Dear Jim, Jon, Bill, and Jack,

Thank you very much for your comments and questions on my Noyce Faculty
Fellowship Proposal.  I'm sorry that it has taken so long to respond,
but this first week of courses has been especially busy.  Your note
indicated a number of different concerns which I will attempt to address
below.

1. Scope and Deliverables

The project is indeed large.  However, I am expected to be devoting much
of my summer to the project (at least one month of full time work and
a few months of part-time work).  As I indicated in the proposal, I am
also hoping to obtain student research students for the project.  Casual
discussion with our students suggests that a number are interested, so
the only barrier I foresee from that side is funding.  Working by myself,
I am confident that I would complete at least three core tasks:

  * Installing and testing a variety of web construction tools.  These 
    include HyperWave, ASML, Siteview, and CometPage.
  * Installing and testing a variety of site evaluation tools.  This will
    also require some research into potential tools.  This term, I'm working 
    with a student, Chris de Beer, to determine appropriate tools.
  * Developing a simple web-based discussion system usable by Grinnell faculty
    (with a little support from me or a student).
  * Developing a simple, cookie-based page analysis system usable by 
    Grinnell faculty.
  * Writing a five-ten page summary description of potential considerations
    for course web design.

With students, I expect to be able to do significantly more.  My
assumption is that we would attempt to gather more tools and investigate
those tools in more depth.  We would also provide additional features
for the core tools and would likely work on building other related tools.

2. Class Usage

I anticipate using all the tools I develop in each (or most) of the courses
that I teach.  As I mentioned in the proposal, I already use some tools I've
developed for analyzing student web use.  Last semester, I developed over
400 printed pages (about 150 web pages) for my two courses and always look
for tools to help with this development.

3. Other Faculty

I will admit that I haven't spoken with a wide variety of faculty about
their needs.  A casual discussion in the science teaching group suggested
that a few science faculty would take advantage of an online discussion
system, if one existed (and if it were permitted by the computing code).
It is also clear that a number of faculty are interested in putting more
of their materials on the web.  This term, I've already helped at least one
other faculty member with developing a course web.

4. Dissemination

I would certainly be willing to give a teaching colloquium in the fall.
Since many of us are busy, I also expect that a printed "how to build a
web" guide will be  useful.

5. Grant Amount

I had asked for a stipend of $4000 primarily because of the scope of
the project, which I intend to be more than development of technology
for a particular class.  The guidelines suggest that the academic-year
award is typically release time for one course.  I took that to mean
that the grant was intended to support more time-consuming projects than
typical curricular development projects.  If you are only able to award
$2000 I will still undertake the project, but it is possible that it will
be smaller in scope.  I expect that I would only have time to develop one
of the two tools and might only be able to install a subset of the tools
mentioned above.

Thank you again for your consideration.  I look forward to hearing from
you.

-- Sam Rebelsky