CISS Wins Two NSF Grants
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News from the Center for Information Society Studies
January 28, 2003
For immediate release
Contact Amy Sprague for more information
amy_sprague@ncsu.edu / 515.6053

CHASS CENTER RECEIVES $800,000 FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

The Center for Information Society Studies has received two grants totaling over $800,000 from the National Science Foundation. Both are follow-up grants for earlier pilot projects, and both focus on using the internet to improve education and public policy making.

One grant is for LabWrite, a project that uses online instructional materials to improve science education by helping students write better lab reports. LabWrite was awarded a two-year budget of $489,159 on December 19, 2002, from the Courses, Curricula, and Laboratory Instruction division of NSF.

“Labwrite was supported by NSF because we have powerful evidence that students using it actually learn science more effectively than students receiving the usual instruction in writing lab reports,” said Dr. Michael Carter, principal investigator and associate professor of English at NC State.

Tests of the LabWrite prototype, developed under the previous NSF grant, have shown that students using LabWrite demonstrate significantly greater comprehension of the scientific concepts of a lab experiment and of the scientific logic of the experimental process. The new grant will fund a national test of LabWrite.

The other grant funds an online Citizens’ Technology Forum, to explore ways of improving public involvement in discussions of technology policy. The Citizens’ Technology Forum received a two-year grant of $325,068 on January 24, 2003, from the Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology division of NSF. This was the largest grant ever given by this NSF division.

“This grant allows us to give North Carolina citizens a voice in technology policy and a chance to study the deliberative qualities of their interaction. This work will have both theoretical and practical implications, in several fields, and we are excited to have this opportunity,” said Jane Macoubrie, principal investigator and assistant professor of Communication at NC State. The research team will study methods of improving deliberation and consensus formation in online discussions.

Both projects plan to share their potential with a wider audience. LabWrite has immediate plans to extend its use at NC State and a variety of other colleges, including a community college and a historically black university, and eventually plans to make it available to all colleges and universities in the state. The LabWrite team also expects to create a version for high schools. The Citizens’ Technology Forum is dedicated to improving the policy making process and eventually making that process available to other states across the country as well.

“We hope, eventually, to orchestrate a national Citizen’s Technology Forum, and the work this grant funds will help us figure out how best to do that,” said Patrick Hamlett, co-investigator on the grant, and associate professor of Multi-disciplinary Studies at NC State.

Michael Carter is joined on the LabWrite team by Eric Wiebe of Math, Science, and Technology Education, Alton Banks of Chemistry, Robert Beichner of Physics, and James Mickle of Botany.

In addition to Jane Macoubrie, the Citizens’ Technology Forum project includes Patrick Hamlett, Multidisciplinary Studies, Carolyn Miller, co-Director of CISS and professor of English, and Michael Cobb, assistant professor of Political Science.

Following are the full titles, grant numbers and specific departments at NSF to which the grants were submitted;

“LabWrite, a National Web-based Initiative to Use the Lab Report to Improve the Way Students Write, Visualize, and Understand Science”
Grant number DUE-0231086
Submitted to NSF, Courses, Curricula, and Laboratory Instruction division

“Citizen Learning, Deliberation, and Reasoning in Internet-Mediated Technology Policy Forums”
Grant number SES-0242994
Submitted to NSF, Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology division