Geoffrey Fox DRAFT
Marv Goldberg 23 October 1996
Ed Lipson
We propose that a joint Center be set up between the two colleges of Engineering and Computer Science and Arts and Sciences. The goal of this Center is to exploit the rapid evolution of information technology in order to develop new curricula and new ways of delivering existing courses at Syracuse University. The Center would conduct world-class research in educational technologies with the expectation of attracting significant external funding. This Center builds on and integrates together several highly regarded curriculum and technology activities now at the University. The Center would support and encourage new courses whose value would be enhanced by use of new information technology such as that used in the Web based courses Phy105/106 Science for the 21st Century, Phy307/308 Science and Computers in A&S and ECS400/CPS616 Introduction to Web Technologies, CPS615 Introduction to Computational Science in ECS. Further, it will support and encourage new educational degree offerings such as the proposed "Masters in Multimedia" and "Certificate in Internet Engineering." All such degree programs would be Centered in existing academic units.
We expect that there will great student interest in new minors and certificates that focus on the latest Internet and Web technologies and which can be taken by students in essentially any existing program. Further, we see that the growing interest in Lifelong learning and the tremendous demand from employers for Web technology expertise together suggest that there is great opportunity for increased offerings through DCESS of degrees and certificates in the latest information technologies. We propose that the Center partner with DCESS in developing such offerings. The technologies in which the Center would specialize are expected to be central in a trend towards "Virtual Education" and, in particular the "Virtual University". The time scale and impact of this is not clear but a world class activity in this area must be useful and prudent for the University. We expect that CITE would work with other University units including DCESS, School of Education, and IST in various distance education projects which will help position Syracuse to be a leader in whatever emerges as the Virtual University.
Director: Marv Goldberg
Technology Lead: NPAC (Geoffrey Fox)
The Center would have some administrative and systems staff including some personnel transferred from NPAC. It will build (based on initial NPAC infrastructure) resources to support proposed education initiatives. This will include high speed networks (ATM) and video servers. Note that CITE would work with existing academic Faculty Computing and Media Services so that CITE offers leading edge services outside the current scope of base University activity. As concepts and services "mature," both infrastructure and consulting services would move to Computing and Media Services. In this sense, one could view one role of CITE as being a "research unit" of CMS.
This is an initiative to position Syracuse University for a leadership role in the Information Technology Revolution in a way that reinforces its mission as a Student Centered Research University. We can refer to this as an initiative in Information Science Integration (ISI). This envisages integrating information technology where appropriate throughout the curricula and delivery of courses at the University. As a broad based initiative, we do not propose a new academic department but do believe it is essential to establish a "real entity" - the proposed CITE - to give substance to this endeavor. It would however be possible that new academic groupings, programs or even departments be formed as the ISI is implemented. In particular, we can see a program in Information Systems Engineering emerging in ECS but a new department is not necessary even here.
Criteria: What are the criteria for gaining support of such initiatives at Syracuse? We suggest some here:
There are not many initiatives that meet all of these criteria. We hope to demonstrate that this ISI initiative meets these criteria and more. A discussion of these criteria is presented briefly in sequence below and expanded upon in the later text.
We wish to create an initiative at Syracuse with multiple missions which can serve as a focus and Centerpiece for teaching, research, development and application of emerging information technologies with built-in alliances to other units concerned with these technologies.
The technological core of the initiative's programs is "Information Systems Engineering (ISE)," i.e.,. the methods and procedures for developing new information technologies that can be applied to a broad range of problems of interest to, and benefit for, society, including education, commerce, communications, etc. There is expertise in especially ECS and IST today in this core technology area. ISE may be viewed as an embryonic new discipline conceived at the interface of applications/use of information and the technologies of computer science and computer engineering, two disciplines that each are relatively young but now sufficiently mature and broad to have well-defined sub disciplines. IST is a world-leader in use and management of information and ECS in its underlying technologies.
An initiative such as the one described can optimally place
Syracuse in a leadership role in meeting the exponentially growing
challenges of this information revolution. We require a center
which is a real business unit because an alternative loosely defined
"program" is typically less effective at Universities
and because only a department or center has the resources necessary
to carry out the missions described below..
