The advent of the World Wide Web has revolutionized the nature of higher education. A fundamental paradigm shift is taking place within the information infrastructure of colleges and universities as they respond to new Internet technology. Millions of homepages and web sites; thousands of online courses, newsgroups, listservs, groupware projects, chat rooms, and administrative applications; and hundreds of cybercolleges and virtual universities are now available at the click of a mouse.

Academic planners, faculty, and students who want to incorporate the best practices of web technology in higher education are inundated with the sheer volume and complexity of Internet resources. The diffusion, dissemination, and categorization of the web have failed to keep pace with this veritable explosion of potential.

This FIPSE application proposes the creation of an Internet Clearinghouse for Higher Education, to be housed at George Mason University in collaboration with the ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education and the ERIC Clearinghouse for Assessment and Evaluation. The Internet Clearinghouse for Higher Education will provide a central, online database of higher education-related web resources. Using visual concept maps based on the ERIC thesaurus of descriptors and a taxonomy of higher education developed as part of the project, users will be able to query the database to quickly find the web resources they need. The concept maps will provide a research tool that helps users make connections with the literature/knowledge base to increase the dissemination and diffusion of online documents.

Efforts by faculty and students to find web resources on a specific topic are helped and hindered by a myriad of factors. Some of these include an individual’s knowledge of the Internet, preferred search strategies, and the software tools chosen for the search. Controlling for skill level, the web sites and categorization schemas available in a given field of study vary widely in their breadth and depth. A librarian at a research university may have created an advanced user’s guide to electronic periodicals and listservs in a given specialty. Several faculty may have prepared a conference presentation about web resources in their discipline and published the URL in a professional journal. Although some of these sites are well maintained and documented, providing invaluable insight into the current state of electronic activity, these examples suggest the haphazard and inconsistent manner in which schemas for navigating the Internet have been developed. The number and type of resources are growing at such a rate that previous attempts by scholars to keep up are almost immediately rendered obsolete.

When looking for a new type of web resource, there are two basic methods – search engines and subject catalogs.

Many people turn first to their preferred commercial search engine. These vary widely in complexity and scope, from Yahoo's indexing system to Lycos' use of annotated reviews to Alta Vista's presentation of related search terms. While these search engines continue to evolve, they are geared to no single industry or knowledge base. They fail to meet the sophisticated needs of higher education faculty and staff in finding and making the best use of Internet resources. The results are often inconsistent – returning too many unrelated hits or not enough.

A second alternative for users is the online subject guide. Several examples of general guides include the Argos Clearinghouse (formerly the Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resources), the Library of Congress Topical Guides, and The Whole Internet Catalog. These guides vary in the depth and breadth of links related to higher education.

A growing number of specialized subject catalogs are also being developed. For general higher education, notable examples include the Internic Academic Guide to the Internet, Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment, the Student Affairs Virtual Compass, Internet Resources for Institutional Research, the NACUBO Resource Directory, the Directory for UK Higher Education Administrators, the AlphaSearch Gateway to the Academic Web, and World-Wide Web Resources for Higher Education Faculty. The ERIC Clearinghouses for Higher Education, Assessment and Evaluation, Information and Technology, and Community Colleges also offer their own sets of related links and occasional ERIC Digest guides to Internet resources.

In addition, most every discipline and field of study has its own guides, prepared by faculty, graduate students, and/or professional associations, aimed at different audiences for different purposes. Examples include the ACLS Online Directory of Constituent Societies, Discovering Online Resources Across the Humanities, and A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace.

Each of these global, general higher education, and discipline-specific guides suffers from similar problems in design, maintenance, and scope. Too often they are labors of love performed by individual faculty members. While the Library of Congress and the ERIC Clearinghouse guides have support from a larger infrastructure of professional library services, even these online publications are limited in scope, the number of links they provide, and the sophistication of their indexing and search functions. The problem is that existing efforts at the national level to catalog and manage print publications have not been translated effectively into efforts to catalog the World Wide Web. The success of each guide varies. This was sufficient in 1994 when HTML was overtaking Gopher menus and there were a finite number of links to be included. With over 30 million computers hosting Internet domains, higher education is hindered by the lack of a comprehensive and standardized approach to cataloging and sharing web resources.

