IEI Infrastructure and 

Support Services

 The Structure of IEI

The Instructional Enhancement Initiative is financed by a fee charged to students on a per-unit basis.  Currently the fee is $2.50 per unit in Humanities and Social Sciences courses, and $3.50 per unit in Life and Physical Sciences courses.  Thus, each student  pays $10 for the typical 4 unit course.  A typical full-time student taking only social sciences courses will pay between $90-$120 per year in IEI mandated fees, and more if some mathematics or sciences course are taken.

The proceeds from this fee are used to finance technological enhancements on several levels.  In the first year, these fees have been used to help finance projects such as a web page for every course, expanded and upgraded student computer labs, extended lab hours, and instructional technology support staff.
 

  MyUCLA Home Page, Library, and Other Services

The MyUCLA home pages give students immediate access to enrollment and other administrative information, alnong with other pertinent links in a centralized password-protected location.  The pages may be customized along the same lines as MyYahoo, and other internet home page services.  Students may access an individual course schedule, academic progress report, and access links to other university sites that allow them to update their personal data, for example.

UCLA's library has started a system that catalogs past exams for regular instructors and delivers them on demand via the web.  This system is a marked improvement over the system it replaces, which required students to thumb through and tediously write down the catalog numbers on individual cards, each requiring identification information.  Students would then stand in line and could check out a limited number of them for a period of a few hours.  The new system is able to deliver these materials to any student with access to the web at any time, concurrently.
 

 Social Sciences Computing: Courseware for UCLA Social Sciences Departments

Many divisions of the college use licensed software developed by the University of British Columbia, called WebCT.  Going its own way, the Social Sciences Computing division (SSC) has chosen to provide and support its own collection of administrative classroom support tools.  This has allowed SSC to be more responsive to instructor needs.  In some cases, WebCT users have not received bug fixes or modifications to the software in a timely fashion.  Having a group of web experts available with a willingness to try new ideas and work closely with faculty has proved invaluable to our endeavors.   Mike Franks, the SSC staff member in charge of Web development, has a nice presentation on the services provided by SSCnet and also some examples of what various social sciences classes are doing with IEI.
 

The Standard IEI Tools

Every undergraduate course in the College of Letters and Science at UCLA is provided with a web site with a set of standard tools, using either WebCT or the custom software provided by SSC.  These tools include

Professors and their departments decide which tools are utilized for particular classes, but each course will at least have a syllabus. The use of other tools will depend on the availability of materials, and whether the professor wishes to provide the materials electronically, or to allow a discussion board.  The course instructor controls the course web site through his or her administrative pages.

The discussion bulletin board provides an additional means for student interaction with the professor, teaching assistants, and fellow students, in a forum accessible by the entire class.  This facilitates communication by avoiding coordination problems: if a student cannot make the office hours of a professor or teaching assistant, he or she can post a message, and receive a reply electronically.  The bulletin board has the added benefit of making the interaction available to all members of the class.  Chances are that if one student has a question, other students may have the same question, and can also learn from the professors answer, and from each other.  Professors and teaching assistants can also read the bulletin board interactions between students to get a sense of what points need more emphasis or clarification in lecture.

Most of the other items on the list, such as the syllabus, lecture notes, assignments, etc. are not unique to web-enhanced courses, and merely provide a convenient way for students to obtain material normally photocopied and handed out in class at any time.  The list of links provides a way to direct students to resources the instructors deem useful.  Some of these links can be to pedagogical resources developed by the instructor or by others.

Enhancements to the Standard Tools

Following the example of the authors, SSC has seen the advantage of online practice quizzes, and has made them easier for instructors to create by providing a web-based form that creates them on-the-fly, through the instructor's administration pages.  SSC has assisted other instructors to develop custom web applications that facilitate interaction in unique and useful ways. For example, for a course the Department of Geography offers in the writing of grant proposals, SSC designed a custom Web application that allows multiple participants at diverse locations to edit and annotate a document.
 

Pedagogical Support

UCLA's Office of Instructional Development (OID) offers financial support to faculty projects for the purchase of CAI-related materials and for CAI-related graduate student projects.  In addition, it provides expert personnel for training and technological assistance for CAI projects.  The latest innovation is the development of the Technology Teaching Assistant Consultant position (TechTAC), funded through an OID project called Integrating Technology into Undergraduate Teaching.  The training of the Consultant begins with a seminar that "will advocate that the use of technology in teaching always be driven by pedagogical objectives, [but] is also designed to encourage teaching assistants (and the faculty and students with whom [they] work) to see technology as an exciting source of inspiration for curriculum innovation."  The TechTAC is expected to be technologically proficient and is responsible for training teaching assitants, not only in the traditional skills required for a teaching assistant, but also in the use of available CAI technologies available to them.  This position is part of a university plan to make extensive use of graduate student assistants in the provision of instruction using new media.