for leading the student through its contents in a specific sequence, but this intention is lost on the spontaneously curious -- and on those who take responsibility for their own learning.
Most people who visit a Web site are, in fact, driven either by spontaneous curiosity or by some practical need to know a particular thing, which they would like to find in the most efficient and convenient way possible. Hence the HyperTextBook, which is meant to be used more or less as follows:6
What is needed most is a refined, easy-to-use mechanism for generating links and cross-references and storing them in a database which we call a MetaIndex which in turn includes methods for accessing this database from any page in the HyperTextBook and exploring links related by context, topical proximity or other criteria. This tool is essential for the resolution of the complex problem of generating the cross-linking scheme that makes a HyperTextBook out of a mere collection of "learning quanta."
Only 10 years after its creation, an estimated 70 million people
have access to the World Wide Web [WWW or just "the Web"].
This number continues to grow exponentially.
Educational tools that lend themselves to exploitation over the Web
may therefore have a substantial impact on education in the future.
Like any other technological revolution, this has the potential
to make things better, worse, or both. Much attention has been
and will continue to be given to the "downside" prospects,
but "upside" gains will be proportional to the effort devoted to
their planning, design, realization and evaluation.
The Web will not become a significant educational vehicle until the majority of prospective students have ready access to, and are comfortable with, a suitable computer interface -- and until typical private Internet connections reach speeds roughly 100 times that of today's phone-line modems. We estimate about 5 more years of "grace" before these conditions are met -- just enough time to complete a major educational development project. Until then, most UBC students have on-campus access to suitable computers and network connections.
Meanwhile [and even after the advent of the "wired world" predicted above] the same material can be delivered without network traffic using cheap, ubiquitous CD-ROM technology. Even the computer simulations and other "active" components of a full-function HyperTextBook can be supplied on CD-ROM if the material is presented in HTML with Java and/or Javascript code embedded -- this will work with the user's Web browser, all of which now incorporate the ability to execute embedded Java programs.
Lots of other institutions are taking an interest in Science 1 and considering development of their own integrated Science options. This resource is likely to benefit many more people than just the Science 1 students at UBC; but we would be satisfied if it simply helped us do our job better here.
Eventually, publishing companies will devote huge resources to similar projects; then our efforts may become redundant. However, without a standard of integrated functionality to meet or exceed, it is not in the interest of commercial publishers to invest the resources necessary to produce a genuine HyperTextBook. Instead they will simply "tack together" their existing material and offer the same products on CD-ROM as they now offer on paper. In this sense, the most important goal of our project is to set a standard for this new form of delivery of educational material.