One approach to cataloging the Internet is to screen web sites and collect links for a "peer-reviewed search engine." The Argos project conducted by Anthony Beavers at the University of Evansville offers full text searching of sites that a group of editors has selected as "scholarly and topical." A similar effort is exemplified in the "Scout Report" funded by NSF and maintained by the computer science department at the University of Wisconsin. This electronic, e-mail newsletter and web site provides annotated reviews of Internet resources in several clusters of disciplines, including science and engineering, business and economics, and the social sciences. Comparable commercial versions of this approach include "Yahoo Picks," "The Weekly Bookmark," and "Netsurfer Digest." While these approaches have much to contribute to higher education in documenting web resources, they are still inadequate given the millions of web sites and the complexity of the knowledge base.

Several national efforts are currently underway to alleviate this problem. A consortium of higher education institutions and private companies is working with Educom, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as part of the Instructional Management Systems project of the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative. One component of this multi-faceted project is the development of "metadata tags" that will become part of homepages and include information about a web site's format, keywords, location, title, author, credits, learning level, and other fields. Metadata tags could also be used to manage intellectual property and copyright issues. Without such tags, the process of doing research on the web is like:

A related effort is underway to catalog Internet resources about K-12 lesson plans. The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) Project is funded by the National Library of Education and is being conducted by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology. The purpose of the project is the "development of a common electronic gateway to instructional materials on the Internet." The GEM staff have developed a Perl script for collecting data from web sites and have built a cataloging system for K-12 lesson plans, using a field structure similar to the IMS Metadata tags. The GEM Union Catalog currently in beta provides "one-stop, any-stop access to high quality Internet lesson plans, curriculum units and other education resources," with links to over 700 resources. The IMS and GEM projects are particularly useful systems for cataloging Internet resources, but they do not necessarily increase search results or accommodate the unique taxonomy of the higher education knowledge base.

George Mason University and Dr. John Milam have for three years provided the web site Internet Resources for Institutional Research <http://apollo.gmu.edu/~jmilam/air95.html>. This site houses over 2,000 links in 51 topical categories, from admissions guides to affirmative action to financial aid, and offers case studies, a field guide, and other articles. With awards and approval from the Argus Clearinghouse, Magellan, and the Lycos Top 5% of Web Sites, the site gets over 1,400 hits a week and is incorporated into the official web sites of the Association for Institutional Research and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education.

Dr. Milam has made numerous presentations to national and regional audiences and worked closely with several professional associations in developing their web presence. His forthcoming ASHE-ERIC monograph with the working title The Future of the World Wide Web for Higher Education documents best practices of web applications in teaching, research, administration, and student affairs and highlights the key concepts behind initiatives such as Internet 2 and the Western Governors University. Another forthcoming ERIC publication by Milam entitled Internet Resources for Higher Education will provide an overview of the many types of web resources which are available. Out of this research, the author has reached the conclusion that no single, existing search engine or subject guide for categorizing Internet resources is adequate to meet the needs of higher education. The number of homepages is growing too quickly and the taxonomies now in place are too simplistic.

In working with the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education on developing its web site and as a member of ERIC’s National Advisory Board, Dr. Milam has proposed that ERIC do for the web what it does for the print literature - provide a sophisticated search engine and cataloging system that serve the diverse needs of higher education. While ERIC-HE does not have the internal resources to fund such a project, the agency recognizes the importance of the endeavor and is encouraging it with non-monetary support (see supporting letter in appendix).

Reviewing the project summaries of current and past FIPSE projects, this proposal is different from many, in that it will perhaps contribute more at the national level than at the level of the sponsoring institution. However, in order to make the best use of the web, George Mason faculty, academic planners, and students are in great need of a search engine which is sensitive to the unique vocabulary of higher education. The many efforts which are underway at Mason and elsewhere to incorporate web technology will remain fragmented and perhaps incomplete if faculty are unable to compare and contrast their web-based classroom and administrative projects with those of their peers. In addition, content/concept maps represent an important innovation in data mining and in how institutions develop their information infrastructure.

This project also offers a significant contribution to faculty development, in that institutions will no longer have to reinvent some of the wheel of curricular reform and innovation, but will be better able to find and utilize existing models freely available on the web. Provided with a complex, visual concept map to higher education in a taxonomy that addresses their needs, faculty will be equipped with a new tool to locate and learn from best practices. Higher education faculty and academic planners badly need a relevant, concept-based, search tool which will help them make sense of and make the best use of the virtual explosion of resources on the web.

For example - faced with problems of retention, campus planners can click on the concept map for students, examine the relationship of ideas about retention, attrition, and graduation rates, then quickly find quality web sites to help them understand the problems they are facing. The web sites already exist. Campuses are making online documents available which tell the stories of their best practices. The trouble for the average user is in screening and finding these sites and the Clearinghouse is focused on helping people make this connection.

