This papers details the history of the Graphics and Visualization Center's Summer Workshop in Computer Graphics and 3D Geometric Modeling, held for the last four summers at Brown University in Providence, RI. Spalter will summarize the lessons learned as the Center experimented with different strategies and structures for this Workshop. During the summer of 1996, Workshop participants began creating curricular resources that are now available over the World Wide Web. Spalter will demonstrate these efforts and introduce the Greenhouse Web site that supports them. The goal of these projects is to help future Workshop participants and the public at large to better understand concepts in computer graphics and their application to other fields such as mathematics, the physical sciences, and art and design.
This summer marked the fourth anniversary of the Summer Workshop in Computer Graphics and 3D Geometric Modeling, an outreach program run by the Graphics and Visualization Center. The Workshop introduces high school teachers in math, science, and art to concepts in computer graphics, both to understand the field itself and to see how computer graphics can be used in the teaching of other subjects. This paper describes the history of the program, from its beginnings in the spring and summer of 1993 through several incarnations and into plans for its future. The process of creating and repeatedly reworking the program has been an intensive education for us in K-12 outreach at the high-school level. Our chief question has been, "What is an appropriate model for outreach in the context of an STC and in the specific subject matter of computer graphics?" For us this question involved considering of the role that university teachers can play in in-service training, the use of the university lab environment, and striking a balance between depth of coverage and numbers of people affected, between intensity of effort and amount of money spent per participant and measurable, quantitative impact. Corollary issues include strategies for content development and delivery, ongoing support for and by participants, and short- and long-term evaluation and assessment.
The Summer Workshop began in the spring of 1993 as a pilot program. The Center was responding to emphasis placed on K-12 outreach for the STCs, but since K-12 was not part of the original call or proposal, a Center-wide effort proved difficult to implement in a short time frame. Several sites undertook projects relevant to their communities with the Center-wide goal of establishing significant outreach efforts that would introduce high school teachers and students to the world of computer graphics. The Brown site recruited seven volunteer high school teachers in math and computer science to attend a weekly series of nine evening lectures. I worked with the Brown site PI to create an introductory set of lecture notes in computer graphics with an emphasis on the mathematics relevant at the high school level. Completely ignorant of outreach methodology, teacher training programs, and existing funding models, we decided to create and deliver the lectures in a format familiar to us, that of a mini-Brown course. The teachers responded enthusiastically. We lost no one and feedback included such encouragement as, "That a teacher can say she looks forward to going to a two-hour lecture/demo after a full day in the classroom speaks for itself!" We decided to run a longer version of the Workshop during the summer that would include lab sessions. We did not know if had we saturated the local teachers' interest in attending a demanding, fast-paced course for no credit and no stipend. With the encouragement that all but one of our pilot participants were game to try the summer version, we moved forward.
In preparation for the summer session, we revised the lecture notes and engaged a computer science undergraduate to prepare interactive illustrations of some the concepts in the lectures, namely the use of simple linear transformations to move, rotate, and scale geometric objects on a computer screen.
We ran the Workshop for three intensive weeks, 9-5 each weekday. Lectures were supplemented with lab sessions in the Sun Lab (so named for its Sun workstations) using CAD/CAM research software developed at the Center's Utah site and also used in their outreach program for high school students. We were greatly assisted in our first summer by support from Utah via the Center's televideo system over which a Utah staff member provided support for their unique software. We also used the televideo for lectures given by PIs at all five sites and attended by outreach program participants in several sites, including Brown. Again, we focused on math and science teachers.
Although we did not recognize it at the time, all the important ingredients for the evolution of the program and the achievement of a workable model were already in place. These key factors were: the enthusiasm of the initial participants, the commitment to creating detailed lecture notes on the subject that could serve as both teaching material and handouts for students, the use of the Center's televideo system to exchange ideas and pool expertise, and the creation of interactive teaching tools. We also did not recognize at the time that were pursuing a highly unfundable model of outreach that engaged middle-aged white teachers (those who could afford to come without a stipend and had an interest in difficult subject matter) in a course of study on Unix workstations (not found in many high schools), at a cost of thousands of dollars per participant, with a focus on the kind of math that is usually taught only to the best students.
The mini-college-course model was very effective for intensive learning and teaching but revealed to us why universities and colleges run at a loss despite skyrocketing tuitions. It enabled us to provide a level of teaching and immersion that is so impractical it could never be supported by a grant, but let a group of high school teachers learn in depth about a new subject that they could not have studied in school. We built bridges between their schools and our lab: teachers came back throughout the year for group reunions and brought their classes to tour the graphics research lab at Brown. The lecture tapes recorded over the televideo during the summer were shown to hundreds (by now thousands) of high school students during the school year, introducing them to such subject areas as CAD/CAM, virtual reality, realistic rendering, and behavioral modeling. The interactive demos were used in many math, physics, and computer science courses. Our high school teacher participants spent more time with Andy van Dam than most Brown students who take his regular courses. Through email and Web communications, we have succeeded in maintaining strong links between our university and Center and a number of high schools.
We attempted to take advantage of our ever-more knowledgeable group of teachers by making them mentor teachers for new participants. Our summer 1994 Workshop started with over 20 new teachers and six mentor teachers, but by the second week there were fewer than 10 new participants even though all the mentor teachers had stayed. Many had left after the first day, reporting that material was too dry, difficult, and intimidating. We were mystified, since we had in fact improved its clarity. It was at this turning point that we began to realize how unusual and self-selecting our first rounds of teachers had been. The summer continued with the reduced number of participants and we incorporated easier-to-use research software and a commercial package, Macromodel, donated by Macromedia Corp. We also began more aggressive evaluation to ensure we didn't lose more teachers and to help guide the next summer's Workshop. Participants were subjected to final evaluation questionnaires that were to become longer and more detailed each summer.
