The Year in Review and Beyond
Hope Greenberg
April 1994 - May 1995

Goals:

Increase the UVM Humanities presence in the Global University.

Expand the role of Academic Computing and academic computing to further the teaching, research, and service goals of the university.

Highlights of 94-95 Activities:

Through presentations, guest lectures, and custom short courses, introduced faculty, students, and staff to Internet tools and resources to enhance teaching and scholarship.
Represented UVM/CIT at three international conferences as an invited speaker on the area of Arts and Humanities scholarship and the World Wide Web.
Represented CIT both as invited keynote speaker and presenter at several regional meetings and conferences.
Worked with VETC grant recipients, Underhill Central School and Brewster- Pierce Memorial School to develop and provide training for the Mr. Blueberry project.
Continued to develop online training materials for Internet-related courses.
Continued to create and develop humanities projects for the World Wide Web.

Details:
(Note: This format is adapted from a three column format used last year. Within each section you will find a statement of objectives taken from last year's review, a statement of how those objectives were addressed during the 94-95 year, and a statement of goals for 95-96 and beyond.)

Teaching

Customized classes:

Objective as stated 5/94:
I will continue to offer customized classes as requested on Internet/E-Mail, word processing, and operating systems.

Addressing the objective 94-95:
By far the classes most in demand this year were Internet-related, both introductory and Web development classes. There were also a handful of requests for WordPerfect for Windows and Windows.

Objective for 95-96 and beyond:
The practice of offering customized classes to self-defined groups seems to work well although, of course, it would not scale to the thousands.

E-Teach

Goal as stated 5/94:
Once E-Teach is finished for this semester I will survey the participants for ideas to use for the next section of the course, which will begin in the summer. I may also use this format to create a new course that focuses on using the network to enhance teaching and research.

Addressing the goal 94-95:
E-Teach was the major "hole" in this year's activities. Trying to balance providing information that was narrow enough to be truly useful yet broad enough to cover the multiplicity of platforms/systems here at UVM as well as creating information that had some longevity proved to be daunting. Objective for 95-96 and beyond:
I want to try once more to combine the e-mail version of e-teach with the Web version. However, I want to try and steer the list to being self-supporting--a "guy on the side" vs. "sage on the stage" approach.

Enter UVMTEACH (and UVMRESEARCH): two lists devoted to discussion of teaching and research ideas with an emphasis on integrating technology, particularly the Web. (see Conferences: Faculty Writing Program, below)

Video Training:

Objective as stated 5/94:
I will continue to review appropriate video training materials for use in the library and continue to encourage

Addressing the objective 94-95:
With the exception of the addition of WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows there was little need to update the video library in the area of word processing. The response from the (self-selected) group of people who have used the video training has been generally positive. In addition, new policies in Staff Development have made it easier for people to take advantage of the computing courses offered by the Church Street Center.

Objective for 95-96 and beyond:
Will attempt to convince Client Services to expand the video collection slightly beyond the supported software list where such additions would prove helpful.

Consulting:

Objective as stated 5/94:
I will continue to do presentations to specific groups on Internet and computing resources.

Addressing the objective 94-95:
In addition to general Internet courses I developed, in conjunction with Wesley Wright, several Web Developer's courses to teach faculty, staff and students how to publish on the Web. This and other Web and Internet-related consulting constituted, by far, the bulk of consulting calls.

Objective for 95-96 and beyond:
One-on-one training and consulting is sometimes necessary. However, it does not scale to 10,000 users! I will continue to seek ways to bring more people into the Internet "fold" by continuing to develop online training materials.

Outreach

Objective as stated 5/94:
Plan to attend hypertext conference at Yale, June 12-14. Also plan to present at a conference this year. Possible topics are enhancing teaching through the Internet or preparing Internet-wide multimedia projects for teaching and research.

Addressing the goal 94-95:
This was the year of the conference! Following hard on the heels of the Yale conference on Electronic Publishing and Hypertext (trip report available) came the Vermont Business Expo. Wesley and I, along with other members of CIT staffed the Continuing Education booth to demonstrate Internet and Web resources and technologies.

The following month I traveled to Randolph at the invitation of the Vermont Publishers Association to speak about publishing and booksales on the Internet.

I presented at the 2nd International World Wide Web Developer's conference in Chicago in October (published in the electronic proceedings), which in turn brought a request from a member of the audience to become part of a panel on Web publishing for two conferences (see below).

I attended the University Press Association's conference on electronic publishing in November in Washington, D.C. The proceedings published on paper after the conference and I have resisted purchasing them partly for that reason and partly because I already have the URLs for the projects discussed by most of the presenters.

The day after returning from Washington it was off to New Hampshire and the Franklin Pierce Law Center all day faculty/staff retreat. Again the subject was the Web. (Note: FPLC received their network connection in February 1995 and have recently joined the Web with their own Page)

Following a brief lull the conference rounds continued, this time with presentations at the National Online Meeting (thousands of commercial online users and producers) and the Boston conference hosted by Dartmouth, once again on the topic of humanities computing and the Web.