Distance Education for Curricula Enhancement at HBCUs

Vision

Distance education is likely to be revolutionized by the growing power of
high speed networks and Web Software for delivery, preparation and
teacher-student/student-student collaboration components of education and
training. This impact will be important at all levels of education K-12,
undergraduate, graduate, continuing education and institutional training as
in the DoD. Currently there is very little experience as to what features of
both hardware and software are important and it is probable that there is no
one answer but different applications will have different requirements and
varying success.

NPAC has in TANGO and WebWisdom leading edge collaboration and dissemination
technologies. Further the Virtual Programming Laboratory is a good prototype
Web lab environment. Further we have substantial experience with computer
Science graduate and undergraduate classes, Physics 105/106 undergraduate
class, and Living SchoolBook at K-12 level
in the use of the Web for education and training in many areas.

Project Description and Value to PET

The application of NPAC technology can impact both asynchronous (self study
by student) and synchronous (teacher delivery) modes. Further it can be used
both in MSRC training and education as well as in programs with the
partnering HBCU's. The MSRC applications could be a model for much broader
scale DoD training and so lessons learnt could be of profound importance.
Again the HBCU applications are a model for how knowledge(from "leading edge
research" Universities) in rapidly changing fields can be transferred to the
curricula of educational institutions which are not so strongly coupled to
research in these fields and so find it hard to keep their curricula up to
date. Thus impact includes education in community colleges and similar
institutions and will have broad national importance and not just confined
to a few or all HBCU's.

This proposal covers the initial phases of what is anticipated to be a
long-term Focused Effort in Distance Education. The goal at this stage is to
setup the necessary infrastructure to provide distance education at CEWES
and the HBCUs and to conduct several trials designed to help evaluate
different strategic approaches and technical details of the implementations.
It is worth noting that taken individually, not all of these trials will be
considered "successes" by those involved. The real measure of success must
be developing from these trials an effective set of strategies and
implementations for distance education which can be applied as this Focused
Effort continues.

Here the goal is not just to educate a few students better but to leave a
lasting impact on the institution in terms of a better curricula and more
knowledgeable faculty equipped with better Web based tools. This implies
project must have committed involvement of HBCU faculty. We also rely on the
established relationship of CEWES & PET management with the HBCUs.
Consequently, we offer not a list of detailed deliverables, but an overall
plan, with consultation among all of the partners to fix the details as the
project proceeds.

In light of the fluidity required by this project, the staffing and budget
estimates are no more than rough estimates. As presented, these figures
suppose strong involvement with both Jackson State University and Clark
Atlanta University. They also rely on the reuse of course materials already
developed by NPAC for these initial experiments--new courses can certainly
be developed, but this will require adjustments to schedules and budgets.
These assumptions are certainly subject to discussion and revision as the
details of the plan are fixed.

Deliverables

NPAC will take primary responsibility for these items, but specific
deliverables must be designed and agreed by all partners.

   * Ongoing enhancement of Tango, WebWisdom (and if involved the Virtual
     Workshop) to support the selected distance learning experiments.
   * A compact (1-2 week) presentation of a course involving only Syracuse
     and CEWES as a "shakedown" run for the delivery systems. Course topic
     will be decided in consultation with CEWES management, but a basic web
     technology course is anticipated. (by August 1997)
   * Once technical glitches are worked out, one more compact (1-2 week)
     course should be presented, possibly at one of the HBCUs rather than at
     CEWES. (by December 1997)
   * Once technical details are ironed out, Syracuse will coordinate with
     CEWES management and HBCU faculty to plan a set of distance learning
     experiments to be carried out during the remainder of the year and
     continuing into subsequent years. (by December 1997)
   * Once HBCU implementation starts, we suggest several different
     approaches could be tried with perhaps the different universities
     choosing to try out different learning models. Important issues to
     explore include:
        o Tradeoffs between synchronous and asynchronous delivery
        o Role of professors at "client" site (i.e. HBCU) could vary from
          traditional synchronous deliverer to being a mentor for students
          with remote University (e.g. NPAC) delivering material.
        o "Train the trainers" (i.e. professors at HBCU) versus "Train the
          Students" implementation.
        o Importance of the exploratory aspect of learning which is
          naturally supported by Web-based approach.
   * Regular semester-length courses to be offered at HBCUs starting January
     1998.
   * While the ultimate goal of distance education is to minimize the need
     for face-to-face student-instructor contact, the nature of this project
     is such that we consider it advisable to make somewhat more on-site
     visits than we would expect in the long term. For the compact courses,
     we plan 1 day at the beginning of the course and one day at the end for
     followup. For the semester-length courses, we plan for trips of 1-2 day
     duration at the beginning, middle, and end of the course.

Additional Requirements

These items are considered critical to the success of this project, but
while NPAC hopes to play a significant role in the decision-making process,
they would seem ultimately to be the primary responsibility of our partners.

   * Installation of appropriate networked multimedia PC's at HBCU's in full
     classroom configurations (at least 24(12) machines with one(two)
     students per node). Smaller clusters with identical base hardware
     should be present at CEWES, NPAC and other relevant places. These
     systems should be linked by high speed networks supporting interactive
     video conferencing as well as multicast of educational videos served
     from a digital video server.
   * Hiring of a "Network Training Lead" by Jackson State University