Projects
Below are selected projects from 1989 – present. I have tried to list most of the major professional projects on which I’ve worked.
–Brandon
OEIT
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2009-present
Funding Source: MIT and Grant Funding
Key Collaborators: Vijay Kumar*, Jeff Merriman*
SpokenMedia Project
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2009-present
SpokenMedia is an umbrella project for the development of tools and services to enable rich media notebooks for learning and teaching.
The key enabler for these rich media notebooks are full text transcripts of academic video lectures–the text transcripts provide means of searching and organizing video lectures and more importantly combining with text-based materials from places like MIT OpenCourseWare.
SpokenMedia is focusing on a number of tools and services:
- automatic lecture transcription (with potential integration in larger media production workflows),
- video player with a video-linked transcript (and other interactive features), and
- transcript editor.
Funding Source: MIT and iCampus MIT/Microsoft Alliance
Key Collaborators: Vijay Kumar, Jeff Merriman, Andrew McKinney*, Peter Wilkins*
Project Greenfield
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2010-present
“Wouldn’t it be great if MIT OpenCourseWare…” How many times have you heard this phrase? What if there were a sandbox in which the community could test and experiment with the tools and services that might prove useful to OCW visitors, and more generally OER content providers? The MIT Office of Educational Innovation and Technology has launched Project Greenfield as an experiment to enable MIT faculty to explore how OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources might be used in new and innovative ways.
Funding Source: MIT
Key Collaborators: Vijay Kumar, Jeff Merriman, Peter Wilkins*
NSDL-CCLI Dissemination
Fostering Better Dissemination of CCLI-developed Educational Innovations
2009-present
The CCLI Dissemination project begins to address the following question:
The question is how to foster better dissemination of CCLI-developed educational innovations?
This project grows out of our experience in developing a digital library of educational innovation in engineering (NEEDS) and later across many disciplines in STEM (smete.org, NSDL, BEN, ComPadre, MathDL, and so on). As one of the potential dissemination mechanisms for CCLI, we approach the problem of how might we encourage, incentivize or otherwise improve the dissemination pathway through these NSF-funded educational digital libraries. (Also the project is an extension of sorts of the NSDL Reusability project (see below), where we developed guidelines to help developers improve the reusability of their resources and help digital libraries understand what made items in their collections potentially more reusable.)
The Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Innovation program is a decades long funding program by the National Science Foundation to foster and support innovative teaching practices. Limiting ourselves to the last decade (2000s) or so, NSF funded over 3,000 projects. However we believe only a very small fraction of these have ever made it into an educational digital library.
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators: Flora McMartin*, Joe Tront*
NSDL Reflections
Reflections on Building the NSDL
2007-present
The goals of the NSDL Reflections project are best exemplified by the grant’s title, “Where Have We Come From and Where Are We Going? Learning the Lessons and Disseminating Exemplary Practices From the Projects of the NSDL”. The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Program has been in existence formally since 2000, and informally since 1998. By 2002 it was becoming evident that we were beginning to lose some of stories and lessons of the development of the NSDL. Especially as funding for projects ended, and as the NSDL took different directions, the early developers and participants were moving on to other projects. As early as 2002 I had discussions with NSF program officers to fund this work. By 2007, in collaboration with Flora McMartin, were finally successful at securing funding from the NSF to work on this project.
Funding Source:
Key Collaborators: Susan Jesuroga, David McArthur, Flora McMartin*
Reusable Learning
Enabling the Reuse of Learning Content
eduworks, Inc.
2003-2005
The goals of the Reusable Learning Project were to develop a set of guidelines to help educational materials developers and educational digital library developers better understand how to improve reusability (and usability). In addition to the guidelines, we conducted a number of professional development workshops for National Science Digital Library (NSDL) developers.
(The Reusable Learning website has been updated since I left the project. Some but not all of the content has been updated, please check the archive for the versions I worked on.)
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators: Geoff Collier, Robby Robson*
COSL
Center for Open and Sustainable Learning
Utah State University
2005-2008
COSL’s goals were to conduct research and development to increase access to educational opportunity worldwide. COSL worked in the field of Open Education, in particular Open Educational Resources. At COSL we developed eduCommons (OpenCourseWare management software), Utah State University OpenCourseWare, OER Recommender, and the Folksemantic tools (semantic web applications based on folksonomic data, building “Web 2.0″ services to support learning and other applications), to name just a few. (Some additional projects are listed on Justin Ball’s Projects page.)
At COSL, I was fortunate to work on a team with some of the smartest and most dedicated individuals I have ever had the opportunity to work with.
Prior to COSL starting in 2005, I worked with it’s predecessor the Open and Sustainable Learning Opportunities Group from 2004-2005.
Funding Sources: Hewlett Foundation, Mellon Foundation, NSF
Key Collaborators: Justin Ball*, Tom Caswell, Trent Cameron, Ashlee Davis, Shelley Henson (Johnson), Marion Jensen, Kurt Johnson*, David Wiley*
MERLOT
California State University, Office of the Chancellor
2002-2004
MERLOT was started as a collaboration of universities focused on “improving teaching and learning through effective use of academic technologies.” When I worked with MERLOT, it focused on developing a referatory of online educational resources and a discipline-based community of peer reviewers. That is, MERLOT’s system and campus partners contributed release time for their faculty to participate in peer review of online educational resources. I worked with MERLOT as Director of Alliances–to identify projects and organizations to collaborate with to extend the reach of MERLOT, and provide additional services to MERLOT users and partners. Through my work, I set the stage for the Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) collaboration. I was also responsible for updating MERLOT’s logo, updating the Tasting Room and creating the Conference website.
