teaching with technology - 2006 recipients

College of Communication Information

CCI 150 is currently delivered in a large-lecture format and the College would like to modify the course to be a combination of large-lecture with virtual lab sessions. These five modules would form the core of the virtual lab sessions, enabling the College to provide the hands-on experiences with communication and information technologies that will support the students’ growth as consumers and providers of information and communicated messages and support their engagement as adults in a democratic society.  These modules also support our efforts to “teach literacy in the expressive new language that [our] students have already begun to use” (The New Media Consortium, 2005).    The population served by this course is large and diverse, including students considering majors in the College as well as students from other units of the University. With this in mind, we, as representatives of each School in the College of Communication and Information, propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the development of these modules.  

The modules we develop could be used in a variety of other undergraduate courses such as English composition and discipline-specific courses, in areas ranging from the hard sciences to the humanities that need to teach students how to better evaluate and utilize communication and information. These modules could also be used by instructors and  organizations in other settings, including community groups, high schools, the University  Library, and other colleges and universities.

Module 1: Use and Evaluation of Internet Information Resources
Previous research demonstrates that undergraduate students frequently apply the  “principal of least effort” to their research activities: avoiding learning about and using sophisticated systems available through the University Library and relying on simple, single-term queries entered into commercial search engines like Google (Griffiths & Brophy, 2002). Undergraduates are increasingly relying on online Web-based resources when conducting research in support of coursework (Davis & Cohen, 2001) and relying on their independent evaluations of the reliability of the content (Thompson, 2003).  Commercial systems, however, have limitations and are biased. This module will introduce the student to more sophisticated strategies for locating information on the Internet, including formulation of complex queries. The student will be led through the search process using multiple search engines and will consider the variations in the results returned. The second focus of this module is on the evaluation of both the information and the World Wide Web sites that host this information. This module serves as a foundational unit for the others in this group as they will require the students to conduct research on the Internet and evaluate the information that they find.

Module 2: Human Communication in the Information Constellation
The basic building block of all “Communications” is grounded in the creation and interpretation of messages created by senders and interpreted by receivers.  While this principle is no less true today than in the days of the Greek culture over 2500 years ago, the rapid explosion of alternative media (channels of communication) has significantly influenced the manner in which we create messages and how we interpret them (Ostrom  & Marshall, 2003; O’Sullivan, 2000; Walther & Parks, 2002; Wolff, 1998).  This module will elaborate on the impact that differing media have on human relationships as well as illustrate how a person’s self-image is dependent on media.  It will examine the role of the one-with-one transaction in a world where there are many channels for sharing the message.

Module 3: The Economics of Information in a Digital Age  
The unusual nature of information as an economic commodity has been long recognized.  While the creation, organization and production of information, whether in print or digital form, can be expensive, the marginal costs of distribution of additional copies are much smaller. The marginal costs of copying and distributing information that is “born digital” have decreased further. Several notions about the economic nature of digital information continue to compete: the notion that “information wants to be free,” the notion that the legal and technical protection of copyrighted information is paramount, the “copyleft” movement, and the emergence of “open” venues, such as open source software and open information production systems, like the Wikipedia. These issues remain contested ground, with incompatible regulations and cultural norms in different parts of the world complicating digital information exchange. This module will introduce ideas about information production and ownership and, through the examination of a particular case study, ask the student to consider the implications of these competing notions. The case study materials may be updated annually to highlight a contemporary issue.

Module 4: Transformation of Scientific and Technical Information into Public Policy
Science intersects with public policy on issues ranging from energy (McCain and Links, 2005) to public health (Late, 2005) to sustainable development (Dale and Naylor, 2005).   Both ideology (Grossback, Nicholson-Crotty, and Peterson, 2004) and commercial interests (McCain and Links, 2005) are coming to play an ever-increasing role in shaping the ways that science and public policy intersect.  Public investment in science is controversial with some commentators suggesting that public budgets do not favor science (Milo, 2005) while others note that more than $7 billion of American public money was invested in 2004 in the single area of health-prevention research (Abrams, 2004).  Owens (2005) suggests that if scientific research is to have a viable impact on public policy and practice then knowledge must be effectively managed and attention must be paid to effective communication.  This module will provide students with background information on the science/policy relationship.  Students will use search tools to identify a current issue in which science is being used to formulate public policy and will evaluate the quality of public information and communication about that issue. 

Module 5: Who Has the Right to Say What? The Legal and Ethical Dimensions of Expression
Whether the message intent is news, entertainment, fact, fiction, or opinion, students need to understand the extent of their own free expression legal rights as individuals and the rights of corporate entities in the United States. Instilling an understanding of the importance of freedom of expression as a civic engagement instrument in our system of democracy is another goal of this module. Students will learn how rights relate to legal limitations and ethical responsibilities in the exercise of free speech and press.

Link to Full Communication Information Proposal (PDF)