Title of project:
DART: Digital Anthropological Resources for Teaching
Project Managers: Caroline Ingram (LSE)
and Ann Miller (CU)
Institutions: LSE and Columbia University
Duration of Award: 02/03 - 02/08
Total amount: £627,411 (UK)
$990,000 (US)
Period of Report: 02/03 - 08/03
Total co-funding: £1,099,720 (from LSE)
$1,323,000 (from Columbia)
Confirmation Statement
We confirm that the project development is being conducted under the terms agreed in the initial
contract with JISC and the NSF.
Aims, Objectives and Methodology
Please note any changes to the original aims/ objectives methodology as detailed in your project
plan or proposal.
Our aims and objectives are:
1. to develop resources and methods which have the potential to improve significantly the
teaching and learning of undergraduates in anthropology;
2. to provide a new model of professional development for young scholars in the discipline
of anthropology, one that encourages the meaningful integration of digital teaching and
learning into career paths and objectives;
3. to facilitate a gradual but significant process of institutional change at Columbia and the
LSE, encouraging the faculty at both institutions – and elsewhere – to develop models for
appropriate use of new teaching methodologies;
4. to develop technology platforms which allow for flexible, stable and effective delivery of
resources and tools for teaching; and to disseminate widely the lessons learned in the
development of these platforms;
5. to develop a greater understanding of the pedagogical issues involved where the process
of knowledge production is detached from the process of knowledge acquisition enabling
insight not only into anthropology teaching and learning, but also into key pedagogical
issues across a wide range of academic disciplines.
Highlights, Outcomes and Important Findings from project
During this reporting period, the DART project has:
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Recruited key personnel, including research fellows, project managers and learning
technologists at the LSE and Columbia;
Started conducting research on the impact of digital tools on undergraduate teaching and
learning and on digital tools for anthropological teaching;
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Chosen courses in which research fellows will participate and started organizing the
teaching programme into which project resources will be directed;
Agreed to systems for managing the project within the LSE and Columbia, and for liaison
between the two partner institutions;
Chosen an initial set of supporting technology applications;
Convened a one-day departmental workshop (at the LSE) on problems in anthropological
teaching. This workshop (1) generated sets of concrete themes for the DART research
fellows to focus their work around; (2) helped to publicise the project to members of staff
at LSE, and began the process of getting them engaged in the project.
Met (at Columbia) with research and evaluation personnel from the Institute for Learning
Technology at Teachers College to discuss evaluation methodologies;
Sent representative (from Columbia) to CETIS Educational Content SIG Meeting held in
Glasgow, 28 August 2003.
Changes to original award
The grant was awarded with a start date of February 2003. Progress to date has been minor
since the project took some time to appoint staff. At LSE the two research fellows and the Project
Coordinator started their contracts in mid to late June 2003; at Columbia one research fellow
started his contract 1 July, and the other will start 1 September. So the progress reported on in
this report reflects c. 2 months actual work.
Project staff
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The joint directors of the project in LSE Department of Anthropology are Chris Fuller and
Charles Stafford; they are the line managers of the Teaching and Research Fellows,
Luke Freeman and Jerome Lewis, and the Project Coordinator, Caroline Ingram.
CF and CS work in collaboration with Steve Ryan, also a director of the project, in Centre
for Learning Technology (CLT), who is the line manager for the Learning Technologist,
Stephen Bond.
The joint directors of the project at Columbia are Nicholas Dirks in the Department of
Anthropology, who is line manager of the Teaching and Research Fellows, Gustav
Peebles and Rashmi Sadana; and Kate Wittenberg of the Electronic Publishing Initiative
at Columbia (EPIC) who is line manager of the Project Coordinator, Ann Miller, of EPIC.
This team works in collaboration with David Millman, Director of Research and
Development at Columbia's Academic Information Systems (AcIS) and also a director of
the project. He is line manager for Web Developer Brian Hoffman.
Involvement with Programme
The project coordinator at LSE, Caroline Ingram, through her relationship with the JISC, has been
in touch with project coordinators of other projects in the programme in the UK.
