Field Work & Telecommunications
Mary Wack, Professor of English, Center for Teaching and Learning, Washington State University
The Freshman Seminar program at Washington State University has developed something like vicarious fieldwork in its Interdisciplinary Participant Investigation Project. Cedar Mesa, Utah was the field site where several graduate student "field operatives" went with a digital video camera, a laptop, and a modem. They sent back a variety of information of interest to the approximately 18 disciplines (360 students) participating in the project through linked classes, from Anthropology to Zoology.
This information was posted to the IPIP Website to which each seminar was linked through its Virtual Classroom. Each class could then send down requests for further data to the operatives, as they developed theses/hypotheses that they wished to investigate further. The operatives sent back stills, text, and digital video (including several minutes' interview with a European hitchhiker, as well as interviews with locals).
This material is now being incorporated into the students' ongoing assignments in the Freshman Seminar Virtual Classrooms: making "knowledge" out of "data" within the framework of a discipline.
Lizard 38 Fall 96
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Phone: 541-346-2177 Fax: 541-346-2184
Teaching Effectiveness Program, Teaching and Learning Center, University of Oregon.
Last Modified:
03/18/10