About this Issue

With this issue we complete our first six months of publishing Interface. We also close out a very pleasant year of working with our inaugural group of Berglund Fellows, and announce the selection of the Fellows for 2002-03.

The inaugural Berglund Fellows, Marc Marenco, Michael Steele, Deborah Wheeler, and Mark Szymansky, have set very high standards for the second group. Marc, Michael, Deborah, and Mark created a wonderful summer event in July of 2001 consisting of a week of exciting readings and subsequent discussions, coupled with hands-on instruction in useful computer programs and applications for our Berglund Summer Affiliates. They then followed up by producing significant reports on their research activities. We are now admitting participants into our Summer 2002 Workshop. See “Berglund Summer Workshop” <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/edinst.html>.

These research projects have had significant impact. Deborah Wheeler actually published two for us, “September 11th and Its Global Meaning,” (Interface, I, 10, October 2001) and “Islam, Community, and the Internet: New Possibilities in the Digital Age,” (Interface II, 03, March 2002) Each one of these articles have been among the top two or three pieces we have published in terms of the size of their audience. We are also aware that the importance of Dr. Wheeler’s pieces were reflected in a great deal of work she has done in consulting with other groups on this painfully timely topic.

The projects of the other Fellows, too, have had significant impact in their own particular area of interest and expertise. We are proud to have financed and published their research at the Berglund Center for Internet Studies.

We also announce here the selection of four new Berglund Fellows. This year we received many strong applications and it was a very difficult process to select only four from among them. But after repeated close readings and extended discussions we selected the following scholars and their projects:

Mark Bailey, Associate Professor of Education, Pacific University. “Teaching, Learning, and Technology: A Cross-Cultural Look at Transforming Educational Institutions.” The proliferation of electronic resources and distributed learning environments over the past decade has put pressure on many educational institutions to transform the manner in which they structure student learning experiences. As educators across the world reflect on their teaching practices and the potential use of these digital tools, an interesting dynamic has emerged as values, knowledge, time, and the allocation of resources have collided over the issue of what is frequently called “best practice”. The purpose of Bailey’s proposed project is to engage in a cross-cultural examination of the issues surrounding the transition to the use of educational technologies in a range of learning environments. The project will focus on the personal, relational, professional, and cultural aspects of this transition in a collection of schools in America and in New Zealand, ranging from elementary through graduate school. Mark’s work will, we think, help us at the Berglund Center in further defining best practices for K-12 teachers.

Philip Bell, Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Studies in Education program at the University of Washington. A central focus of Bell’s work over the past eight years has been an exploration of web-based learning environments for use in science education. In the research project associated with the Berglund fellowship, he extends this work by studying the educational and social effects derived from an active attempt to foster on-line interaction between highly polarized stakeholders associated with a contemporary controversy in science. As they naturally develop, online communities that feature an activist agenda can resemble balkanized thought collectives where polarized information and opinion pools in distant corners of the Web. Bell’s research seeks to provide insights about how to promote multi-partisan, democratic on-line forums that allow for the airing, education, and possible resolution of competing perspectives about issues of societal importance. Such work stands to inform the possible roles for network infrastructure in society and how to foster constructive interaction around scientific controversies. We are pleased to be able to fund it, and look forward to working with him.

Derek Harding, Project Director, Courseware for History Implementation Consortium & Open and Distance Learning Manager Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom. “ Developing On-line Methodology for the Exploration and Examination of Community Attitudes and Values”. The project seeks to develop and test an on-line methodology for the exploration and examination of community attitudes and values with two groups, one in the UK and one in the US. Group members will be encouraged to explore the main themes through personal biographies and the insights gained from comparing and discussing them in the light of community attitudes and values. It is envisaged that the knowledge gained would underpin approaches to education which would be more interactive, dynamic, participant centered and collaborative. This project will also be useful in gaining insights into the similarities and differences between communities in the U.K. and the U.S. We first met Derek as a Berglund Affiliate during the summer of 2001. The perspective derived from his many years of working with electronic communities in the United Kingdom brought an otherwise unavailable perspective to our discussions and we look forward to working with him again.

Ryan Johnson, Social Science Reference –Electronic Resources Librarian, Holland/New Library, Washington State University, “Issues In The Development Of A Formal Policy On The Inclusion Of Digital Publications In The Faculty Evaluation Process”. The very nature of scholarly communication is in a state of flux because of technological innovations that have altered the way information can be organized and delivered. Through electronic media, scholarly articles and monographs can now be “published” without ever appearing in print. The most significant obstacle to the acceptance of these new publication outlets has been the reticence of tenure committees to consider new and as of yet unproven journals in what many consider to be an ephemeral medium as the equivalent of the older print counterparts. In light of these efforts as well as the growing arenas for publication, the libraries at Washington State University have just incorporated set of guidelines for the inclusion of non peer-reviewed electronic publications in the formal evaluation process. As a Berglund Fellow, Ryan will outline the various issues in developing and implementing such a set of guidelines.

In addition, because we received several strong applications which we were unable to fully fund, we have chosen to create a new type of grant, and have invited two other scholars to join us in our summer workshop as Berglund Associates. We will present them and their work in the May issue of Interface.

With this issue, we publish the last of the Berglund Fellowship reports for 2001-02, Professor Michael Steele’s “Resources for Teachers on Holocaust Denial.” Professor Steele’s piece will be of wide interest to many, but is particularly relevant for K-12 teachers and students of the holocaust.

We also offer an article this month by Dr. Marshall Poe of Harvard University. Dr. Poe is a well-respected scholar of Russian history. He has published in paper or “hard copy” as we digital aficionados term it, several important books. Recently he chose to publish a work entirely in a digital format, for reasons explained in his article, “Do We Need the University Presses?” Here he discusses the economics and sociology of academic publishing, and proposes a new model for publication involving a very creative use of the Internet. This article was chosen as the “Article of the Year” by our sister e-publication, the Journal of the Association for History and Computing (JAHC) < http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/jahcindex.htm>.

As well as the above articles, this issue of Interface contains a very interesting article by Stephen Gance “Are Constructivism and Computer-based Learning Environments Incompatible?” Stephen makes a very powerful argument that the easy assumption of those of us who work with computer-assisted education or training that computers along make a learning context “constructivist” are perhaps erroneous.

Also for our K-12 audience, we have Mark Szymansky’s piece, NAME . We also present the book reviews of Drew Harrington. One of our two student technical editors, Jesse Snyder, introduces us to another extremely useful computer application, the BB or Bulletin Board. Those of us who progress beyond e-mail in our active use of electronic applications usually find the BB the next useful stop.

To some, regular columns such as these might seem less glamorous than the content-related articles we feature each month. But the reality for an e- journal that is produced on a frequent schedule such as Interface is that it is the regular columns that make the journal possible at all. We also know that all three of these columns have a very high and faithful readership. We are very grateful for the difficult work of our editors. Being creative on a regular monthly schedule is not easy!

In this issue, I complete my own three-part editorial exploration of “Globalization and the Internet” in NAME. Whether I am correct or mistaken in my analysis, I do feel that daily events continue to point up the importance of the topic itself.

As always, we hope that you will both enjoy and find useful this edition of Interface. We welcome contact from readers.

Jeffrey Barlow,

Editor, Interface