The purpose of this proposed FIPSE project is to create an entirely new type of search engine for Internet resources related to higher education – the Internet Clearinghouse for Higher Education. The project will be housed at George Mason University and principal investigator Dr. John Milam will collaborate closely with the ERIC Clearinghouses for Higher Education and for Assessment and Evaluation. At the end of the third year of the project, responsibility will be turned over to the ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education so that the project services will be institutionalized as a regular function of ERIC.

During the course of the project, critical collaborative relationships will be formed with Educom, the ERIC Clearinghouse for Information and Technology, the National Library of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative to develop the cataloging schema and taxonomy and eliminate possible duplication with other efforts. This new initiative draws upon and expands the GEM and Metadata projects to develop standards for cataloging Internet resources. It is anticipated that an important dialogue will develop with Educom and GEM about their respective cataloging efforts and how these might be made most useful for higher education search engines.

The project will encourage and make effective use of all other systematic efforts to document web resources by topic within higher education, in a sort of coordinating role much like ERIC now assumes for the print literature. For example, while ERIC is often the first place to go for bibliographic research, other commercial and non-profit resources such as Education Index and Higher Education Abstracts should also be consulted. The mission and scope of each literature resource is different. While the Internet Clearinghouse will serve a critical role for cataloging and disseminating web resources, other comprehensive efforts are needed as well. The expectations for the transformation of higher education via the web are too great and the demands are too complex to expect a single solution to meet all needs.

This proposal departs from the ERIC-IT focus with GEM in that it is not limited to lesson plans and K-12 curricular resources, but to all types and kinds of higher education-related Internet resources, from links to campus wide information systems to online courses by discipline to models for enrollment projections. The ERIC-IT cataloging system and software developed with GEM have much to offer, but parts of the record structure and field definitions such as potential audience need to be reworked and expanded. It is expected that, while many quality higher education-related links will be cataloged, a significant effort in the search for new links will focus on areas targeted by ERIC-HE and FIPSE.

The most significant innovation of this project is the use of visual concept maps to document the relationship between ideas, concepts, and resources in higher education. Based on the work of Ausubel (1968), Novak (1993), and Jonassen and Grabowski (1993), a content map "visually describes the relationships between ideas in a knowledge domain" (Plotnick, 1997). The hypertext model of the web allows for users to move back and forth between links, without being relegated to a hierarchical, linear, menu system. Software tools for knowledge discovery and outlining, such as Inspiration Pro, are based on this concept. As part of this project, Dr. Milam will create a concept map based on the ERIC thesaurus of descriptors. The ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation has already provided Dr. Milam with an electronic version of the thesaurus of descriptors so that he may do some preliminary analysis of its suitability for this purpose.

For example, out of the discussion of a taxonomy about student development may come the idea to create a concept map based on a composite model of student departure, such as developed by Tinto. Each variable in the causal model of student attrition could be an image in the concept map, leading the user to different types of Internet resources.

Currently, there is some movement away from the use of controlled vocabularies to providing keyword searching of full text documents, a natural evolution consistent with the growth of search algorithms. This project’s use of the ERIC thesaurus does not represent a step backward. Rather, it is based on the recognition that the higher education knowledge base is very complex and that concept maps provide an invaluable tool for navigating this taxonomy. While full-text, keyword searches can be extremely powerful, they can also result in more "noise," with thousands of seemingly meaningful hits that have little relevance to a searcher’s topic of interest. The Clearinghouse addresses this noise with concept maps that link quality resources.

The target audience for the concept maps includes faculty, staff, and students who do not fully understand the complex nature of research on higher education. Scholars who already grasp the relationship between search terms can use the planned keyword searching feature. Others will want to incorporate the controlled vocabulary of ERIC. The idea behind the concept maps is to add a third dimension to searching which in effect takes some of the research out of doing research, by pre-building the relationships behind key concepts that practitioners need to take into account when examining a topic.

The Clearinghouse database of links will be screened for relevance to each content area and for quality. Consistent with the ERIC’s bibliographic monitoring role, in which it only adds print citations to the database that meet its specified criteria, the Internet Clearinghouse will not add every possible link related to higher education. The Clearinghouse will instead focus on adding resources of high topical interest, such as the FIPSE program areas, which present new and unique ways of addressing a problem or issue. For example, while human resource issues are of great interest, there will be no effort to locate and categorize every human resource office with a web site. A more useful approach is to catalog web resources that represent different techniques and applications, that demonstrate good practice, and that provide examples of innovation. One area in which the Clearinghouse might catalog individual schools is for common data sets. Currently there is no central place to get CDS data from all participating schools.