CITE would have multiple missions which we illustrate below:
A: New Undergraduate Curricula in ECS: We could develop
an engineering degree in Information Engineering providing majors
with expertise in technical areas related to information infrastructures.
Current web hardware and software technologies already have rich
intellectual content and will continue to change rapidly. Courses
on state-of-the -art hardware and software associated with ISI
will be built on a foundation of science, mathematics and engineering
courses as are those for all engineering disciplines.
B: General ISI Courses: We can develop a general course
in information technology, offered at several levels-introductory,
junior, senior. and masters. As the technology can be used by
essentially all majors, we expect this to be popular with students
and employment opportunities for those skilled in this growing
field should be excellent.
C: Graduate Courses: Through Master's degrees and certificates,
continuing education and advanced concepts would be presented
with an industrial focus, allowing students to remain at the leading
edge of this rapidly evolving field.
D: Research: The center CITE would perform fundable research
in education technology as well as research in collaboration with
other units to create innovative proposals in the area where information
technology impacts the disciplinary or professional activities..
NPAC would be one research arm of the department. Students would
play a significant role especially in educational areas where
students would also be the eventual customers. Here, undergraduate
research and training would lead to excellent employment opportunities
in an expanding field of national priority. Our experience in
"Science for the 21st . Century" indicates
that many graduate students enthusiastically take part in developing
Web based courses.
E: Alliances - CITE as a University Resource:
CITE's infrastructure would be designed to work closely with associated faculty from units throughout the University so that they may optimally utilize state-of- the-art information delivery systems, providing students with new methods of learning (such as in Science for the 21st. Century). Obviously, these alliances need to be incrementally arranged and will be limited by the availability of personnel and infrastructure. We intend to articulate our goals and capabilities carefully so that we do not receive comments and questions such as: "Who is going to provide the training?" "How can I do this on my 386 machine?" "My department chairman won't even pay for a network connection!" "Our network doesn't do multimedia!" In this area we intend to work closely with Computing and Media Services and act in some sense as their research and prototyping arm.
While we fully realize that few of our faculty are at state-of-the-art in the areas emphasized by this center, we expect that many could be helped by its existence to the benefit of students. Through such collaborations with other units, interactive educational delivery systems will be designed to provide clear evidence that such learning has occurred, while in addition, discovery oriented laboratories will require and reinforce skills in critical thinking. We will focus on value-added and productivity enhancing components of these systems, components that enhance interactivity and that help to efficiently tailor the course to the individual students needs as well as multimedia components that will make courses more attractive. These can be especially effective in large enrollment courses.
F: Special Alliances
1.Professional Schools The information oriented profile of the professional schools at Syracuse means that many of these units could eventually benefit substantially from and contribute to such a resource. Students in IST and Newhouse especially would stand to benefit from our proposal which will interact positively with the proposed "Master's degree in Multimedia"
2. Continuing Education The new center will enhance education in the areas where many new jobs are emerging and most importantly where many existing employees need to gain skills. For instance when a corporation switches from analog to digital technologies or from telephone to net or installs a Web IntraNet, engineers in these organization need to learn new skills. Further as these technologies are still changing rapidly, this re-education need is ongoing for both organizations and their employees. Thus we expect that DCESS will be a major vehicle for offering courses developed through the ISI initiative.
Further we are developing the distance education technologies which will allow efficient offering of these courses to sites around the state, nation and world. This will increase the number of potential students by a significant factor. Senior citizens and the physically challenged will be empowered to participate in University offerings to an unprecedented degree.
Experts in various fields including individuals not resident at
Syracuse can be recruited for such courses and expand our offerings
- they will come if we build a competitive technical support
base. The mechanism for delivering distant web education is still
unclear but we have in place leading research activities in these
areas and should be able to implement the best practice at any
given time. Note in this general "Virtual University"
environment, one expects the need for a few skilled people to
develop base curricula and for mentoring and delivery to be the
responsibility of another group of individuals. In our business
plan, we tentatively build this in with a roughly equal mix of
faculty (primary course developers and oversight) and instructors
with a higher course load. The delivery of distant learning to
large numbers of students could help generate center resources.