Some of the project team will be attending the first programme meeting in Washington DC on 1011 December 2003.
The JISC programme manager, Rachel Bruce, visited the project at LSE soon after its inception,
but before the majority of project staff were in place. Steve Ryan has attended a number of
meetings of the learning technology community and talked to both Grainne Conole
(Southampton) and Neal Juster (Glasgow) about the programme.
Publications and Publicity
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“LSE and Columbia – forging new bonds”. LSE News and Views, Volume 31 (2) May
2003
“US-UK E-Learning Deal”. Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 March 2003
Engagement with Potential Outcomes Users
One of the first activities of the project was to hold an away day for all members of staff in the
LSE department of Anthropology, in order to consult them on their ideas for teaching problems for
the project to tackle. This consisted of a half-day meeting in which Charles Stafford, one of the
LSE project directors introduced the project to the department, and then there was open
discussion about potential ways in which members of staff could see technology impacting on
their teaching in a positive way.
The project will be developing a website within the LSE and Columbia Department of
Anthropology websites, which should be planned, written and live by end November 2003.
Detailed Progress and Future Plans
During this reporting period at the LSE the DART project has recruited key personnel. The team
at LSE have also undertaken preliminary research on the use of digital tools in anthropological
teaching, started organising the teaching programme around which the DART research will be
conducted, agreed management systems with Columbia, and convened a brainstorming
workshop with Anthropology staff at the LSE focused on the project aims and objectives.
During this reporting period the project at Columbia completed its hiring and reassigning of staff,
reached key decisions concerning the postdoctoral fellows’ involvement in courses, chose an
initial set of supporting technology applications, and began researching the uses of digital
resources in undergraduate teaching and the tools currently available for teaching anthropology,
and learning about the attitudes and practices with regard to digital resources within the Columbia
department of anthropology The process of choosing postdoctoral fellows for the project proved
to be more lengthy than anticipated, and the fellows’ starting dates are staggered: July 1 for
Gustav Peebles and September 1 for Rashmi Sadana, reflecting summer teaching commitments
and her move from California to New York.
Clearly, we are still at a preliminary stage of the research, and it is too early to provide information
about our findings and project evaluation activities. However we have a clearly defined set of
tasks and objectives for the next reporting period. These include:
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embedding the fellows and the DART project within the teaching and other routines of the
department
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Research fellows and support staff to begin design of digital tools and reaching decisions
about an initial set of digital resources; designing and developing prototypes of those
resources; and beginning to test prototypes with students
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Performing analysis of intellectual property rights, metadata, semantic navigation, and
archival requirements for the digital resources
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Research fellows to prepare and finalise course materials for use (in conjunction with
digital tools) starting in January 2004;
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Design and finalisation of the evaluation-in-use streams for the project;
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Columbia and LSE research fellows, support staff, and principal investigators to make
reciprocal visits to share ideas and discuss provisional outcomes;
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Convening the first Project Meeting in October (London); to facilitate reaching final
decisions about initial resources to develop, and by November begin the processes of
design, content acquisition, metadata markup, and online interface development
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Attending the first Programme Meeting.
In the autumn term Rashmi Sadana will observe and consider digital enhancements for teaching
“History and Culture of South Asia”; Gustav Peebles will observe and consider digital
enhancements for “Introduction to Women’s Studies,” and collaborate in creating a new spring
course, “The Ethnographic Imagination.” In the spring (Lent) term, Luke Freeman and Jerome
Lewis will apply digital enhancements for teaching “Reading Other Cultures”.
During the autumn the fellows will complete their research into impacts of digital tools on college
teaching and digital resources currently developed for teaching anthropology as well as their
exploration of attitudes and practices within the LSE and Columbia departments. The project staff
will create and regularly update a project web site. The fellows will work closely with department
faculty and will promote the project by giving departmental talks as well as talks at academic
meetings in the field. In line with developments occurring at the LSE, by January/ February 2004
the fellows will begin to test their resource prototypes with undergraduates.