The Geography Virtual Department: Building and Linking Geography Curricula Nationally Using the Internet and Worldwide Web

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Funds are requested to convene workshops and seminars to plan and develop ilstructional materials that will use the Internet and Worldwide Web to interlink the cufficula of geography departments throughout the United States. The goal of the project is to build high quality curriculum materials including "electronic" textbooks and interactive modules that: 1) span the entire undergraduate curriculum, 2) exploit further the potential of existing Internet resources, and 3) take full advantage of the hypermedia format of the Worldwide Web. The project will allow geographers at many universities to work toward common goals and share the time and expense of developing the sorts of hypermedia curriculum materials that are likely to become the hallmark of higher education in the twenty-first century. The project addresses three important challenges facing contemporary higher education: 1) to provide faculty with the skills needed to create hypermedia instructional materials and use the Worldwide Web effectively, 2) to set goals for the development of the discipline-specific educational resources that will support the emergence of "virtual" departments and even "virtual" universities, and 3) to help transform the Worldwide Web from an adhoc and improvised collection of materials into an orderly and systematically developed resource for education and research. To reach these goals, two week workshops will be held at the University of Texas during the summers of 1996, 1997, and 1998 to bring together thirty faculty from universities across the nation. Participants will set goals for the development of new materials, gain skills in hypermedia authoring, and write the first modules. One day seminars will also be held at the national meetings of the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers to: 1) evaluate and refine materials, 2) present the new materials to a larger professional audience, and 3) offer hands-on training.