Project Summary: Project HCC_LiveOnline

   The purpose of this project is to adapt and implement the online pedagogy practice developed at Jacksonville University under the NSF-funded Global Classroom project to:

  1. Develop a model for online delivery of computer science courses that utilizes collaborative learning and establishment of learning communities through the use of both live and asynchronous class sessions.


  2. Determine the feasibility of online delivery in this mode of more complex computer science courses that are purported to need .face-to-face. instruction.


  3. Create learning opportunities that will assist in meeting future educational technology needs in both training and teaching.


   The project will address the NSF.s Broader Impact Criteria as follows:

Advance Discovery and Understanding While Promoting Teaching, Training and Learning:

   In addition to developing the online delivery of computer science courses model, a major activity of this project will be involvement of computer science faculty from other community colleges in workshops that will demonstrate the model and encourage adaptation of the model for use at their home campuses. Project staff will provide technical support and consultation as well as access to the Project.s virtual campus for development and testing of materials.during the academic year following the workshop.

Broaden Participation of Underrepresented Groups:

   Our primary focus will be the 27 community colleges in Florida. These colleges are both large and small, rural and urban. Their populations have a large percentage minority students and women. We also intend to involve faculty from other SMET disciplines within our own campuses, which are urban (Ybor City and Dale Mabry campuses), suburban (Brandon campus) and rural (Plant City campus).

Enhance Infrastructure for Research and Education:

   The development of the online Webmastering program involves partnerships with both WebYoda, a training and webmaster certification company, and World Organizations of Webmasters (WOW), which provides webmastering standards and advanced training and certification. These partnerships will provide discounted training and certification activities to all participants. Broad Dissemination to Enhance Scientific and Technological Understanding: In addition to dissemination through workshops the PI will present papers at local, national and regional conferences such as: Syllabus, League for Innovation, TBCon, the International Conference on Teaching and Learning, and various conferences that focus on Distance Learning.

Benefits to Society:

   With the burgeoning use of the Internet both to disseminate and obtain information, the need for experienced webmasters capable of not only building a website but also skilled at its management and maintenance will grow rapidly. We need community college faculty capable of providing reasonably-priced quality education in this area. Additionally, ToolBook is a training software used in many of our major industries for in-house training of its employees. They need persons capable of developing and maintaining the training materials. Of particular importance in ToolBook is the ease with which simulations can be generated allowing e-training of persons in particular industrial skills or software use.