Focused Effort Title: Information Technology in the New University:
Application to the ERDC Graduate Institute

Organization:
	Florida State University
	Jackson State University
	Mississippi State University

Thematic Area(s):
	Scalable Computing Migration
	HPC Training and DoD User Productivity
	HPC Performance Metrics/Tools
	Management and Interpretation of Large Data Sets
	SciVis for Very Large Problems

Lead:	Geoffrey Fox (primary contact), Willie Brown, Joe Thompson

Email Address: gcf@cs.fsu.edu

Telephone:  850 644 4587		Fax:

Statement of Work:

This effort builds on collaboration built up over the last 4 years by
ERDC funding and being expanded for an NSF ITR proposal. The latter
has made it through the first cut (1 in 10) but still faces fierce
competition for funding.  New models for education are enabled by
information technology such as TangoInteractive, the increasingly
sophisticated portal technology and mobile devices. This technology
enables both more interactive higher quality curriculum and new
delivery mechanisms that could change the traditional relationship of
student, teachers and mentors. In particular new technology enhances
the capability of asynchronous learning (students interacting with
education/training portals anywhere at any time) and allows curriculum
to be developed and delivered by faculty distant from the
students. Although it is easy to forecast change, it is far less clear
what this change will be as this depends on complex interactions
between technology opportunities, infrastructure deployment, changing
conservative educational institutions and most importantly customer
(student) acceptance.

In this proposal, we focus on two learning sectors: 
1) The MSRC staff and users with a particular focus on the ERDC
   Graduate Institute
2) Undergraduate and Graduate Students at PET HBCU partners - a key
   aspect of the pipeline to the U.S. (and in particular) DoD workforce.

We will address one major and one secondary curriculum area
1) Graduate level (continuing education) education in information
   technology and high performance computing
2) Undergraduate level education in information technology with this
   curriculum being adaptable to introductory continuing education
   material for MSRC students without a primary degree in information
   technology area

We will develop material in accordance with the model of collaborative
portals as explained in
http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/pajavaapril00/. This is
mainly addressing computing portals but basic architecture is the same
for education and training case. The architecture embodies ideas
prototyped in TangoInteractive as well as asynchronous portals like
those from Lotus (LearningSpace) WebCT and Blackboard that are popular
in many universities. We will also include PowerPoint, which is of
course popular in the HPCMO program.  

We have set up a working group led by Joe Thompson consisting of those
responsible for web-based education at several South East
Universities. This group is established under the auspices of SURA and
it is currently studying a project to take these commercial portals
and map them into a common XML specification of the educational
objects on which they are built.

In this ERDC focussed effort, we intend to develop material within
this emerging framework that initially is targeted at asynchronous
web-based use but can be delivered in TangoInteractive fashion through
shared web browsers. FSU will lead the effort to define and support
the needed portal technology. One seemingly inevitable consequence of
distance education technology is that in the future curricula material
will tend to be developed in larger groups than the traditional
individual and that this high quality material will be shared among
students at several institutions. In the case of the NSF ITR, we aim
at HBCU (Minority serving) institutions with the goal of improving
undergraduate computer science education.  In this effort, MSU will
lead the effort to define and develop curriculum material of the type
described above for the ERDC Graduate Institute.  It will have
graduate courses (such as CPS615 and CPS616 developed at Syracuse) as
well as more elementary set of courses adapted from undergraduate CS
curriculum defined in NSF ITR but aimed at non-CS majors for graduate
version.  Jackson State will be responsible for adapting courses
between the HBCU and MSRC versions at both undergraduate and graduate
level. They will also staff teaching of material at HBCU's. All three
institutions will contribute to the development of curriculum
material.

This effort is potentially long term as it envisages a new process for
course exchange between universities and DoD. In the first year we
intend to set up the framework and develop sample courses. There could
also be possible infrastructure issues that would need an additional
activity. In a separate focussed effort, we have suggested that more
sophisticated audio-video conferencing (such as the Access Grid) could
be important.

Relation of Coupled Activities Discussed Above

Here we clarify the two outside activities described above to show
they are synergistic and not duplicative with the effort here.

The NSR ITR proposal to be submitted by FSU, MSU, JSU, and FAMU will
focus on enhancing the undergraduate CS curriculum at the Nation's
HBCUs - by adding web-based delivery of certain courses from major CS
programs to the curriculum already available at the HBCUs, as well as
sharing of courses among HBCUs.

The proposed SURA effort, originating from a workshop conducted by
Thompson and Fox, will focus on the development of education portals
to enable efficient sharing of course materials and delivery
technology across the SURA universities. Since the SURA region
encompasses most of the Nation's HBCUs, a logical application of these
portals is in the HBCUs.

This presently proposed PET multi-university focused effort would
leverage these two related efforts to (1) adapt undergraduate course
development and delivery from the NSF effort to deliver undergraduate
IT courses in MSRCs, targeted particularly at MSRC researchers without
CS degrees but also serving as some continuing education for those
with CS degrees, and (2) to adapt the portals from the SURA effort to
enhance graduate CS programs in the ERDC Graduate Institute, at other
MSRCs, and at HBCUs.

Deliverables:
o Presentations for PET Midyear and Annual Reviews
o Inputs to PET Annual Report
o Written progress reports in June and December 2000
o Final Technical Report in March 2001
o September 00: Technology Framework and Curriculum Design
o December 00: First graduate class adapted for ERDC Institute with
  HBCU version 
o January-April 01: Delivery of first class at ERDC Institute 
  and to HBCU network university
o March 01: Three classes available.

Requested Resources:
	Florida State:		$120,000
	Jackson State:		$100,000
	Mississippi State:	$ 80,000

Florida State Budget Detail

Item			Base		Fringe
Geoffrey Fox		 13846		2548
David Bernholdt		  5095		 937
Other Staff		 16667		3067
Grad. Students (2)	 32000		 192
Tuition			  6918
Travel			  2838
Overhead		 35893

TOTAL			120000

Travel include 2 trips to ERDC or Jackson for "All Hands" meetings