Currently, practitioners use a subject guide or search engine to locate web resources. What will be different with the implementation of the Internet Clearinghouse for Higher Education? As an example, imagine that a user is interested in resources related to "cost of instruction." When she goes to the primary URL for the Clearinghouse, she will choose between using the concept maps, the ERIC taxonomy, and keyword searching.

If she chooses the concept maps, the first thing she will see will be a map of the broad types of resources, with heading such as students, faculty, courses, finance, and human resources. Perhaps she clicks on the word "finance." The visual concept maps will show her the taxonomy of resources related to higher education finance, including a diagram which might lead to other concept maps with topics such as tuition costs, financial aid, econometric models, economic impact analysis, state funding, and income benefits of higher education. The user can then drill down to related mappings or drill up to broader search terms. Each picture in the visual diagram will show the number of Internet resources matching the search criteria. By clicking on a special icon attached to each image, the user will get a list of links which match the search criteria.

If a user does not need the research relationships inherent in the concept maps, she can type in a keyword or burrow through groupings of subjects and keywords in a structure similar in some ways to that of Yahoo, but tailored for higher education. When the submit button is clicked, all resources meeting the search criteria will be listed.

Using this method, the user would be led to resources which the project staff might catalog, such as: (1) different models for determining cost of instruction put up by a research university, a doctoral institution, and a community college’s institutional research office; (2) online conference papers from AIR, ASHE, and SCUP; (3) Department of Education online publications; (4) the report of the National Commission on Responsibilities for Financing Postsecondary Education; (5) SREB State Data Exchange documents about expenditures per student FTE; (6) John Minter Associates’ web site on management ratios; (7) the interactive IPEDS site and its finance data; (8) the Research Associates publication Higher Education Resources and Expenditures: Institutional Data; (9) articles from the online edition of NACUBO Business Officer articles; (10) the recent report of the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education; and (11) the FIPSE call for proposals and current projects on this topic.

All of these documents are available online in some manner, though they are very difficult to find unless one knows where to look. In tests of the commercial search engines using the search term "cost of instruction," none of these resources appeared in the lists of hits. Instead, using Excite, users find "Helicopter Adventures, Inc.," and with Lycos users are able to locate "Silicon Engineering – Summary."

Dr Milam will build a dialogue about the taxonomy of higher education, using presentations, demonstrations, and focus groups at the professional meetings of ASHE, AERA, AAHE, SCUP, Educom, and AIR. Another tool which will be used to generate dialogue is the online forum, similar in many respects to a newsgroup, where scholars and practitioners read different threads of posts about a topic and participate in a discussion that is more coherent than that found in listservs or newsgroups. The online forums also provide a permanent record of the evolution of the taxonomy.

ERIC-HE will help host the focus group sessions, in cooperation with project staff. ERIC-AE will also be involved in their design and the analysis of the results. While the ERIC thesaurus provides some inherent taxonomy, the relationships between search terms are not consistently documented. The number of broader and more narrow terms for a given keyword are minimal at best. Using the thesaurus as a starting point in the discussion of taxonomy, the focus groups will be used to apply scholars’ complex understanding of the knowledge base to the relationship of search terms. This effort requires an understanding of causal maps as well as concept maps. It is expected that this effort will not meet with consensus and that different audiences and constituencies will have different approaches to the use of key words. However, it is hoped that out of these discussions will come some basic, working assumptions about the kinds of relationships between terms which need to be understood in order to conduct useful searches of web resources.

The project will begin with the 2,000 links maintained in Dr. Milam's web site Internet Resources for Institutional Research and with the links developed by ERIC-HE. These will be catalogued and entered into a relational database. Additional higher education links will be added from searches of Yahoo, Excite, the higher education-related subject guides, all of the ERIC Clearinghouses, and other sources. Software such as Linkbot will be used to search web sites and find new links. The purpose of this project is not to supplant the efforts of other subject guides, especially those that specialize in certain topics such as assessment, but to link to and support them.

It is anticipated that many individuals and offices will want to be involved in contributing web sites for the database. For this reason, a web application will be created which allows for people across the country to add and modify links and resources, providing annotated reviews whenever possible. Wage employees will be hired to monitor the search engine, assist in locating and cataloging web resources, and provide various levels of support.