Premier Award
Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education
University of California, Berkeley and Virginia Tech
1997-present
The Premier Award was developed to “recognize outstanding courseware designed to enhance engineering education.” The Premier Award was developed by NEEDS and the Synthesis Coalition, with initial support from founding sponsor John Wiley & Sons. Under the early leadership of Pamela Eibeck, the Premier Award was envisioned as part of a multi-step mechanism to recognize the work, and promote high-quality, in the digital educational materials being developed by engineering educators. The Premier Award recognized its first courseware in 1997, and greatly refined its review criteria in 1998. In collabration with Joseph Tront and Flora McMartin, we have built the Premier Award into what it is today. Through 2008 we have recognized courseware from over twenty authors in most engineering disciplines.
Funding Source: NSF, Autodesk, John Wiley & Sons*, Microsoft Research*
Key Collaborators: Flora McMartin*, Robert Lettieri, Andi Niess, Joseph Tront*
smete.org and the SMETE Open Federation
A Collection of Collection — A Community of Communities
University of California, Berkeley
1999-2004
The goal of smete.org was to serve as a central portal to the content and services available through partner educational digital libraries and collections of science, mathematics, engineering and technology education (SMETE, now called STEM by NSF) for K-12 and higher education. smete.org built upon the technology we developed for NEEDS, and linked together the collections of SMETE Open Federation partners. The work of smete.org and the SMETE Open Federation were the precursor to the National Science Digital Library of 2008–a collaboration of disciplinary collections providing services and resources across STEM education.
The SMETE Open Federation was envisioned as a federation of organizations and research projects that span science, mathematics, engineering and technology (SME&T, now called STEM by NSF) education. These organizations include various SME&T disciplinary digital libraries, K-12 science libraries, services that support digital libraries, professional development organizations for SME&T teachers and faculty, as well as SME&T publishers and professional and disciplinary societies. In collaboration with the Partners, we developed a shared Vision Statement to guide our activities.
(The collaborative activities of the SMETE Open Federation and the development on the smete.org portal effectively ceased operations by 2002 as our core integration funding proposal was not funded by NSF. The currently available website, however, is essentially the same project that I worked on.)
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators (@ Berkeley): Alice Agogino, Andy Dong*, Eric Fixler*, Gretchen Lutes*, Flora McMartin*, Jialong Wu*
NEEDS
A Digital Library for Engineering Education
University of California, Berkeley
1995-2004
NEEDS was developed to support the development, use and reuse of digital educational resources for engineering education. It was originally envisoned as a network of courseware development studios, as well as a delivery system to distribute courseware. As it evolved, NEEDS became probably the prototypical example of an educational digital library. NEEDS contained a catalog of digital learning resources, and services and tools to find and reuse those resources.
(NEEDS transformed into the Engineering Pathway, a pathway for engineering education in the NSDL, in 2004. The currently available NEEDS website, however, is essentially the same project that I worked on.)
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators: Alice Agogino, Andy Dong*, Flora McMartin, Greg Paschall*, George Toye, William H. Wood, III*, Jialong Wu*
TLtC
University of California Teaching, Learning and technology Center
University of California, Office of the President and University of California, Berkeley
2001-2004
The TLtC was developed to serve as a virtual center to support the use of technology for teaching and learning throughout the University of California System. The TLtC published a monthly webzine and provided a small grants program for UC campuses.
(The last issue of the TLtC was published in April 2006. The currently available TLtC website, however, is essentially the same project that I worked on.)
Funding Source: University of California Office of the President
Key Collaborators: Gene Ellis*, Julie Gordon, Paula Murphy*
BITS
Berkeley Instructional Technology Studio
University of California, Berkeley
1993-2004
BITS started off as a courseware development studio for the Synthesis Coalition to work with engineering faculty developing digital learning resources. It expanded to work with other disciplines including art practice, architecture, education, music, etc., to help develop courseware and multimedia to improve teaching and learning. BITS also setup and managed a multimedia computer lab (MacLab Archive).
BITS was also responsible for hosting and maintaining the MMCS: Multimedia Case Studies of Engineering Design and Vibrating Beam Experiment Instructional Support Courseware (my Master’s project).
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators: Robert Lettieri*, Greg Paschall
ME39C
Multimedia Case Studies of Engineering Design
University of California, Berkeley
1994-1999
ME39C was a freshman/sophomore seminar developed by Alice Agogino and Sherry Hsi in the department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. (The freshman/sophomore seminars were added by Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien to help motivate undergraduate students at Cal by bringing them into small classes with senior faculty.) I was fortunate to participate as a co-instructor, and designed the complementary ME139C junior/senior project management class to accompany ME39C.
Key Collaborators: Alice Agogino, Sherry Hsi*
Vibrating Beam Experiment
Engineering Courseware for a Senior Mechanical Engineering Lab at UC Berkeley
1993-1995
The Vibrating Beam Experiment was my Master’s project.
Funding Source: NSF
Key Collaborators: Pamela A. Eibeck*, Winston Wang, David Karp
Providence Highlands Community Association
Providence Highlands Community Association
2008-2009
The Providence Highlands Community Association is the homeowner’s association for the Providence Highlands development in Providence, UT. I was fortunate to be elected as the founding president of the board of directors. As president, one of the projects I worked on was setting up and contributing to the PHCA’s website/blog hosted at WordPress.
Key Collaborators: Jon Brenchley, Emily Merkley*, Robert Parkinson
SFASME
San Francisco American Society of Mechanical Engineers
1989-2004
SFASME is one of the local chapters of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. I was involved with ASME beginning with my time as an undergraduate in 1989, and upon graduation began working with the professional section. I served on the executive committee of SFASME as chair, treasurer, webmaster, newsletter editor and honors and awards chair.