As an indicator of possibilities we should note the Fox trip
to China which generated major media coverage for a billion
people.
G: Impact on K-12 schools
Here we expect to work with the School of education (Living SchoolBook)
and projects such as the Information Institute in IST (askERIC)
headed by Mike Eisenberg.
H: Associated Business-Real World Contact
Faculty associated with the center CITE would be encouraged to provide services to industry, enhancing the regional economy and the competitive, real-world outlook of the center, and possibly serve as a funding source for the center. It would also serve as an employment-experience-training resource for students. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants from Federal sources could aid in establishing a company. (Available information at www.nsf.gov)
1) Introduction
The Chancellor is on record as saying that the university may invest in new programs that bring in new revenues, with a necessary condition being a business plan that returns the university's investment. We intend to create a center that is structured to foster the creation of viable new programs that bring in new students to other university units. So the center's business plan includes revenue from new programs in existing academic units as well as its external research funding.
The revenue basis for this plan is based both on main campus courses and an expanding continuing education market for these courses, the latter due to rapidly evolving technology.
The University must face these continuing education issues in
any case, and this initiative can serve as a base for exploration.
2)Partial Fiscal Analysis
Here we just look at one component of CITE's activities - its research and the natural ECS program in ISE (Information Systems Engineering) and do not include the important possibilities outside curricula in this technology core. We will base the business analysis on current ECS profiles with:
Year Income Contracts Expense
Tuition IDC FBOH(no IDC) FBOH(Incl IDC)
1 $700K $400K $0.86M (-18%) 27%
2 $1.6M $500K $1.3M 23% 62%
3 $2.6M $650K $1.8M 44% 80%
Note on Budget Assumptions
1)We believe it is very difficult to get a cost effective (high FBOH) without both substantial use of "Instructors" (high quality teachers responsible for 4 courses per semester) and without aiming at the distance education market.
2)We find it difficult to accurately estimate number of possible DCESS (distance education) students but again believe that to be cost effective one MUST offer graduate courses to very many students Nothing else will generate enough income to offset the high cost of preparing material which changes so rapidly. Thus we have assumed an aggressive (large) number of students
3)We see trend to "lifelong" learning and a critical field (Internet/Information technology) which is changing rapidly implies that there will be many professionals with existing jobs who will require such retraining
4)The Physics dept. and NPAC/ECS have national leadership in the Web Technologies needed for the new approaches to distance education which are far more interactive and powerful(attractive to students) than precious video conferencing/videotaped implementations. Currently both our curricula and delivery technology are superior to the competition and this center will allow us to maintain this
5)Note that the technology has several interesting features including
ability to monitor student actions (logging Web pages accessed)
and for faculty/instructors to record electronically (audio, video,
text) lectures This allows novel approaches to course and teaching
assessment and improvement.
A: Introduction
We base the tentative curriculum on the courses and curricula developed or proposed for Computational Science(Information Track -- CPS-I), Multimedia Master's Degree(MM) and the Certificate in Internet Engineering (CertIE-- courses appended). We will follow the interdisciplinary structure of CPS-I and MM with a core based on extending material in CertIE.
B: Graduate Program.
1:Masters Let us first discuss a Master's Degree in the emerging ISE program. This could consist of a total of about 11 seminar length courses arranged as:
2. Ph.D. The Ph.D. would be naturally based on Master's
curriculum as typically Ph.D. course requirements are more less
same as those for Master's.
Existing Certificate in Internet Engineering -- CertIE
Purpose: retraining professionals Requirements: Students are expected to have experience in a high level programming language like FORTRAN, Pascal, C, C++, or Java (the last 2, which are object-oriented languages, are preferred)
Credit hours: 12 (equivalent to four 3-credit-hour courses)
Course Contents - Take 4 of following 6 courses with first
two courses required
1.General Course This would have probably three versions at Introductory Undergraduate, Senior/Junior level and Master's level. We have in fact got a draft of Master's course described as IMM601/CPS601 in proposed Multimedia Master's Degree. It surveys hardware (Internet, Optical Fiber, Satellite) software (Web and Multimedia) and applications (from many fields) underlying Information Engineering The Undergraduate "Principles and Practice of Information Engineering" would have a similar structure but a lower more general level. Approximately one quarter of lectures would be from "guest" lecturers in range of application areas.