Whenever possible, this project will promote the use of GEM and/or IMS metadata tags in order to reduce the amount of cataloging that will be necessary. If tags such as author or keyword are already used in a document, these will be extracted and incorporated into the database record for a web site URL. To encourage the use of these tags, one possibility is to send the cataloged record for a web site to the owner with the recommendation that the HTML for the cataloging tags be added to the original document.

The project staff will develop a special web server to house the database and the search engine. While the technologies available for this development are constantly changing, it is expected that the project will begin by using Windows NT, Access, SQL, the database middleware product Cold Fusion, Netscape Enterprise Server, and HTML forms. It is possible that a database server will be used with Microsoft’s software SQL Server to accommodate the dynamic nature of the dataset. Or, perhaps the site may consist of static pages that are refreshed nightly with database-generated output. The server will be connected to the Internet via the ATM backbone at the university and at ERIC and may be mirrored at other sites throughout the country to share the server load and increase response time.

See the appendix for a table of goals and objectives, a timeline, and evaluation procedures for each phase the proposed project. As described above, the primary goals and objectives of the project are to:

1. Develop a visual concept/content map for higher education, beginning with the ERIC thesaurus of descriptors, building a scholarly dialogue about the best taxonomy to use
2. Modify existing cataloging software to better document higher education links
3. Find, screen, and catalog quality web resource links
4. Build a web database server for online queries
5. Develop and pilot test the search engine to query the catalog database
6. Gather and use feedback to improve the content maps, catalog system, web server, and search engine
7. Publicize the project and disseminate information about the search engine and web resources, including an email newsletter similar to the Scout Report
8. Develop a model and funding strategy to move the project from the FIPSE grant stage to become a fully operational service within ERIC.

Critical to the success of the search engine is feedback about the search engine's design, ergonomics, and usefulness for different purposes. Continuous feedback will be solicited with a series of online survey forms that focus on key questions at each stage of the project. The general higher education conferences of ASHE, AERA, AAHE, AIR, Educom, and SCUP will be used to promote the pilot, gather comments and feedback, demonstrate the search engine, and hold focus groups.

The proposed debate about the higher education taxonomy needs to take place at a national level and involve many kinds of constituencies. For this reason, the ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education and the ERIC Clearinghouse for Assessment and Evaluation will collaborate with Dr. Milam in the conference presentations and in designing and evaluating the focus group sessions. A letter of support from ERIC-AE is included in the appendix, along with that of ERIC-HE, detailing this collaborative arrangement.

In addition, Dr. Karen Gentemann and Dr. Nancy Ahson, Director and Associate Director respectively of the Assessment Office at George Mason University, have agreed to be involved in the design of the feedback forms and in the analysis of the results. This effort is funded as part of the university's in-kind contribution. Working as a project team under the coordination of Dr. Milam, ERIC-HE, ERIC-AE, and George Mason's Assessment staff will evaluate the focus groups, survey results, and critical performance measures.

The proposed evaluation activities include the following:

1. Focus groups to discuss the concept maps and taxonomy, with a feedback mechanism to evaluate the success of the focus groups;
2. Focus groups to discuss the search engine;
3. Online forums to generate discussion about the taxonomies;
4. Online feedback and satisfaction surveys about various stages of the project; this will be a mainstay feature of the web site;
5. Performance measures, such as the number of web resources added per month, the number of hits, and ratings about the usefulness of the results
6. A pilot test of the search engine, comparing results for beginner and advanced users to those obtained with other search engines or subject guides
7. Feedback from cards/surveys handed out at conference presentations, demonstrations, and vendor showcases
8. Peer debriefing about the project with ERIC-HE, ERIC-AE and Mason Assessment staff.
9. A methodological log about the evolution of the project, contacts, and other notes

It is expected that over the course of the proposed three year FIPSE grant the technology of the World Wide Web will continue to change dramatically. While the initial project will make use of Cold Fusion, this may not continue to be the best choice in the future. A new type of Java database application may become available which will allow for a search engine to be developed which will be more efficient and quicker. It is expected that almost every aspect of this project's software and hardware resources will be made obsolete by the end of the funding period. Although George Mason University and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education will provide in-kind contributions of hardware and software, this proposal also includes some monies for software expenditures to keep versions up to date.

