PSPB staff collaborate on a project featuring an enhanced broadcast. From left, Charlie Gudeman (producer/director), Tracy Vosburgh (station manager), and Mike DiPasquale (multimedia designer).

David DiBiase is masterminding a science offering not just for students at Penn State, but for what he hopes could be audiences around the country and the world. Combining the efforts of Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences Dr. Richard Alley with Penn State Public Broadcasting (PSPB) and Penn State's World Campus, DiBiase plans for Alley's Geology of the National Parks course to become a 15-episode television series in which Alley and his students explain science literacy concepts embodied in beautiful, natural landscapes.

"The public television series will be coupled with a formal Penn State course offered through the World Campus," said DiBiase, director of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, which aims to make the College's best offerings available to a wider audience.

The course, which will be taught also by Associate Professor of Geosciences Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan, is one of the first projects of a new initiative offering faculty ways to work in a digital age. Engaging Faculty—a joint effort of PSPB, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and Ohio State University—comes in concert with television's conversion to digital technology.

PSPB has signed on its digital signal, which allows for high definition TV, the ability to air four channels simultaneously, and an enhanced broadcast—with resources that direct viewers to additional information. A multipurpose studio in a new facility in Innovation Park, set for completion in 2005, will aid the packaging and distribution of content in multiple formats.

The conversion serves as the impetus for Engaging Faculty—an exploration to encourage faculty to think of classroom enhancement, research dissemination and community engagement in new terms, said Krichels. "It's for faculty who want to think differently about their material."

“Faculty who came to the workshop were interested in extending the reach of their courses and their work.”

 

—BYRON KNIGHT

 

Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences Dr. Richard Alley Photo by Todd Johnston

A small group of faculty from each partnering university met last fall in Madison, Wis., for technology immersion and to set goals. "Faculty who came to the workshop were interested in extending the reach of their courses and their work," said Byron Knight, director of Broadcasting and Media Innovation at University of Wisconsin-Extension.

 

This fall, at the 2004 Outreach Scholarship Conference, to be held at Penn State, participating members will share progress.

DiBiase at the next conference hopes to report the progress of the College's pilot program, which he describes as a kind of reality learning show. (Those tied to the project call it colloquially "This Old Park," referring to the Public Broadcasting home improvement classic.) DiBiase speculated that a potential episode could take place in Death Valley, which is growing wider by the year. Alley and students would examine GPS data at the site in order to demonstrate that continental plates are moving about.

"We could use the phenomenon at Death Valley to illustrate a fundamental concept," explained DiBiase. He said the challenge is to create a show that people want to watch in a cost-effective way and then make the video and other materials available in multiple formats. "It ties into increased capacity."

While the partnering institutions hope that eventually there will be projects that crossover, each university is concentrating on engaging their own faculty initially. "The main challenge is to identify the project that assists Ohio State University faculty with their research goals and also dovetails with the mission of public broadcasting," said Tom Rieland, general manager of WOSU.

Collaboration is Key
William Kelly, head of the Department of Integrative Arts in Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture, noted that the initiative for the first time gives faculty the opportunity to take advantage of the enormous holdings at universities and public broadcasting stations associated with those universities.

Kelly, who has long been involved with electronic course development, cited as one potential project securing the rights to Public Broadcasting's Dance in America, 25 years of video recordings of every major dance company, dancer and dance genre.

"It's difficult to teach dance history without actually seeing people dance," said Kelly. "We could build a half dozen courses on dance history with those recordings. It might not be worth getting the rights if it's for just Penn State, but would be worth it if it also became a national television show."

A new facility will feature a multipurpose studio.

Another example involves linking viable broadcast material with course work.

"You could run Saturday night movies—a certain kind of movie—as part of a normal broadcast and build course work around it," he said, adding that "multiuse means that we can use things that aren't being used and that we can use things more efficiently when we do."

The key, said Kelly, is interaction. "In order for digital education to work, it requires a level of collaboration across faculty and universities."

Current initiatives such as Creating Health, a multi-year, multimedia project, already build on the expertise of University faculty in several Penn State colleges and departments, and key participants of the project are now champions of Engaging Faculty. The program provides healthy lifestyle information in a variety of ways, including television programs, a Web site, print materials and Cooperative Extension-led community workshops and health screenings.

Krichels hopes that one day the initiative can go to a national level, to all public televisions stations licensed to universities.

"The concept is a potential beacon in the future of public broadcasting," he said.