Overview
This proposal is in response to the National Science Foundation's RFP "NSF 94-
05 Program Guidelines -Networking Infrastructure for Education Supplements".
Biomedical Engineering -- An Adventure in Network Instruction
Two biomedical engineering courses will be taught using our existing network in cooperation with the University of Tennessee, Memphis and Memphis State University. This project will 1) convert course syllabus into a network usable format for teaching, 2) discover the advantages and disadvantages of network education, and adjust the network environment and content to maximize for the delivery of engineering design education. Since the MECCA NIE supplement was funded, the Biomedical Engineering Departments at The University of Tennessee, Memphis and The University of Memphis have received a $750,000 award from the Whitaker Foundation to facilitate joint course development. This award was partially leveraged from the MECCA award and provides additional resources for joint instruction as well as for new faculty support.
Shelby State -- UT Memphis Nutrition Education
UT Memphis and Shelby State will use the MECCA network to provide remote
nutritional instruction and assessment to evaluate the utility of network-computer
delivery of value added information for prevention of diet related disorders and nutrition education. The second phase of this project will be to use the computer tools on the MECCA network to evaluate and instruct residents of the LeMoyne Gardens Housing Project on nutrition and diet within interactive cyberspace (a networked computer environment including both LAN and WAN connections).
Senior Citizen -- K12 Teacher Connection for Education
MECCA and its membership in cooperation with the Delta Area on Aging
will connect senior citizens to the Internet and to K12 students of Memphis for
educational tutoring and cross cultural communication. MECCA will provide a
preventive medicine list server for our older adults so that they can interface with
preventive medicine components of our medical community such as the Planetree
Center at UT Memphis. We will establish a senior citizen information server network
so that the senior adults can have a window onto the Internet providing information which
they deem useful to the larger network community. Seniors as well as K12 teachers will
attend a workshop UT Memphis to learn strategies of computer network management relevant
to the delivery of information for education. They will learn network communication
skills, gopher and www server management procedures and how to maximize these
combinations for student instruction.
LeMoyne Garden Residents -- On Ramp to the Information Highway
The Residents of the LeMoyne Gardens housing project will receive information
resources from LeMoyne-Owen College that are currently not available at local schools
or libraries. Classes dealing with network utilization and etiquette including the basic
TCP/IP function and extended Internet utilities such as gopher and mosaic. Job
announcement and general community information will be made available through gopher
and mosaic servers emanating from the LeMoyne-Owen campus.
Human Physiology -- Network Teaching at LeMoyne-Owen College
The joint network Human Physiology class to be taught by UT Memphis, Physiology
faculty will allow its faculty to evaluate the suitability of this form of education
delivery. Several faculty will be involved with varying degrees of computer skills. This
methodology will allow for a free class format (without major time constraints). It will
convert what are now static lectures into dynamic teacher-student interactions..
Primary Objective
These prototype projects will function as models for additional programmatic
content into both higher education and K12 institutions in Memphis. Information
gathered from these projects will allow MECCA to provide useful student and teacher
paradigms for network training and utilization for the delivery of education.