Why Here

The University of Illinois has long pioneered advances in humanistic inquiry at the leading edge of technological innovation. EOTU builds on this legacy with an undergraduate research initiative that integrates powerful software applications developed by university faculty.

Resources

The infrastructural and intellectual resources of UIUC will sustain EOTU over time. In terms of information infrastructure, the campus has long been on the technological cutting edge. UIUC is the cradle of the Netscape browser and the Eudora e-mail application, and in 1998 Yahoo! Internet Life named it the "most wired" public university campus in the United States. That same year, Newsweek named Champaign-Urbana one of the nation's "hottest tech cities." Most important for EOTU, however, is the enormous intellectual energy available at the interface between technology and the humanities at the university. EOTU draws liberally on resources and expertise already established at this interface:

• The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Founded in 1997, the program promotes interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
• The Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society. Initiated in 2002 as a Chancellor's cross-campus initiative, center affiliates examine how multiracial democracy is experienced in a variety of contexts, with a special focus on the university and on Illinois.
• The Student Life and Culture Archival Program. The program collects, preserves, and makes available materials documenting student involvement in fraternities, sororities, student government, religious associations, publications, social events, athletics, and other activities that contribute to students' experience in higher education. No other university in the United States houses such a collection.
• Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES). CITES coordinates the integration of information and educational technologies into academic life. Free regular consulting and competitive intensive support are available for campus initiatives.
• Applied Technologies for Learning in the Arts and Sciences (ATLAS). ATLAS provides consulting on educational technologies and maintains state-of-the-art instructional spaces for the departments and instructors in the Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Center for Advanced Study (CAS). EOTU's success to date owes much to the initial investment of CAS. CAS funding sustained a 2002-03 seminar series that brought together faculty, graduate fellows, staff, and administrators from across campus.

Previous humanities initiatives on campus have made good use of the foregoing resources. For example, a recent initiative, Silicon, Carbon, Culture: Combining Codes through the Arts, Humanities, and Technology, supported more than twenty broadly collaborative projects that brought together faculty from the Colleges of Fine Arts, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Engineering. Of longer standing, Women, Information Technology and Scholarship, begun in 1991, is an interdisciplinary group of women faculty, academic professionals, and graduate students working to help insure that new communications technologies are structured and used in ways beneficial to all, regardless of gender.

UIUC Technologies

These and similar campus initiatives are models for our project. An element common among them is the use of technologies developed at UIUC. EOTU follows suit by incorporating two web-based applications authored by colleagues on campus:

• The Inquiry Page (IP). A dynamic virtual community, the Inquiry Page offers a collaborative environment in which inquiry-based education can be discussed, resources and experiences shared, and innovative approaches explored. Both the processes and products of research are archived in readily accessible form, and are thereby made available to later generations of students who will build on the work of their predecessors. The IP supports students' research efforts by sustaining and documenting an active inquiry process. Students are prompted to Ask Investigate Create Discuss Reflect Ask in order to generate claims of academic interest and locate evidence. (The IP's creator, Professor Bertram C. Bruce, Library and Information Science, is a member of the EOTU Working Group.)
• Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web (IKNOW). IKNOW is a web-based application that assists communities-classes, workgroups, and organizations-in managing their knowledge assets. By surveying a community's members and searching its web pages, IKNOW answers the questions: who knows who? who knows what? who knows who knows who? who knows who knows what? In so doing, connections can be made between persons and groups who possess specific knowledge and those who seek it. (IKNOW's creator, Professor Noshir Contractor, Speech Communication, is a member of the EOTU Working Group.)