Technology Highlights
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies continued its growth in technology use. An internal grant program encouraged faculty to expand online course materials, and was greeted enthusiastically by both students and faculty. Over 1,000 work requests were handled by systems support, and audio/video clips and a new design were implemented for the college website. Jeff Pruett manages computer support services for the college, and Cynthia Blasdell manages the college website and coordinates educational technology activities in the college.

Systems Support

During 2001, the Office of Systems Support, composed of a manager, 2 full time staff and 2 student assistants, handled 1,045 work requests. In addition to maintaining over 400 workstations, 4 student labs and over 150 laptops, Systems Support also administers two web servers and offers second tier support to the departments and centers for their servers.

Jeff Pruett, Manager of AYSPS Systems Support, served as member of two Senate subcommittees and the NET/SIG committee (a university wide discussion group dealing with information technology issues). In the past year he sat on a committee that drafted a Wireless Policy for the university and chaired a working group that is developing a computer emergency response procedure for the university.

Web Activities

Key activity at the college website in 2001 focused on the addition of audio and video elements, upgrade to a more streamlined "look and feel," continued development of relevant content, and outreach within the University.

The occasion of the Foreign Policy Symposium in March, with former President Clinton and Ambassador Young, proved to be an ideal occasion to begin incorporation of audio and video archives of important events in the life of the college. Don Howell and Matthew Munson from GSU's Division of Distance and Distributed Learning provided vital assistance during this process. Additional multimedia projects in response to the popularity of the archives included video of the Governor speaking about the Andrew Young School, highlights from Maya Angelou and Harry Belafonte's hosting of the Andrew Young Birthday Gala Celebration and fundraiser, discussion of AYSPS programs by the Mandela Fellows, and video of Ambassador Young speaking about his life to the Summer Interns.

A new design was created and implemented for the college website. Goals were a streamlined "look and feel," and more efficient maintenance. David Richardson from the University Educational Technology Services group created the new templates, and Cynthia Blasdell integrated the templates within the existing website architecture.

Continued development of relevant content included creation of a new historical site on Andrew Young, and photo galleries from the Foreign Policy Symposium with President Clinton and Ambassador Young, the South Africa Study Abroad Program. The site was kept up-to-date with information from The Briefing, academic bulletins, course syllabi, course pages, experts pages, media hits, news releases, and dissertation announcements.

Cynthia Blasdell, College Web Coordinator, served on the Web Instructional Support Planning Team (WebISPT) during Fall 2001. Called by the Provost to evaluate educational technology support at the University, this group identified ways to leverage university resources to maximize the effectiveness of technology-enabled instruction and associated learning. Increased collaboration between the Andrew Young School, the central support units, and the other colleges has resulted from the meetings.

College Web Oversight Committee members are: Cynthia Blasdell (Chair), Jamie Boex, Wanda Cooley, Julie Hotchkiss, Angie Jackson, Susan Laury, Glenn Landers, Jeff Pruett, Joey Smith, and Greg Streib. The committee met in Spring 2001 to continue to identify ways to optimize the audience experience and maximize traffic across the college, department and center websites. This involves identifying overlaps and linkages between the units.

For further information about technology initiatives and website developments across the college, please see the individual center and department sections of the annual report.

Educational Technology

As part of an effort to expand educational technology initiatives within the School, the Dean's office offered for the second year a Summer WebCT Incentive grant program. As the primary educational technology tool used by AYSPS and GSU, WebCT facilitates the creation of online educational environments, offering a secure space for faculty and students to chat, post messages, turn in class assignments, access grades, post group projects, etc. Faculty are able to monitor activity on the WebCT site, and students are able to receive immediate feedback as they progress through the course.

As a dual objective of awarding early adopters and of creating a collaborative environment of assistance for new adopters of WebCT, the Dean's office incentive program is structured as a mentor/mentee program. All mentees were asked to incorporate multiple features of WebCT into their course(s) such as the bulletin board feature, linked syllabus, use of quiz feature, chat rooms, etc. Mentors were chosen based on their previous WebCT experience. Mentors and Mentees were:

WebCT Mentees and Mentors*

Mentee	Course	Mentor(s)
Jay Bae	Econ 4210 Health Economics	Shif Gurmu
Greg Lewis	PAUS 9111/9121 Advanced Research Methods and PAUS 4021/4031 Policy Research Methods	Ross Rubenstein
Christine Roch	PAUS 4031 Research Methods II	Julia Melkers
Ben Scafidi	Econ 8080 Economics of the Public Sector	Shif Gurmu
John Thomas	PAUS 4031/8351 Local Governance and PAUS 9151 Scope of Public Policy Spring: PAUS 3311 Public Policy Process and PAUS 4021 Policy Research Methods I	Julia Melkers
Mary Beth Walker	Econ 8740 Applied Statistics and Econometrics	Sally Wallace
William Waugh	Pers 2002 Global Disasters, PAUS 8271 Disaster Management, and PAUS 8281 Disaster Relief and Recovery	Greg Streib
Verna Willis	PAUS 4241 Training Design and Strategy	Greg Streib

Both GSU's University Educational Technology Support (UETS) and Division of Distance and Distributed Learning (DDL) groups provided educational technology support, in the form of training sessions (group, one-on-one, and workshops); brownbag meetings in which policies and technologies related to WebCT were explored; and email updates. Most importantly, they were available on an as-needed basis to troubleshoot problems as they arose, logging into courses to identify problems during phone calls with instructors.

Follow-up activities involved with the grant program include a workshop and final reports, in which mentors and mentees discussed experiences, lessons learned, and impacts to the classroom. Comments regarding the Summer 2001 WebCT Incentive Program were quite positive.