Current Version of CPS601 reads:
CPS 401/601 IMM 601 Multimedia Systems and Tools This is designed for students with modest mathematical but some computing background. It covers the basics of high speed networks, multimedia servers, ISDN/ATM/Telecommunication realities, data compression, World Wide Web, HTML, VRML, PERL, Java, databases, WebTop Publishing and Collaboration technologies. Brief description of virtual reality. Emphasis is on how to use the technologies and their impact.
2.A possible Undergraduate concentration in ISE requires
more thought but it should exhibit the major themes of Masters
Program -- namely a core set of Information Engineering courses
with a strong interdisciplinary and industry focus with degree
requiring a thesis. As in the other engineering curricula, this
is built on a set of relevant science and technology courses.
D: ECS RESEARCH in ISE associated with CITE
Research in ISE could either be generic (i.e. focused on nifty new ideas in Information Engineering) or in collaboration with Other departments. We have several examples of such collaborations:
The proposed curricula and research illustrates the natural collaborations and benefits with other departments. There are two types of collaboration
Note students will be presented new methods of learning which will be intrinsically interactive and exploratory. We see from Physics 105/106 and the Living Schoolbook (as well as Internet certificates offered by NPAC successfully in China) that this new type of distance education is successful and preferred by students. It is expected by many to drives changes in University setup which is unclear at present but is likely to occur and have profound effect. The proposed center will allow University and students maximal benefit from trends to the Virtual University
This program will prepare students for the jobs that will be needed in the Information age. NPAC has seen this over the last two years where graduate students have been snapped up. Further our NSF funded "Research Experience for Undergraduates" has demonstrated the great attraction of this area as it is chosen by the majority of our students. For instance this summer one SU undergraduate worked on the VRML approach to building a Web based Virtual University, another on novel Web interfaces for disabled using nifty detectors, and a third on biological information systems. Careers taken by NPAC Graduate students include computer companies (IBM, Intel), telecommunication companies (NYNEX), software companies (Oracle), small businesses (the local Syracuse Language Systems). The proposed enterprise also spans applications from that of University Professor developing new physics teaching modules, the future digital journalists (as explained in proposed multimedia master's program which could be implemented very attractively by collaborations involving new center) and future Aerospace engineers developing concurrent engineering integrating the different engineering disciplines involved in design, construction and support of products. The Information Age is creating new jobs and restructuring old areas. Our proposed center will be at the Center of this revolution and attract students at all levels including those associated with University College which can naturally take lead in retraining for the new age.
The new initiative is centered on education in the areas where many new jobs are emerging and most importantly where many existing employees need to gain skills. For instance when CNN switches from analog to digital technologies or NYNEX from telephone to net or a Fortune 500 company installs a Web IntraNet, engineers in these organization need to learn new skills. Further as these technologies are still changing rapidly, this re-education need is ongoing for both organizations and their employees. Thus we expect that DCESS will be a major vehicle for offering courses in this ISE area. Further we are developing the distance (and disabled / home delivery) education technologies which will allow efficient offering of these courses to sites around the state (nation). This will increase number of potential students by a significant factor. The mechanism for delivering web education is still unclear but we have in place leading research activities in these areas and should be able to implement the best practice at any given time. Note in this general "Virtual University" environment, one expects the need for a few skilled people to develop base curricula and for mentoring and delivery to be the responsibility of another group of individuals. In our business plan, we tentatively build this in with a roughly equal mix of faculty (primary course developers and oversight) and instructors with a higher course load.
The initiative will also encourage courses for industry partly along the lines of what SU used to do with IBM etc. (notably Physics and ECE) but now using Web technologies and distance learning. The courses would not only use Web technologies, but would also be about Web technologies.
