using information technology · recommendation is that the federal government set as a national...

PRESIDENT’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Panel on Transforming Learning

February 2001

Using Information Technology

To TransformThe Way We Learn

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

c/o National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research & Development4201 Wilson Boulevard . Suite II-405 . Arlington, VA 22230

703-292-4873 (ITRD) . FAX (703) 292-9097 . [email protected] . www.itrd.gov

February 9, 2001

The Honorable George W. BushPresident of the United StatesThe White HouseWashington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC)applauds your new initiative on education, one of the Nation's mostfundamental concerns. We share your vision of a more efficient, effective,accountable, and equitable education and training environment, and webelieve that information technology will play an increasing role in realizingthat vision. Our 1999 report, Information Technology Research: Investing inOur Future, identified learning for all citizens throughout their lives as one ofthe vital areas where information technology offers the potential todramatically transform current practices in ways that will greatly benefit allAmericans.

Thus, we are pleased to enclose Using Information Technology toTransform the Way We Learn, part of a series of studies following up on the1999 report. This report highlights our findings and recommendations onhow the Federal government can provide the leadership needed to solve keyinformation technology challenges and to improve the quality of, and publicaccess to, distant, knowledge-intensive, and otherwise unaffordableeducational and training experiences. Our goal is to define a long-rangeprogram that will provide all citizens with full and easy electronic access toeducation and training resources enhanced by new technologies and used byproperly prepared teachers and trainers. This combination of technology andteachers using new teaching and evaluation methods has the potential toprovide enormous leverage in the pursuit of more effective and less costlyeducation and training.

Based on our findings, information technology promises to help improvelearning in very exciting new ways, provided that the educationalinfrastructure and technologies are improved. The overarchingrecommendation is that the Federal government set as a national prioritythe effective integration of information technology with education and

President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee

Co-Chairs:

Raj ReddyIrving Wladawsky-Berger

Members:

Eric A. BenhamouVinton CerfChing-chih ChenDavid CooperSteven D. DorfmanDavid W. DormanRobert EwaldSherrilynne S. FullerHector Garcia-MolinaSusan L. GrahamJames N. GrayW. Daniel HillisRobert E. KahnKen KennedyJohn P. MillerDavid C. NagelEdward H. ShortliffeLarry SmarrJoe F. ThompsonLeslie VadaszSteven J. Wallach

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training. This must be at the core of any far-reaching education initiative. Four subordinaterecommendations urge that the Federal government:

• Establish and coordinate a major research initiative for information technology ineducation and training, including learning technologies and sciences, informationtechnologies for education and training, and requirements for learning and teachinginformation technology fluency;

• Establish focused government-industry-foundation partnerships to aggressively pursuethe information technology research program;

• Develop programs that enable educators and related professionals to use informationtechnology effectively; and

• Work with industry and academia to develop technical standards for extendablecomponent-based technologies and infrastructures that can be widely used inonline education and training.

We believe that adopting these recommendations will allow the Nation to make significantstrides towards realizing our shared vision. The Committee looks forward to working withyou and the Congress to empower American citizens by providing them with lifelongaccess to dramatically improved educational experiences enhanced by informationtechnology. Thank you for the continuing opportunity to advise you on these and otherimportant issues.

Sincerely,

Raj Reddy Irving Wladawsky-BergerCo-chair Co-chair

Enclosure

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President’s Information TechnologyAdvisory Committee

Co-Chairs

Members

Raj Reddy, Ph.D.Herbert A. Simon UniversityProfessor of Computer Science andRoboticsCarnegie Mellon University

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Ph.D.Vice President for Technology andStrategy, Enterprise Systems GroupIBM Corporation

Eric A. Benhamou Chairman3Com Corporation

Vinton Cerf, Ph.D.Senior Vice President for InternetArchitecture and Engineering WorldCom

Ching-chih Chen, Ph.D.Professor, Graduate School ofLibrary and Information ScienceSimmons College

David M. Cooper, Ph.D.Associate Director of ComputationLawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory

Steven D. DorfmanRetired Vice ChairmanHughes Electronics Corporation

David W. DormanPresidentAT&T

Robert EwaldPresident and CEOE-Stamp Corporation

Sherrilynne S. Fuller, Ph.D.Head, Division of BiomedicalInformatics, Department of MedicalEducationUniversity of Washington Schoolof Medicine

Hector Garcia-Molina, Ph.D.Leonard Bosack and Sandra LernerProfessor, Departments of ComputerScience and Electrical EngineeringStanford University

Susan L. Graham, Ph.D.Chancellor’s Professor of ComputerScience, Department of ElectricalEngineering and Computer ScienceUniversity of California atBerkeley

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PA N E L O N TR A N S F O R M I N G L E A R N I N G

James N. Gray, Ph.D.Senior Researcher, Scalable ServersResearch Group, and Manager, BayArea Research CenterMicrosoft Corporation

