Academic/Career Recognition Task Force
The DLESE home page provides a good introduction to the goals and objectives of a broad-based geoscience community effort to establish a Digital Library for Earth System Education.

The DLESE Steering Committee and 4 Subcommittees are in place and planning to submit a number of proposals to several funding agencies seeking support for this effort.

At the Coolfont Organizational Meeting in August, 1999 the Collections Subcommittee proposed the following :

    "Establish mechanisms for providing academic career credit to creators/suppliers of materials".

Creators of materials that are accepted into the reviewed collection of DLESE should receive academic/career recognition for their creative accomplishments. It is the responsibility of the Academic Recognition Task Force (ARTF) to insure that review processes and selection criteria are academically sound, defensible, succinctly stated and widely disseminated to those who serve as part of the faculty review process. That is, academic recognition must be earned.

Review processes and expectations for faculty accomplishment have a strong cultural component that is rooted in the academic backgrounds of the senior faculty, upper administration, and history of each institution. ARTF must be viewed in the same dispassionate way as an editorial board of a scientific journal or the review panel of a federal funding agency.

ARTF will not become an advocate for promoting changes in a local culture nor will it promote the library by evolving into a marketing function.

ARTF will provide input to the Collections Committee and the Steering Committee regarding the perceptions of faculty and administrators of proposed review processes by January 2001 and will go out of business at that time.

Of necessity, ARTF must work closely with those involved in devising the assessment, evaluation and selection processes. Members of ARTF have been selected to provide a broad and cross-cutting panel.

    Bryan L. Aivazian, Science Teacher Wyoming Center for Problem Based Learning, DLESE Steering Committee
    Tom Boyd, Colorado School of Mines, DLSE Technology Committee Chair
    John C. Butler, University of Houston
    Warren Huff, University of Cincinnati
    Kim Kastens, Columbia University, DLESE Collections Committee Chair
    Charlie McClennen, Colgate University
    Bill Prothero, University of California at Santa Barbara , DLESE Users Committee Chair
    Mohan Ramamurthy, University of Illinois, DLESE Services Chair
    Randy Richardson, University of Arizona
    Steve Semken, Dine College

    Send To ARTF

Denning (The Leading Edge, 1997, 1014) recognizes four types of research that can produce innovations -- changes in the way a community works:

    (1) generating new ideas;
    (2) generating new practices;
    (3) generating new products; and
    (4) generating new business.

In the first type of research (1) emphasis is placed on originality and novelty with grantsmanship and peer reviewed publication serving as a certification of both. A faculty member is practicing the second kind of research (2) when she/he offers new ways to think about, understand, and be competent in a subject. The emphasis of research (2) is on "understanding that produces competence". Denning notes that "a large number of faculty are expertly practicing the second kind of research while under the illusion that they are engaging in the first - and not getting credit for either."

ARTF believes that the development of resources accepted for inclusion in DLESE is evidence, at a minimum, of successful engagement in Denning's (1999) research (2), teaching and service.

Gathering Input From The Geosciences Community

Several surveys have been drafted rather than attempting a "one size fits all" approach.

  1. Potential Users Survey

    In August of 1998 a survey was posted at the home page of the Virtual Geosciences Professor. Since that time about 1,200 individuals have loaded the survey page and more than 300 responses have been returned by e-mail; approximately 200 are teaching geosciences at the college level.

    The VirtualCoffeeRoom is a forum for faculty, staff and students interested in exploring the potential of the Internet in the creation of learning environments. The listserv has been in existence since April, 1997 and has 216 subscribers (approximately 80% in the U.S.) as of February, 2000). The archives of the Listserv are public.

    Mark Francek, Central Michigan University, maintains a mailing list called Earth Science Site of the Week that is distributed to about 300 earth science educators. He has agreed to distribute the URLs of the surveys to his mailing list.

    The subscribers to these three lists (about 700 total) will be sent the URLs for the Potential Users and Potential Contributors Surveys. Please suggest additional lists that you have access to.

  2. Potential Contributors Survey

    The Virtual Geoscience Professor web site has been maintained since July, 1996. The site now includes links to nearly 3,800 Internet-based resources for the geosciences. Approximately 200 (7%) of these resources have been recognized as exemplifying good practices. A good practice site is one recommended for someone to explore if they are interested in seeing how their peers were using Internet-based resources and multimedia in their courses.

    In addition, many of the subscribers to the VirtualCoffeeRoom and Earth Science Site of the Week (mentioned above) will feel qualified to respond to the Potential Contributors Survey.

  3. Chairs Survey

    Approximately 400 geoscience departments in North America have active home pages and more than 200 departments have at least one individual producing Internet-based course resources. Each of these 200 chairs will receive a Chairs Survey that will focus on how they currently set and evaluate the teaching expectation for their faculty and on what they would need to know about DLESE in order to evaluate the selection process.

The Survey Process

I propose that the survey process begins in mid-April, 2000 so that we can catch faculty prior to the end of the academic year and before the summer starts. I expect that more than 75% of the returns will arrive after two weeks of notification.

Results will be tabulated and preliminanry recommendations will be made during the summer and distributed to the Collections Committee and the Steering Committee. A focus group is planned for the GSA Annual Meetings in Reno, Nevada in early November, 2000. The purpose of the focus group is to refine our thoughts on the whole question of academic recognition. If deemed useful, a repeat focus group could be held in conjunction with the AGU meetings in San Francisco in December, 2000.

A final set of recommendations will be delivered to the Collections Committee and the Steering Committee by the end of January, 2001.