"Exploring Contemporary Art and Music: Interactive CD-ROM"

Summary of Proposal

This is a continuation of an ongoing project to support digitizing and arranging the course materials for Art Education 160 Contemporary Art and Music based on a prototype developed with support from Acadmic Affairs, The College of the Arts, and ACCAD.

For this grant period, there are 4 objectives:
  1. Formative testing of the project, particularly with students.
  2. Continued technical support.
  3. Further investigation of copyright issues, and
  4. the development of a project Website.

  • Formative Evaluation
    Formative evaluation is conducted during the formation of a project to assess the feasibility, and effectiveness as well as the value of the project. During the development stages, it helps the designers of a product, to increase the likelihood that the final product will achieve its stated goals. We have routinely evaluated the product as it will be used by the instructor teaching in the auditorium setting. We intend to continue formative evaluation of the project specifically with the student user in mind. Student utilization of the CD-ROM presents a whole new set of technical and pedagogical issues.

  • Continued Technical Support
    Continued technical support is needed to insure that new course materials can be added to the CD-ROM, and to insure that the newest technological advances are being used. This technical support is necessary since the project coordinator focuses on content and educational applications. A gradute student from ACCAD with knowledge of the technical aspects of programming and the authoring software is equipped to make technical adaptations. This technical expertise is essential.

  • Copyright Issues and Research
    Intellectual property rights issues were addressed in a February 1997 nationwide video-conference "Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia: The Final Document." Representatives from the Consortium of College and University Media Centers, the US Copyright Office, the publishing, recording, and motion media groups met to discuss the recent guidelines and their impact. In May, ACCAD sponsored an interdisciplinary symposium titled, "Intellectual Copyright Issues, Electronic Storage and Dissemination of Information," at the Wexner Center, illuminating even more questions and areas for consideration. We must keep current on developments in this area, to be sure our project proceeds in an ethical and legally safe manner. The current guidelines makes it clear that to be ethical and safe, we must continue the copyright permisions process, and pursue the long arduous task of identifying copyright holders for various pieces and then attempt to secure permissions.

  • Website Development
    We propose developing a Website about the project that will outline the project and the course, including the formative evaluation strategies. We will also research and develop World Wide Web connections pertaining to the course content. Because of unresolved copyright issues we cannot readily make the CD-ROM content available on the web, but we can provide a course outline, a project outline, and establish links to Websites which are related to the course content.