The 1995 Workshop Homepage
In the middle of the spring of 1995 the program seemed to be slowing, rather than gathering momentum. We had fewer new applicants than teachers who wanted to return. I consulted with our mentor teachers to create a less intimidating syllabus and, following my own interests in computer science and computer art and design, opened the program up to teachers of art and design, industrial technology, and multimedia and created a non-math track for those who preferred design-related discussions. We gave everyone a day off each week (because of complaints that even essential normal errands could not be run within the previous 9-5, five-days-per-week schedule) but again had no stipend. In order to make the Workshop more useful back at the teachers' schools, we abandoned the research software and Unix workstations in favor of Macromodel on the Macs, again donated by Macromedia to each participant and trueSpace on the PCs, donated by Caligari to each participant. The program was very successful, with 20 new teachers on the first day and 19 on the last.
We increased our assessment efforts with written forms and videotaped discussions. A short evaluation/feedback form was filled in at the beginning of the program and at the end of each day; the final feedback form was over 15 pages long. The results were constructive and generally quite positive. But the TAs and I were so exhausted and burnt out at the end that I dreaded the program's continuation along these lines of customized tracks, multiple software packages, multiple computer platforms and lecture notes that had to be comprehensible and interesting for teachers in several disciplines.
A crisis spurred the recasting of the Workshop into a form that that takes advantage of the factors mentioned earlier and the unusual situation created by the Center funding and its research and educational missions. Responding to an emphasis on minority participation in outreach, we had pursued an arrangement with a largely minority public school system in another state that was about to receive money from an NSF Urban Systemic Initiative and needed to train 15 to 30 math and science teachers in effective use of computing in the classroom before the next school year began. We ramped up to host these newcomers, put off our mentor teachers, booked housing, investigated board fees, plane fares and field trips. We began to reorganize and recast our notes to meet these teachers' needs. At the end of May, however, we learned to our surprise that the grant the school system thought it had been awarded was not at all certain; in fact it was never awarded.
Too late to begin recruiting local teachers, without any commitments from our regulars, and adrift in our focus, it seemed that the program was not improving in proportion to the effort and money sunk into it, indeed almost the opposite. Given the seriousness of the situation and the time crunch, we had to act quickly. But this crisis was also an opportunity to try something new. We consulted extensively with our mentor teachers. They told us that while they loved learning the concepts, it was not easy to integrate them back in the classroom, even after getting their school to upgrade (or establish) computer labs and acquire software licenses. The teachers who had successfully brought the computer into academic curricula reported that the process took years, during which they had to create their own teaching materials and experiment through trial and error to find what motivated students. The results had been impressive, though: two schools had created entire courses in 3D modeling, one lasting a full year. 3D graphics and the math involved had become part of a physics course, chemistry lab, math course, industrial technology courses (a.k.a. shop) and of course computer science classes. Without the math component, 3D graphics were being used in art, design, multimedia and biology courses.
Freed from what we felt we should do to satisfy the perceived emphases of the NSF, I asked the question, what would we like to do? What could we do that would really build on the foundations we have laid over the past three years? Our teachers were our greatest resources. The model we had been using was effective but had limited impact in terms of the numbers of people immediately affected. Perhaps we could work with our teachers to create materials that would help them and teachers across the globe integrate computer graphics into math and computer science courses and courses in other disciplines.
The 1996 Workshop was conducted only with teachers who had participated at least once before (several had come each year since the summer of 1993 and two had attended every workshop since the spring pilot). The focus was on creating curricular resources that could be used in courses and placed on a Web site for use by the public at large. The workshop was structured but participation times were flexible. We taught mini-courses in the Web, HTML, and Macromedia Director (donated by Macromedia). Teachers documented their techniques and course materials and designed and created new ones. Projects ranged from 3D animated physics illustrations to lesson plans for art and optical illusions and exercises on 2D to 3D design. Interactive illustrations were created with Java and multimedia examples of design projects with Director movies (put on the Web with Shockwave). The experience we had gained in working in the K-12 area, the lecture notes we had polished, our background in innovative undergraduate teaching methods, and our research in computer graphics and its use in communication and teaching were all finally combined.
The new form of the Workshop is now a year-round effort in which teachers come back one Saturday each month to work on projects. Communication takes place through email and a moderated Web discussion group. Our efforts, those of undergraduate teaching assistants (who have been critical to the program's success from the beginning) and, most importantly, those of the teachers, reach not only thousands of high school students in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts area, but are available to countless teacher and students across the country and indeed the world.
The creation of materials and the use of the Web make evaluation and assessment easier. Quantitative results can be calculated from Web logs and teachers can give detailed reports about their use of the resources in the classroom. In addition, this model should be easier to fund: it fits better with existing EHR grant categories such as materials development and advanced technology, and the experience and effort is distilled into a product that is easy to distribute and can be used by thousands of teachers and students. The program is easier to conduct and far easier to sustain after Center funding ends.
As a model for outreach for our STC, the materials development work fits naturally with the subject matter that is the focus of our Center's undergraduate and graduate education and at times is even related to ongoing research in interaction and graphics-based communication. We plan to continue this model and coordinate similar efforts by the other Center sites to produce teaching materials, from lesson plans to interactive illustrations in Java and VRML, that will help make it easier to teach computer graphics at a range of levels and in a range of disciplines.