Funding

   Project Proposal:   
  Web-Based Applications for Teaching about Presidents and Presidential History

  Participants:
  UCDC, UCSB, UCSD

  Principal Investigators:
  John Woolley (UCSB)

For the past several years, the PI (Woolley), working with graduate student Gerhard Peters, has produced an extensive instructionally-oriented web site in conjunction with an undergraduate course on the American Presidency at UCSB (www.presidency.ucsb.edu). The site now includes an array of data that are valuable resources in undergraduate instruction including text versions of all presidential inaugural and state of the union addresses, text versions of many other speeches, streaming audio and video of many speeches, data tables including many of the most commonly referenced data on presidential elections, popularity, relations with Congress, etc.

The purpose of this project to assemble a group of UC scholars who share an interests both in the Presidency and in adapting current technology for instruction. The goal is to assess the feasibility of, and to plan specific adaptations, modifications, and enhancements that would result in the the current UCSB site being more adaptable as an instructional resource at more than one UC campus, in more than one discipline, and in more than one course.

These adaptations would contribute to undergraduate education in several important ways:

• Increase student interest and engagement with the material
• Provide easy opportunities for students to do various kinds of "real" analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data
• Allow for sharing of specialized expertise across similar courses on different campuses
• Permit the preparation of instructional "modules" on some standard and repeated topics. These might include very general introductory material suitable for adoption in lower-division courses. Or it might permit "customizing" parts of upper-division courses so that students could select from a menu of topics to pursue in more depth.

  Addressing Instructional Problems

While this project is not primarily addressed to lower-division lecture courses, it does address difficult instructional problems and could have both direct and indirect spin-offs for lower-division lecture courses especially in American Politics. In the upper-division courses that are most immediately relevant, courses on the American Presidency, enrollment demands are large and often limited only by classroom size. It is difficult, if not impossible, in such a context to assure that students get much individual attention from the course instructor (as opposed to Teaching Assistants), to tailor the course substantially to individual student interests, and to insure that students have an opportunity to practice research and analysis on real data.

The real goal is to produce sets of materials that can help in solving these problems. Data sets (including documents; contemporary media accounts; etc.) could be assembled and structured in a way that facilitate student analysis. The costs of this assembly could be justified in a context of making the data available to hundreds of students on many UC campuses. By organizing instructional modules on specialized topics, it might be possible to allow students at some points to choose to pursue issues of special interest to them.

  Pre-Planning

The PI has discussed the proposed project with all of the potential faculty participant, all of whom have expressed interest. There is an existing web-resource at UCSB that has been in use for nearly two years as part of upper-division instruction in one course (American Presidency), and that has also been used as a resource in a variety of other courses on campus. In recent months this resource has gotten more attention outside UC (especially through the Google search engine).

The project brings together faculty with extensive involvement in innovative use of technology in instruction. Kernell has developed videos (e.g., 25 Years of the Presidency"), and together with Groeling has made significant use of the Internet in undergraduate instruction. Berman has used live interactive TV linking UC (especially Davis) and UCDC. James has developed Internet-based resources for his classes and has experience trying to involve undergraduate students in doing analysis of primary documents.

  Possible Elements for Inclusion in a Full-scale Implementation Grant

1. Case Study Materials. It might be desirable to assemble and post on the web groups of illustrative documents and media accounts relating to important historical events and periods that can be used by students to enrich their reading or to serve as the basis for an analytic exercise, or by professors to illustrate points in lectures. While some examples of this are already on the UCSB site, a good example are the case study materials prepared by Tim Groeling to accompany the Presidency chapter in the Kernell/Jacobsen textbook.

2. Data sets with simple analytic options. The data already available on the site can be expanded. More critically, it could be desirable to implement applications that permit students to examine the data statistically and relations among variables. This could include analyses such as two-way scatter plots, trend lines, and cross-tabulations.

3. Enhanced search engine capacity. Provide for easy searching of subsets of documents on the web site and facilitate rudimentary content analysis.

4. Easier Updating. Implement server-side interfaces for easily updating the content of particular parts of the website.

5. Interactive Modules. Develop some truly interactive modules on topics of common interest in instruction on the presidency. Students would be able to use the module to learn about the basic approaches scholars have taken to studying a specific topic and then actually try their own hand at it. (For example, accounting for variation in presidential approval; accounting for variation in ability of presidents to achieve their legislative agenda; accounting for variation in presidential ability to create a policy legacy.)

6. Streaming Mini-Lectures. Develop technologies for interactive web-based classroom "visits" by participating scholars -- either through live special guest presentations or through the preparation of streaming video "cameos" for use on specific topics.

  Roles

1. Prior to the planning session.

a. All participants will think about their own experience teaching the presidency to identify instances when specific assignments they considered or attempted could have been enhanced if students had easy access to materials that could be provided over the web. (E.g., quantitative data, historical documents, media content, maps, organizational charts.)
b. All participants will try to identify an example of a specifically web-based resource that might enrich or extend presidency instruction in some way. This could be anything from searchable databases of historical documents; to simulations that could be played out on a multi-campus network; to interactive explorations of the White House/Executive Office complex at different points in history that would help illustrate the change in the institutional presidency over time.
c. All participants will be alert for any examples of engaging and effective web-based applications that might be adapted in some way to enrich instruction in the presidency.
d. All participants will have spent some time evaluating the existing presidency website (www.presidency.ucsb.edu) to identify strengths and weaknesses and develop some suggestions for improvement.

2. In the Planning session.

The general expectation is that the session will involve two main tasks:
(1) Identifying web applications that several participants think would be valuable in future instruction at more than one UC campus;
(2) Identifying feasible strategies for implementing those applications.

Two of the members of the project team have a lot of experience in the nuts and bolts of web design (Groeling and Peters), and I expect they will play a role on those issues more than the other participants. Everybody, especially Berman, Kernell, James, and Woolley, has a lot of experience with the practicalities of motivating undergraduates and can assess the feasibility of applications in the real world of UC instruction.