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COMPUTER SCIENCE
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February 29,2000
revised April 10
FULL REPORTS:
The nine members of the Language & Literature Committee met in New York City on February 4; the six members of the Performing Arts Committee met with David Green in Philadelphia on February 11; the seven members of the Visual and Media Arts Committee also met on the 11th in Washington D.C.; the eight members of the Interdisciplinary Studies Committee met March 10 and the seven members of History met March 19 with David Green in Washington, DC.
This is an abstract of the full reports, which are available from this page.
Apart from general discussion on the project as a whole and its context, the meetings focused on the Initial Questions document, the make-up and structure of the workshop as a whole, the field meetings, the interdisciplinary topical sessions and the plenaries.
Although the Steering Committee as a whole had recommended that the individual field committees not change the questionnaire, these committees did make some suggestions as well as discuss its distribution.
Language & Literature suggested using only the bold-faced questions ("the italicized questions are too directive and leading"), while Visual & Media Arts suggested bringing the last question to the front ("What are some of your greatest frustrations and greatest needs in research and teaching?"). Whether it was in the questions or not, Language & Literature also suggested that participants had some way of reporting on projects around them in addition to their own research methods and information needs. Interdisciplinary Studies strongly suggested that cognitive issues --- how does this activity affect teaching and learning --- should be given more emphasis and suggested additional language to be added to the questionnaire.
Distribution: While Language & Literature felt that the questionnaire responses should be returnable by email, fax and mail, Performing Arts recognized the daunting task and the logistical nightmare of photocopying and distributing thousands of pages and strongly recommended an electronic-only distribution and return system. They proposed that the questions ONLY be circulated as webform and that results be electronically forwarded to five field-based web response areas so that each field committee could easily review responses. NINCH has used this technique in conducting member surveys and in a call for "Best Examples" of digital projects (see http://www.ninch.org/PROJECTS/Future/bestexamples.html).
Language & Literature members were not universally comfortable with urging their questionnaire respondents to return the document and decided that any follow-up of this type would be left to the discretion of the individual field committee member.
Both Language & Literature and Performing Arts agreed there should be some form of cover letter. Performing Arts thought the letter should come from NINCH on letterhead, thanking the recipients for participating.
Performing Arts thought the questionnaire responses should NOT be anonymous but that participants should be assured of their confidentiality.
Several were concerned about how best to use the time between the analysis of the results of the questionnaire and the workshop meetings in September
Visual & Media reiterated the project's intentional "two-way" structure reflecting bottom-up concerns (of individual constituents "in the trenches") and top-down organizational concerns (of member societies and disciplinary arenas) that should be seen in the exchanges among the three sorts of workshop sessions (field -specific, topical, and plenary).
All committees worked on selecting workshop participants, following the structure suggested. Performing Arts was concerned that few computer scientists were actively involved at this stage of the project. Although the committee suggested an additional panel just of computer scientists, the members were prepared to give up some existing workshop slots to increase the number of computer scientists. Visual & Media also suggested that additional computer scientists be invited to the workshop.
Earlier tentative outline planning of workshops came up with this outline:
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Day One Plenary Speaker Field Meetings I: How do we work? Lunch Interdisciplinary Topical sessions (concurrent) Plenary Dinner |
Day Two Field Meetings II: What do we need? Interdisciplinary Topical sessions (concurrent) Lunch Interdisciplinary Topical sessions (concurrent) Interdisciplinary Topical sessions (concurrent) Dinner Evening Plenary Speaker |
Day Three Field Meetings III: Projects and collaborations to meet needs Lunch Plenary |
Language & Literature suggested:
* a longer opening field meeting and a majority of the Workshop time being spent in field meetings.
* on Day Two, field meetings held after topical sessions to incorporate their gleanings
* plenary speakers in the evenings
Language & Literature suggested a field meeting structure that would incorporate break-out groups that report back (topics in addition to the questionnaire results might include the "opportunities" of current models of electronic publication, structured data, literacy and technology (emerging reading and writing practices), peer review in electronic contexts, archival practices, including questions of longevity, intellectual property rights, and the changing nature of "texts" (both delivery and reception). Language & Literature felt strongly that electronic publishing would probably be the core of their field meetings.
Visual and Media, while encouraging all workshops to think both about their own disciplines and also across disciplines, already had its list of issues and assumed needs to discuss. These included:
While Language & Literature suggested that topical sessions should be limited to around 10 people, Visual & Media suggested larger and fewer topical sessions to avoid overlap or potential timing conflict of desirable topics. Participants could be asked ahead of time which sessions they hope to attend to aid scheduling and avoid conflict.
Visual & Media suggested workshop panels of (possibly three) individuals presenting projects (preferably not their own) that address an identified issue in different ways.
Several commented on the need to reference and include projects but to quickly move beyond them to the issues they demonstrate (avoiding "show-and-tell")
The list of original suggested topics had included:
To this list Language & Literature added:
Visual & Media suggested:
Bob Kolker suggested that Media Studies should be added as a discipline for a topical session.
Although the plenaries were intended to principally bring together the conclusions of individual field meetings and topical sessions, Language & Literature wanted to suggest some specific topics for the plenaries, including:
Language & Literature also suggested the following as plenary speakers (in order of prioritization):
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