Subject: Update on Distance Education Pre Proposal Resent-Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 00:34:48 -0500 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 23:12:43 -0500 From: Geoffrey Fox To: Willie Brown , Joe Thompson , Nancy McCracken , Chris Lacher , Peter Dragovitsch I would like to get by december 17, any thoughts that you feel should be in pre-proposal. Here are some very specific requests: 1) Please Comment on Joe Thompson's suggestion that this be pursued in some way as a SURA-wide initiative. 2) Please comment on his suggestion that the concept of open source courseware (for material produced by this proposal) be included -- See his white paper below. 3) Please send me NSF style CV (At most 2 pages, 5 publications related to proposal) 4) Please send (if you haven't already) a short (1 page or so) white paper on your interest/proposed role 5) Please send me bullets describing following "cosmic issues" that NSF requires for all ITR proposals COSMIC ISSUES for ITR Proposals extracted from NSF99-167 a) For Summary: a1) Scientific research problems to be addressed a2) The methodologies to be used, and a3) The potential outcomes b) General goals in Area we fall -- how do we stand? ITR Area A) Information Technology Education and Workforce (Words from NSF99-167) A1) Educating our citizens to fill the estimated one million vacant positions in the information technology industry is a critical national need. A2) Fundamental research projects in universities should contribute to educational needs by training students, developing new research foci in existing departments, and increasing the breadth and depth of IT research activities in U.S. universities. A3) Research projects should develop new methods for educating people in IT or explore the use of learning technologies in educating K-16 students for IT careers. A5) NSF also is interested in research on methods to increase IT literacy and skills among the general student and public populations. A6) Projects which exploit international cooperation and comparisons in the understanding of workforce and educational issues are particularly encouraged. ITR Area B) Information Management (Words from NSF99-167 -- less relevant area) B1) Increasing the utility and scope of online information is the goal of this element of the ITR research program. Proposals should outline fundamental research activities dealing either with online content (transforming the kind, quality or amount of material online) or with access (increasing the utility of online information via research on quality, economics, searching, or other related areas). B2) Proposals relating to online information content should involve a significant body of online information; they should address the nature of the material, what is new, and how it will be provided in a sustainable and permanent way. c) Discuss the goals, objectives and anticipated impact of the proposed project. d) Make clear whyt the proposed project is a research project, e) Describe Contributions to advances in information technology and f) Describe Advances in Education and Workforce as defined below by NSF g) What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? g1) To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks, and partnerships? g2) How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning? g3) How well does the proposed activity broaden the participation of underrepresented groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, geographic, etc.)? g4) Integrating Diversity g5) Community-extending concepts such as undergraduate education or links to minority serving institutions, or institutions in EPSCOR states g6) Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding? g7) Plans for distributing software etc. g8) What may be the benefits of the proposed activity to society? g9) Integration of Research and Education h) Management Plan i) Budget Material from Joe Thompson on Open Source Courseware ---------------------------------------------------- GENERAL ARGUMENT words ---------------------- The rapid profusion of commercial efforts in IT-enabled course development and delivery poses a danger of lock-in to less-than-optimal proprietary systems that gain some monopoly status by virtue of widespread availability and use, as has occurred for operating systems and office systems. But higher education courses, by their very nature need to be dynamic: continually changing and adapting to incorporate new content and modes of presentation, as well as more effective pedagogy. OPEN SOURCE COURSEWARE words ---------------------------- Universities moving separately with the development of IT-enabled courses is inefficient and duplicative. Rather, a concerted effort is needed to marshall expertise and innovation across a coherent and logical group of universities to develop the body of IT-enabled courseware. By courseware is meant content in a suitable software infrastructure. Both the content and the software infrastructure would be addressed in this effort. And this courseware should be open source - continually accumulating enhancements and improvements as it is applied within the group. A recent Chronicle article (back page of the October 29 issue) argued for open source in general in terms of the traditional open nature of universities: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i10/10a09201.htm Another Chronicle article (November 5 issue) also addresses open source from the open nature of universities standpoint, but more focused on scientific software: http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i11/11a05101.htm CONCEPT words ------------- A virtual center of the HBCU/MIs and supporting universities would be formed to develop and apply open-source courseware in undergraduate and graduate education in computer and computational science, both in on-campus courses and in distance learning - for regular students and in continuing education. This courseware could ultimately extend across the entire curricula of these universities. This virtual center would also continually evaluate emerging delivery and administration systems, promulgating standards for use across the HBCU/MIs and other universities. APPROACH words -------------- The fundamental technical approach of this virtual center would be to develop object-oriented modular courseware components assembled into complete IT-enabled courses, as well as for use as components in otherwise conventional courses. These modules would be composed of four basic object classes, each of which may incorporate audio and video objects: * Text * Graphics * Animation * Simulation These modular objects would be written using XML, with standard DTDs for the various disciplines and course types. Animations and simulations would incorporate Java applets. There would also be hierarchial discipline (subject) classes, with invokable sub-classes. A course would be made up of topics, each of which would be treated in a module (object) for the topic. These topical modules would be made up of various text, graphics, animation, and simulation objects forming explanatory content, examples and homework problems, and with associated quiz questions. This modular approach would allow components to be combined into courses at different levels. Thus some of the same components could be used with differing other components to assemble a freshman physics course for majors and a general science course for non-majors. The open-source nature of this effort would allow component modules to be adapted for use beyond that originally conceived.