Liz Babbitt, UWired Librarian, instructs Shelly Konold, a student in the Ancient Art and Myth FIG.

UWired Program Enters Second Phase

Paula Walker, Odegaard Undergraduate Library

Now in its second year, the UWired program has expanded from its first-year pilot phase involving three UW Freshmen Interest Groups (FIGs) to include nine sections, eight of them UWired FIGs, and a ninth class consisting of the combined men's and women's basketball teams. Organizers have received proposals from faculty for upper division undergraduate courses to link with the UWired Program, and these collaborations will take place during winter and spring quarters, 1996.

During its first year the UWired program established a classroom, the UWired Collaboratory, in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library, and librarians taught a year-long information and technology seminar. Students were loaned laptop computers to use for both the technology class and their FIG classes. The students learned to use their laptop computers, access electronic mail, search library databases, and create World Wide Web home pages in addition to completing their regular course work.

Realizing that they could not afford to run the program solely with laptop computers, UWired planners created a second Collaboratory equipped with 28 Pentium workstations during the summer of 1995. The design of the Collaboratories is different from most other computer classrooms in that the computer stations are in clusters, not in rows. The design is intended to facilitate collaboration among the students for group projects and group learning. Each Collaboratory has seven tables in a modified circular shape.

Collaboratory I continues to accommodate laptop computers, but in Collaboratory II, each table holds four desktop computers. Four students sit facing the center of the table and each other. The seven tables are staggered throughout the room so that students can consult easily with students at other tables as well as with those at their own table. There is an instructor's station in each Collaboratory for traditional lecturing as well as for projecting computer images on to a large screen. However, the instructors also circulate among the student stations for part of the class period as the students work on their projects.

A third Collaboratory is planned for the second floor of OUGL, in the alcove directly above Collaboratories I and II. Construction will begin in early December 1995, with completion set for mid-January 1996. Collaboratory III will feature the same design, but will hold 15 of the circular table units to accommodate 60 students. In addition, there will be a UWired Laboratory for Teaching, Learning and Technology, also located on the second floor of OUGL, where faculty can receive training and work on incorporating information technology into the UW curriculum, for both on-campus and distance education uses.

The creation and implementation of the UWired program is the work of staff from four major campus divisions-the Libraries, Computing & Communications, Undergraduate Education and University Extension.