AIM Lab Narrative

As part of his curriculum revitalization project, Associate Dean William George asked me in 1993 to help faculty integrate computers into their teaching. We looked at the Educational Technologies lab in the School of Life Sciences and then started our own in ACES. After the release of NCSA Mosaic on the UI campus later that year, we focused on web technology. AIM lab became a model web design team bringing together artists, graphic designers, instructional designers, and programmers to address faculty needs.

A 1994 project The Discovery System was the one of the first large scale class home pages in the world and was presented at the "2nd Annual World Wide Web Conference - Mosaic and The Web." The system was conceived by the first three AIM Lab members, Schmitz, Marsha Woodbury, and Mary Connors, and supported by our first undergraduate interns, Aaron Buckley and Chip Aubry. Funding came from the Ed Tech Board and from SCALE.

Our collaboration with the CCNet Agribusiness committee beginning that same year resulted in the first agricultural portal, the Cyberfarm. Collaboration on Cyberfarm technologies with NCSA staff also began that year. Cyberfarm graphics were created by the star AIM graphic team, Aaron Buckley and Mary Connors.

We created online tutorials in 1994 and 1995 covering web technologies such as Netscape, Eudora and Acrobat. Marsha Woodbury and John wrote the first tutorials, followed by more extensive tutorials by Wendy Van Wazer and Scott Wennerdahl for SCALE use. Scott's Netscape and Acrobat tutorial have received over a million hits.

In 1996 we began to use Java for several projects, including a web-based-GIS viewer by Chris Hewes that was later adopted by NCSA. Early PERL projects included helping support the the Nutrition Analysis Tool created by Jim Painter and Chris Hewes, the most popular outreach site on the UIUC campus at an est. 1.5 million hits a month. 

Another PERL project in 1995, the Virtual Classroom Interface (VCI) was created by AIM Lab staff members Mary Connors and Aaron Buckley for use in ACES but was deployed for 500 classes across the UIUC campus. Mary Connors' 1998 project tested VCI with 50 high school teachers and was funded by Partnership Illinois.

Using equipment in the Beckman Visualization Lab, AIM lab's Chris Hewes developed in 1996 an all-digital 25 minute film called Introduction to the Virtual Classroom which aired on campus and local cable TV channels. The same year AIM Lab's work on Cyberfarm was featured in a NPR TV documentary called Digital Nation.

Our 1998 Morrill 1 project--a collaboration with Grainger Engineering Library and the Agriculture Library--created a prototype digital library for the College of Agriculture and for the Land Grant System. This effort helped lead led to recent year 2000 decisions for ACES and the UI Library to join the national AgNIC consortium. A major equipment donation from INTEL and staff funding from the CFAR SRI IT made the project possible. 

AIM's  work in visualization continued 1999 with work by Mike Acker with 3-D software such as Maya and Cosmo Worlds, creating a prototype of a virtual library. The INTEL equipment grant strongly supported this project. This and earlier VRML and graphics work in the AIM Lab has led to to proposal for a dedicated visualization and virtual reality facility. 

Our recent work on the Online Agronomy Handbook extends our digital library work by creating an interactive electronic book rich with decision aids and seamlessly linked to databases. Also funded by the CFAR SRI IT program, this and related projects in ACES aims at the creation of an integrated, web-based system to support production agriculture and natural resource management.

AIM lab's original home was in the Old Ornamental Horticulture building where we worked closely with our colleague and webmaster, Don Meyer, and Jeana McAllister, head of the Academic Computing Facility. Following the formation of the integrated ITCS unit in ACES, we moved to the Taft House--the historic boyhood home of the sculptor Lorado Taft (see UI Taft Archives here)--and joined a new set of colleagues in Instructional Materials.

In the summer of 1999, AIM lab hosted Dr. Sandhya Shenoy, FAO Fellow and a Specialist in Agricultural Extension from India. Her summer project was to work with us to construct the first portal for Indian Agriculture, The Agricultural Gateway to India.

Linkages to NCSA staff continued over the last six years and enriched our work. Use of their Beckman labs and the CAVE environment provided us the highest of hi-tech capability. We have supported the ACES / NCSA collaboration including the Dynamic Modeling Workshop.

AIM lab's mission to support ACES faculty use of the Web continues through I-Support and by providing on-demand consulting and web development from ACES faculty.