NSF Proposal for DL Courseware - Summary

Title: Interactive Courseware on Digital Libraries

Note: The proposal below is adapted from a supplement submission of Spring 1997, funded and to be completed by Summer 1997.

Project Summary:

Building upon the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI) and other efforts in the digital library area, a variety of information will be collected to help with undergraduate learning in this area. A full semester course will be developed and a complete set of supporting courseware (lecture outline, written overview, objectives, interactive exercises, quizes, illustrations, etc.) constructed for delivery over WWW or on CD-ROM.

The courseware will be added to that developed in the grant Interactive Learning with a Digital Library in Computer Science and made available in mirror form on two different servers, one with an ATM connection, eventually to vBNS. Thus, high speed access to the multimedia components will be feasible.

This project will involve a visit to the six DLI sites to gather usable resources and pointers, and to obtain answers to questions that arise. Results of the project will be reviewed by two experts in the digital libraries area, one representing the computer science viewpoint and the other representing library and information science.

Courseware developed will be tested with an honors course on digital libraries in Fall 1997. A graduate student course on digital libraries also held Fall 1997 will help add value to the undergraduate course as part of their learning experience. Other locations may use the courseware for their own courses starting Spring 1998. Students interested in independent studies in this field can take the course directly. Other course instructors teaching AI, Computers and Society, DBMS, HCI, Multimedia, etc. may want to add a unit to their course from the materials constructed about digital libraries.

Logging of usage of the new materials and online surveys each will help determine the opinions of other faculty as well as students who work with the project results.

Relevant Part of Body of Proposal

Digital Library Courseware

  1. Rationale: Since the early 1990s and especially since 1994 there has been growing interest in digital libraries at universities around the nation. However, there are few educators with wide experience in this area and most of those are focused on research efforts. Accordingly, there is little information available to undergraduate students, in spite of a growing demand for qualified employees. At the same time, from various research groups there are a number of online demonstrations, reports, and testbeds becoming available. A number of conferences each year produce proceedings, some of which are distributed electronically. Without a great deal of effort the results of DLI and other research efforts could be made accessible to undergraduate students interested in: digital libraries courses, independent study about digital libraries, or having a module in a regular CS course (e.g., database or HCI) about digital libraries.
  2. Support from DLI Sites: This PI approached lead staff at each of the DLI sites to see if they would provide assistance for an effort to develop course support related to digital libraries. All agreed. Accordingly, as part of this project 10 days of travel will be scheduled to support visiting each of the DLI sites during summer 1997. During those visits access to testbeds will be discussed, online demos will be identified, interactive sessions not conducive to access through demos will be "canned" as a series of screen shots with audio overlays, literature will be obtained, and questions answered. Thereafter, agreed-upon demos should be kept available online, or moved to run at Virginia Tech if that is more convenient.
  3. Analysis and Courseware Development: Available information about digital libraries will be collected, categorized, and grouped topically. One possible grouping and ordering is given below in Section C.3. Each topical area will be organized as a course unit, that can be studied independently. For each unit, issues will be identified, learning objectives specified, readings selected, interactive exercises (e.g., using a testbed) devised, and a 5-page introduction prepared. A lecture outline will be prepared and extra notes added for instructors or those with keener interest. Using the QUIZIT system (developed in the Interactive Learning project), 3 versions of a 2-part quiz for each unit will be prepared, so that automated testing of mastery can be accomplished. The new book on digital libraries written by Michael Lesk will be referred to where appropriate, since it may stand as a supplemental text for the online courseware being developed. The bulk of the development will take place Summer 1997.
  4. Online and CD-ROM Delivery: Virginia Tech runs a courseware server in connection with the Interactive Learning grant, and a mirror server will soon run in the Computing Center, with an ATM connection. The courseware developed in this project will be made accessible nationwide using those servers. Both PURLs and handles (two types of Universal Resource Names, to give permanence relative to URLs) for the new courseware will be recorded and widely advertised, through D-Lib Magazine and other venues. In addition, in Fall 1997 a small number of CD-ROMs will be prepared for use at locations where network connectivity for multimedia information is not very rapid.
  5. Review: Michael Lesk, from Bellcore, author of the book that will serve as supplemental text, and a leading expert in the digital libraries area, has been asked to review the results of this effort. He will represent the computer science view. Edie Rasmussen, from University of Pittsburgh, will also review the project results, from the library and information science perspective. Dr. Rasmussen is general chair for ACM DL'97, and co-chair of the ACM SIGIR education committee.
  6. Scheduled Courses: The PI for this effort has written widely in the digital libraries area, has taught a number of tutorials, and is scheduled to teach both a graduate course and an undergraduate honors course in Fall 1997, each about digital libraries. Thus, the results of this project will be tested in the undergraduate course. The graduate students may help add value to the undergraduate courseware, as part of the work for their course.
  7. Related Work: There are a few courses being taught about digital libraries. One, taught by Michael Lesk for Columbia University has online lecture notes. These and other online materials will be used as much as possible in the new course. Also, courseware developed for the Interactive Learning project will be linked to wherever appropriate. Thus, the extensive resources for CS4624 Multimedia, Hypertext and Information Access (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~mm) will be referred to often.
  8. Impact: This project will help make results from the DLI and other federally funded digital library efforts available for undergraduate students. It will be available freely for those taking courses on digital libraries, or those interested in independent study. Also, individual units may fit in with a variety of courses: Computers and Society, HCI, Multimedia, DBMS, AI, etc.

Digital Libraries Course Topics

The following list identifies a possible sequence, and the general topic for each part of a digital libraries course. With each item is some further detail about the topic and a partial list of DLI sites (and some others) where a good deal of the content can be based. In parentheses are chapters in the recent book by M. Lesk that coordinates well with this coverage.