State of the Project:

• Beginnings of the project:
  • Past collaborations between:
    • UCSB English Dept (Transcriptions Project)
    • UCSB Art/Media Arts & Technology, Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS)
    • UCSB Films Studies Program
    • UC Digital Cultures Project (DCP)
    • UC Digital Arts Research Network (DARnet)
    • UC Multicampus Research Group proposal ($434,000 over five years; $175,000 from UC Office of the President and the rest from UCSB)
    
    
  • Future of the Project:
    1. Project Goals and Scale
    
    
    2. Structure of the Group
    
    
    3. Plan of Work
    
    
    4. Grants
    
    
  
  

                                                                                  

  1. Project Goals and Scale

  » Develop a technology “tool” (or tools) that improves online reading.
  

  From MRG Proposal: “A good guess—given the current state of the Internet and the interests of many of the Transliteracies participants—is that the initiative will focus on a demonstration technology that both augments the ability of readers to be part of a community of readers (in ways that online technologies are uniquely able to foster) and accommodates different experiences of the same collection of texts based on varying ages, literacy levels, backgrounds, and so on. Balancing flexibly between public and private perspectives, indeed, may be the problem that online technologies—including the new media of reading—were born to address.”

  » Develop a robust, cross-disciplinary research community (humanities and arts, social science, computer science and engineering) behind the technology effort that sets the coordinates for meaningful “improvement.”

  » Scale: from seed grant to implementation grant

  Discussion:
  

  
  
  • Basic goals and scale of the project
  
  
  
  

                                                                                  

  
  
  2. Structure of the Group

  » Disciplinary coverage: humanities, arts, media studies, communiction, political science, sociology, education, computer science.

  » Currently, UC system.
  Discussion:

  
  
  • Disciplinary coverage
  • UC and other people, programs, universities
  • Industry?
  
  

                                                                                  

  
  
  3. Plan of Work

  » Original Plan of Work:

  Project Stages:

  • Year 1: Three working groups to study online reading from humanistic, social science, and computational perspectives (with cross-membership among groups).
  • Year 2: Convergence on the development of a technology to enhance online reading.
  • Year 3: Publication of research in online “casebook” series (clustered publications of articles, technical papers, software, etc.)
  • Years 4-5: Building out, placing, and evaluating project technology (contingent upon grant-seeking)

  Ongoing Annual Activities:

  
  
  • Annual conference
  • Annual week-long seminar for graduate students
  • Inter-campus site visits
  • Participation in online collaboration supplemented by teleconferencing or web conferencing
  
  

  Discussion:
  

  
  
  • Stages of the project
  • Annual activities (see UC Office of the President critique of MRG proposal)
    
  
  
  
  

                                                                                  

  
  
  4. Grants

  » Initial Survey of Possible Grant Targets:

  Discussion:
  

  
  
  • Do you think the project is grantable?
  • Grant strategy
  • Other grant targets