The Workshop is currently organizing four Faculty Collaboratives to provide Campus Partner faculty the opportunity to influence The Workshop's plans, tasks and activities. New Instructional Practices These collaboratives assist faculty in making the transition from whole-class teaching practices favored in conventionally organized classroom settings, to the more interactive and collaborative practices afforded within the instructional settings made possible by The Workshop's computer-mediated instructional (CMI) materials. The assistance will be in the form of: Demos constructed by faculty experienced in using The Workshop's materials Hands-on Workshops Formal seminars A refereed online newsletter where faculty share their doubts, triumphs, and suggestions for improvements Reviews Links to discipline-relevant Web-sites An easily searched video archive of digital video segments of unusually effective instructors commenting upon their teaching practices An easily searched video archive of video segments of students working on particularly difficult lessons during various stages of the learning cycle. Research and Continuous Improvement These collaboratives will: Promote information-sharing among faculty interested in conducting research on the teaching practices, learning activities and forms of collaborative learning encouraged by the genres of computer-mediated instructional (CMI) materials The Workshop is championing Deepen faculty knowledge and understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the teaching practices afforded by The Workshops's instructional materials Identify the practices that are most beneficial to specific types of students within specific disciplinary topic modules Provide standard data collection and analyses protocols (quantitative and qualitative) to support faculty in sharing their research findings, interpretations and recommendations with others The research will be presented in the form of: Seminars Articles in refereed journals An online refereed journal Digital video segments of research methodologists explaining the rationale, derivation and application of the data collection and analyses protocols Video vignettes of lead researchers explaining their research methods and research findings An electronic bulletin board where research leaders can post answers to inquiries sent to them by faculty participants. Technology Transfer These collaboratives will focus on transferring The Workshop's enabling technologies (including source code) to its Higher Education partners, where educational software development groups and individual faculty can use them to support local computer-mediated instructional (CMI) materials development work. These Higher Education partners will be able to examine the design and architecture of the source code, suggest improvement and to contribute new source code. The forums in which these technologies will be reviewed include: Expert demos Hands-on Workshops Seminars Formal presentations An on-line newsletter where faculty and academic technologists can share design ideas, code, experiences and advice with the greater educational technology community Instructional Partnerships These collaboratives will support the efforts of The Workshop's partners to extend the benefits of computer-mediated instructional (CMI) materials and instructional settings to K-12 Education and other governmental agencies, education-minded community-based organizations and, where appropriate, for-profit firms. These groups will have access to: Appropriately modified versions of The Workshop's instructional materials Faculty professional development cooperatives Essential enabling technologies © 2007 Distributed Learning Workshop. All rights reserved.