The major activities of CISS this year were in four areas: planning, funded research, proposal submission, and website development. The major projects in these areas are described briefly below. We did not sponsor any seminars or lectures this year primarily because we were without a Program Assistant for 4 months in the fall, when this kind of activity would have to be organized. We did help sponsor faculty and student attendance at the 2002 International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS'02) on Social Implications of Information and Communication Technology in Raleigh, June 6–8.

Planning for an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program
An ad hoc interdepartmental committee worked to develop a proposal for a doctoral program oriented around new communication issues in the information society. Three faculty from the Department of Communication (Gallagher, Johnson, and Taylor) and three from English (Anson, Mehlenbacher, and Miller) met throughout the year to create a program rationale and design that would prepare graduates for faculty positions of the future in both Communication and English departments, as well as for nonacademic positions in research, policy, and communication system design. The proposal will be finished this summer and submitted for university review in the fall, with a requested implementation date of Fall 2004.

Planning for an Endowment Campaign
CISS is planning an effort to raise a permanent endowment to support its operations. The plan is to have a faculty member visit firms in the Triangle area (and perhaps other areas in North Carolina) that make intensive use of information technology, such as banks and government agencies, or that supply information and communication services. They would be asked about problems and issues facing their organizations that have a larger social or policy component. Examples might include privacy and the digital divide. In advance of this survey of firms, a focus group consisting of a small group of information officers in local organizations would be convened to brainstorm about these matters and give guidance for the larger inquiry. From this inquiry would grow two outcomes: (1) a research agenda that would be responsive to the interests of the corporate and government communities while serving scholarly research goals; and (2) longer term, once a steady flow of useful research is produced, a plan for asking external parties to fund the endowment. CISS will work with Joanna Johnson to plan the focus group and survey next fall, budget permitting.

Funded Research:
LabWrite (National Science Foundation Courses, Curricula, and Lab Improvement Program Award 9950405 for $87,000)
Mike Carter, Principal Investigator, ENG
Eric Wiebe, Co-Investigator, Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education
LabWrite is a proof-of-concept grant awarded by NSF for the development of online instructional materials to help students learn the science of the lab experience by writing better lab reports. During this year the LabWrite team completed phase 2 of the assessment of the LabWrite project. The goal of phase 2 of the pilot study was to determine whether or not the LabWrite concept had been proven. The results of this study provide evidence that it significantly improves students' science learning. A control-group experiment was designed to test three hypotheses, and all three were supported:
1) Students using LabWrite learned the scientific concepts applied in the lab more effectively than students using traditional instruction in lab report writing. Holistic analysis of the reports showed that the LabWrite group was judged to have learned the scientific concepts of each of the labs significantly more effectively than the control group (p <.001).
2) Students using LabWrite will learn to apply the elements of effective scientific thinking more effectively than students using traditional instruction in lab report writing. The primary trait analysis demonstrated that the LabWrite group exhibited significantly better scientific thinking (p <.0001).
3) Students using LabWrite will develop a more positive attitude toward science and lab report writing than students using traditional instruction in lab report writing. A survey indicated that the students in the LabWrite group had developed a significantly more positive attitude toward lab reports than those in the control group (p <.01).
A follow up proposal has been resubmitted to NSF.

Funded Research:
A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Danish-Style Consensus Conference and the Comparative Feasibility of Its Delivery via Face-to-Face and Internet Modalities
(National Science Foundation Social and Behavioral Sciences, Ethics and Value Studies Award 0080810 for $145,000; Kenan Institute for Engineering, Science, and Technology for $15,000)
Patrick Hamlett, Principal Investigator,MDS
Carolyn R. Miller, Co-Investigator, ENG
Jane Macoubrie, Co-Investigator, COM

This three person team received an NSF grant to conduct two versions of the Danish-style Consensus Conference, employing two different modalities. One mode was the traditional face-to-face practice, while the other was conducted entirely on the Internet (the first time a consensus conference has been conducted via the Internet). Three panels of fifteen citizens were assembled, one for the face-to-face conference, one for the Internet-only conference, and one as a control group. All three groups completed pre-test and post-test questionnaires, and transcripts of both the face-to-face and the Internet-only conferences were subjected to content analysis techniques.

The same team intends to prepare a second grant proposal, to be submitted by August 1. For this project, two additional consensus conferences, each involving a mix of face-to-face and Internet components, will be organized. This is intended to test various modifications of the face-to-face process in anticipation of conducting a nation-wide consensus conference. In addition, a series of Internet-only conferences will be conducted, to test various approaches to transferring various facilitator roles to the panelists.

Proposal Submitted:
Media, Identity, and Adolescent Sexuality
(Submitted to National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
May 31, 2002; 3-year budget equals $780,156)
Melissa A. Johnson, Principal Investigator, COM
T. L. Taylor, Co-investigator, COM
Prabu David, Co-investigator, Ohio State

This three-year project will use qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine the relationship among media, identity, and adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. The target populations are English- and Spanish-speaking teens, ages 14–18. The goals of the qualitative stage in the first year are to examine adolescents’ interpretations of media’s sexual content; and to examine how identity affects choice and mediates sexual content in the media. In the second and third years, the researchers will apply these understandings to explore causal effects. In these phases, the primary goals are to improve knowledge about causal effects of mass media’s sexual content on adolescent sexual identity, attitudes, and behaviors; and to assess social judgement biases associated with sexual attitudes and behaviors.

Proposal Submitted:
Labwrite: A National Web-based Initiative to Use the Lab Report to Improve the Way Students Write, Visualize, and Understand Science
(Submitted to National Science Foundation / Courses, Curricula, and Lab Improvement Program, Educational Materials Development, August, 2002; 2-year budget equals $489,159)
Michael Carter, Principal Investigator, ENG
Eric Wiebe, Co-Investigator, Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education

Hundreds of thousands of student and faculty hours are devoted annually in the U.S. to the undergraduate science lab report, an exercise reflecting and perpetuating many of the shortcomings in science education identified in such reports as the NRCís 1999 Transforming Undergraduate Education in SMET. With comparatively small development and dissemination costs, our project team (from science communication, scientific visualization, botany, chemistry, and physics) proposes to harness this ubiquitous activity to improve the way students write, visualize, and understand science.

Our first goal is to revise and disseminate for national use our online prototype, developed, piloted, and assessed through our one-year NSF-CCLI grant in 2000-01. LabWrite, a series of instructional and faculty development modules, encourages and enhances use of the lab report so that students and instructors can take advantage of the opportunities it offers to develop and expand students' scientific literacy. Our second goal is to build an instructional infrastructure for improving the teaching and learning experience of the laboratory nationwide. Materials and faculty workshops will be piloted within physics, chemistry, and biology courses at NC State and at a small liberal arts women's college, an historically black university, a community college, and a large, comprehensive university. Two national publishers have expressed interest in publishing LabWrite as a supplement to science textbooks as well as a comprehensive interactive package for a variety of lab classes. DUE themes addressed include reaching preservice science teachers, helping to prepare future science faculty, and integrating technology into education.

CISS Website
In the summer of 2001, six faculty from Communication and English prepared research guides and bibliographies for the CISS website to provide introductions to areas of interest: Access and Inequality, Global Society, IT and Education, Politics and Democracy, Economy and Organization, Virtual Culture, Policy and Regulation, and Usability. These are posted on our Research Resources page at http://www.ncsu.edu/ciss/resource_guide.html. Preparation of these research guides was supported by the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Science, and Technology.

We continue to update the site with information about Calls for Papers, Calls for Proposals, and news items concerning social aspects of information technology.