The most significant issue which may impact the project is its possible success. Once the cataloging system is in place, the content maps developed, and the database application programmed for the web server, the Clearinghouse may get many more hits than anticipated. For this reason, some expenditures have been built into the budget to cover the cost of maintaining web sites at commercial hosting services. This will balance the server load, provide backup in the event one web site is not up, and decrease access time. It is important that the project begin as soon as possible to provide a search engine function. The software and database technologies will always evolve. Project staff will keep current on changing web technologies and evaluate the best and most affordable approach for offering the Clearinghouse.

The following is taken from the official "Statement on Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action" of George Mason University and is on record in the Human Resources office.

Specific to the circumstances of this project, the AltaVista web-based, translation service will be used on an experimental basis to develop a Spanish version of the Internet Clearinghouse, at least through the first few top layers of the menu structure. After an evaluation of this service, if this proves to be inadequate, options for a separate translation service or software product will be evaluated, tested, and used.

A text-based version of the web site will also be made available for the visually handicapped and those with dyslexia. This will conform to ADA standards for the web, such as the percentage of color change in graphics design. Online web software such as Bobby, provided by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) will be used to analyze how accessible the web site is for people with disabilities.

Using custom Cold Fusion application tags and/or a special Perl script, it will be possible to detect which web browser a client is using and to display an appropriate version of the homepage. This will allow access by the lowest common denominator of web browser software available. Whenever possible, the web site will not rely upon special plug-in software, helper applications, or special software requirements to make full use of the Clearinghouse.

The specific facilities where the project activities will be conducted (Mason Hall at George Mason University and The National Higher Education Center, One Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. for the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education) have elevators, are wheelchair accessible, and eliminate possible barriers of physical access.

Project staff for the three years will include Dr. John Milam and two wage employees. Dr. Milam's effort (.333 FTE) is estimated at 1/3 his current salary plus fringe benefits at 22.3%. Wage employees are estimated at $12 an hour for the maximum yearly allowable rate of 1500 hours, plus FICA costs of 7.65%. Annual increases are included at an estimated rate of 5%.

Conference presentations, demonstrations, and vendor showcases are an important component of the focus groups and dissemination processes of the project. Six conference packages are estimated in the budget, one of them the FIPSE conference. These are estimated at $300 for registration fee, $300 for airfare (except for the FIPSE conference), $700 for hotel costs and per diem under the state allowable rate, and $60 for parking, shuttles, and other transportation. To display information at the conferences, the rental of vendor display tables is estimated at $500 per year for five conferences.

Office supplies are included at $500 per year. Software costs the first year are estimated at $2000, with an additional $1,000 per year for upgrades. Some web server software is free and the estimate is low because of academic pricing. In addition, once the search engine is working, it will be necessary to host the web site. While George Mason and perhaps ERIC may be able to arrange for access to T1, T3, or ATM-level Internet access, it is anticipated that leased hosting space may be the best alternative to provide consistent service to users. This is estimated at $150 per month, with increases the following two years for CPI adjustments.

The dissemination of project information with printing, postage, and other publication costs is estimated at $1500 per year for postage and $1000 per year for printing. It is expected that several mailings will be done to gather support at the outset of the project, particularly related to the development of a national dialogue about the concept maps and the taxonomy of higher education.

Per usual practice with other Department of Education grant programs, only 8% of indirect costs are included in the project proposal. George Mason will contribute the remainder of the standard indirect cost rate of 43%. This in-kind contribution will cover space, overhead, and other costs such as equipment. ERIC-Higher Education will also provide some indirect costs that have yet to be determined, most probably in space for wage employees, hardware for the web server, and computers for data entry. Among direct costs born by the institution, George Mason lists the Assessment office staff Drs. Karen Gentemann and Nancy Ahson at their current salary plus fringe, with standard increases, at .02 FTE, a low estimate of approximately 1 week's work per year in the evaluation of the project.

This proposal requests $93,270 from FIPSE in the first year, $96,024 the second, and $100,050 the third for a total of $289,344. George Mason's in-kind contribution totals $104,657. Total project funding, including direct and indirect costs paid by George Mason, amounts to $394,001.

Ausubel, D. (1968). Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Jonassen, D.H., & Grabowski, B. L. (1993). Handbook of Individual Differences: Learning & Instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.

Novak, J. D. (1993). "How Do We Learn Our Lesson?: Taking Students through the Process." The Science Teacher, 60(3), 50-55.

Plotnick, Eric. (1997). "Concept Mapping: A Graphical System for Understanding the Relation ship Between Concepts." ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Tech- nology. EDO-IR-97-05.