Education: More Needles in the Haystack

Jean B.Gasen

One of the great challenges -- and joys -- of teaching takes place outside the classroom. Whether on Saturday or Sunday, in the heat of August or chill of early January, class preparation plays a major role in developing the best possible learning environment for students. Access to current resources is paramount. For HCI educators, the World Wide Web is becoming an essential link to such information.

As a frequent searcher for HCI resources, I am amazed at the amount of information already available on the Web. What was once a small set of ftp locations in 1993 has blossomed into scores of Web sites in 1996.

While the number of sites is increasing, HCI educators still must find ways of applying and integrating these resources into an organized framework (Gasen, 1995). Additionally, ancillary teaching resources are still somewhat lacking both on the Web and in print. These materials represent the "hows" of teaching for an HCI educator., e.g. relevant videos and software, suggestions for projects and exercises, additional reading material, overhead transparencies, material and criteria for evaluating student progress, etc.

Case studies, or concrete illustrations, of how others integrate the wide variety of materials into HCI courses can be excellent resources. One of the earliest electronic examples was Gary Perlman's SEI Module on User Interface Development (ftp://archive.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/hci/SEI, 1989) which included information on both what to teach and how to teach it. Clayton Lewis and John Rieman's (1993) HCI book, "Task Centered User Interface Design" also provided ftp access to an online resource for HCI educators (available via the Web at http://www.acm.org/~perlman/uidesign.html). Other teaching resources, including bibliographies and course syllabi descriptions have been made available through reports such as the ACM SIGCHI Curriculum Report (Hewett et al., 1992, available electronically at http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/) and the NSF Report New Directions in HCI Education, Research and Practice (Strong et al., 1994, available electronically at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/arpa/hci/directions/).

Most recently, Saul Greenberg has provided an outstanding resource for HCI educators -- a complete Web site description of CPSC 481: Foundations and Principles of Human Computer Interaction. What makes this site particularly helpful to HCI educators is the inclusion of teaching preparation and resource materials. For example, the site includes descriptions of each topic with associated readings, relevant videos, teacher preparation resources, details on assignments, handouts, overheads etc. The article that follows provides an overview of the course and the rationale for its development.

The HCI community must continue to take initiative in building an accessible and organized web of electronic resources for research and education. Web sites developed and maintained by individuals such as Keith Instone's HCI Launching Pad (http://www.cs.bgsu.edu/HCI), Gary Perlman's HCI Resources Page (http://www.acm.org/~perlman/interactions/resources.html), Hans de Graaff's HCI Index (http://is.twi.tudelft.nl/hci/) and Mikael Ericsson's HCI Resource Page (http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/aslab/groups/um/hci/), go a long way in providing these much needed resources. Additionally, projects such as those being organized by the British HCI Education group to develop a Web site of HCI teaching resources (see "Should we be sharing educational materials?" in the HCI '95 Conference Panel Report on page 30 of this issue for more information), are helping to build a critical information base for HCI educators.

In developing the description of CPSC 481: Foundations and Principles of Human Computer Interaction for the Web, Saul Greenberg has provided a model for sharing HCI teaching resources. I applaud this and similar efforts to create Web sites that are useful for all HCI professionals. So, although the haystack is growing ever higher, the number and quality of needles continues to make the searching worthwhile!

References

Gasen, J. (1995): "Support for HCI Educators: A View from the Trenches", in M.A.R. Kirby, A.J. Dix and J.E. Finlay (eds.) People and Computers X -- Proceedings of the HCI'95 Conference, Cambridge University Press, pp. 15-20
Hewett, T., Baecker, R., Card, S., Carey, T. Gasen, J., Mantei, M., Perlman, G. Strong, G. and Verplank, W. (1992): ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction. Report of the ACM SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group, ACM.
Lewis, C. and Rieman, J. (1993): Task Centered user interface design -- A practical introduction. Shareware book, available by anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/distribs/clewis/HCI-Design-Book/.
Strong, G.W., Gasen, J.B., Hewett, T., Hix, D., Morris, J., Muller, M.J. and Novick, D.G. (1994): A Report on New Directions in Human-Computer Interaction Education and Research. Washington, DC: Sponsored by National Science Foundation and Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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Vol.28 No.2, April 1996
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