The academic program will include World Wide Web-based enabling technologies to allow disabled students to take courses in many areas, either in residence or by distance learning. In most cases, they could then go on and have productive careers and enhanced lifestyles using the new information technologies and suitable hardware interface modules.
Currently NPAC is supporting a groundbreaking project in this area, led jointly by Nason Fellow David Warner, MD., and by Edward Lipson, Acting Chair of the Physics Department and Faculty Associate at NPAC. For several years, Warner has been highly active and innovative in exploiting computer and virtual reality technologies to help the disabled. He has been featured on CNN and ABC news and is continually on the international lecture circuit to promote this exciting work. Dave has formed a not-for-profit organization called the Institute for Interventional Informatics or I^3), which is based in San Diego. Warner illustrates the type of interdisciplinary student this initiative would encourage. In collaboration with NPAC, based in the new Interface Lab (3-224 CST) adjacent to the NPAC Conference Room, the emphasis has been on
The human focus of our project in Syracuse is Eyal Sherman (quadriplegic 15-year-old son of Rabbi and Mrs. Charles Sherman). Among our goals are to enable Eyal (who is unable to speak) to communicate effectively, to control his wheelchair and other aspects of his environment, and to surf the Web. In the summer this project made rapid progress (see http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/pulsar/progress.html) with an excellent team of four undergraduates supported by the NPAC REU program and two graduate students. In Fall 1996, we are assembling a diverse team of SU students including the same graduate students, one of the REU team members, a team of three bioengineering students from the Soling Program, students from Industrial Design in VPA, and a computer-proficient undergraduate who just appeared out of thin air. This project provides an excellent example of the interdisciplinary reach of the information technologies, based on NPAC's diverse forward looking activities.
This type of approach can also be extended to other areas including gerontology. Imagine senior citizens in their 70s taking continuing education courses by distance learning from home, senior residences, assisted living Centers, and even nursing homes. This is a huge and increasing population with an ample share of the Nation's capital, in other words a largely affluent and untapped market. Common problems of those confined to nursing homes (and other shut-ins) are loneliness and boredom. Access to Web resources and interface technologies could greatly enhance the lives of such seniors, notably those with physical and/or mental impairments, and keep them in continual electronic contact with their families and friends even at great distance.
NSF Recognition Award text and comments:
Experience with Phy 105/106: Science for the 21st Century as a prototype.
The Web was born in 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist
at CERN, the European Laboratory for particle physics, programmed
the first types of computer codes, called protocols. This code
allowed a computer on hardware known as the Internet, to contact
another computer independent of geography, interfaces or local
codes, while also providing universal and simple links to documents
residing on these computers. His purpose was to enable researchers
in particle physics throughout the world to communicate and exchange
data and programs more efficiently. This is one example of a basic
research project in producing a spinoff with dramatic impact
on society. While the original web was hyperlink oriented and
relatively simple in structure, the current web is based on very
deep and rich software technologies such as Java, Multimedia
compression algorithms etc. Meanwhile, information delivery hardware
has advanced dramatically through satellites, fiber-optics cables,
and computer hardware design advances and miniaturization.
A possible "bait & fuel" structure is that SU sets
up the initiative like an internal foundation with a fixed lifetime
(say, 5 years). The internal foundation gets a commitment from
the university for a significant amount of funding from institutional
sources (say, $2M or $2.5M), plus a commitment to support raising
of funds from external sources of an similar amount as part of
the current commitment to learning campaign. In this scenario/fantasy,
the internal foundation has $4M or $5M over 5 years as "bait
and fuel" to encourage schools and colleges to develop new
programs that attract new students using emerging information
technologies. Some schools or colleges might decide to reorganize
themselves to create new departments or other entities to support
the new activities. This would be one way to initiate a department
of information systems engineering in ECS. For any school or college
to tap into the "foundation's" funds, a successful proposal
needs to have a business plan that creates programs that are fiscally
self-supporting (at least) at the end of the period of investment
(or perhaps also require a business plan that pays back the original
investment over a period of time).