W. Daniel Hillis, Ph.D.Chairman and Chief TechnologyOfficerApplied Minds, Inc.

Robert E. Kahn, Ph.D.PresidentCorporation for National ResearchInitiatives (CNRI)

Ken Kennedy, Ph.D.Director, Center for Research onParallel Computation, and Ann andJohn Doerr Professor of ComputerScienceRice University

John P. Miller, Ph.D.Director, Center for ComputationalBiology, and Professor of BiologyMontana State University

David C. Nagel, Ph.D.PresidentAT&T Labs

Edward H. Shortliffe, M.D., Ph.D.Professor and Chair, Department ofMedical InformaticsCollege of Physicians andSurgeons, Columbia University

Larry Smarr, Ph.D.DirectorCalifornia Institute forTelecommunications andInformation Technology

Joe F. Thompson, Ph.D.William L. Giles DistinguishedProfessor of Aerospace Engineering,Department of AerospaceEngineering Mississippi State University

Leslie VadaszExecutive Vice PresidentIntel Corporation, andPresident Intel Capital

Andrew J. Viterbi, Ph.D.PresidentThe Viterbi Group

Steven J. WallachVice PresidentChiaro Networks

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Table of co n t e n t s

Members of the President’s Information TechnologyAdvisory Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

Table of contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii

Panel on Transforming Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .viii

About this report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Scope, focus, and approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Overarching Finding: National importance of education . . . . . .5

Finding 2: Educational benefits of information technology . . . . .6Finding 3: Insufficient teacher training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8Finding 4: Evidence of technology’s cost-effectiveness . . . . . . . .11Finding 5: Demonstrated transformation potential . . . . . . . . .11Finding 6: Critical barriers to widespread adoption . . . . . . . . .12Finding 7: Dramatic underfunding of R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Finding 8: Unprecedented partnerships required . . . . . . . . . . .16

Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Overarching Recommendation: Make integration of technologyin education a national priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Recommendation 2: Major Federal research initiative . . . . . . .17Recommendation 3: Public, private-sector collaboration . . . . . .23Recommendation 4: Training for educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25Recommendation 5: Consensus on technical standards . . . . . . .27

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Note on access to computing and communications . . . . . . . . . .29Appendix: Workshop participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

Publications of the PITAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

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PA N E L O N T RA N S F O R M I N G LE A R N I N G

Panel on Transforming Learning

Co-Chairs

Susan L. GrahamAndrew J. Viterbi

PITAC Members

Eric A. BenhamouChing-chih Chen

Steven D. Dorfman Joe F. Thompson

Ex Officio: Raj Reddy, Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Invited Participants

Andries van DamThomas J. Watson, Jr., University Professor

of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer ScienceBrown University

Bruce LincolnManager of Community Outreach

Teachers CollegeColumbia University

Roy PeaCo-Director, Center for Technology in Learning, andDirector, Center for Innovative Learning Technologies

SRI International

Marshall S. SmithProfessor of EducationStanford University

David ShawChairman and Chief Executive Officer

D.E. Shaw, Inc.

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About This Report

“Using Information Technology To Transform the Way We Learn” isone in a series of reports to the President and Congress developed by thePresident’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) onkey contemporary issues in information technology. These focusedreports examine specific aspects of the near- and long-term research anddevelopment and policies we need to capture the potential ofinformation technology to help grow our economy and addressimportant problems facing the Nation.

The 24-member PITAC, comprising corporate and academic leaders,was established by Executive Order of the President in 1997 and renewedfor a two-year term in 1999. Its charge is to provide the Federalgovernment with expert independent guidance on maintainingAmerica’s preeminence in high performance computing andcommunications, information technology, and Next Generation InternetR&D.

In February 1999, the PITAC issued an overview and analysis of thecurrent state of Federal information technology research anddevelopment in a report entitled “Information Technology Research:Investing in Our Future.” That report set forth a vision of howinformation technology can transform the way we live, learn, work, andplay, with resulting benefits for all Americans. But the report warnedthat Federal information technology research and development isseriously inadequate, given its economic, strategic, and societalimportance. The Committee concluded that the Government is fundingonly a fraction of the research needed to maintain U.S. preeminence ininformation technology and propel the positive transformations itenables.

The Committee identified 10 information technology “NationalChallenge Transformations” that are critical to America’s future. Tomeet these transformation challenges, the PITAC recommended astrategic Federal initiative in long-term information technology R&Dand outlined the research priorities that will drive the necessaryadvances in the new century.

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The PITAC subsequently convened a group of panels led byCommittee members and including invited outside participants withrelevant expertise to examine some of the transforming applications ofinformation technology in greater detail. Three panels focused oninformation technology national challenges: Transforming Government,Transforming Health Care, and Transforming Learning.

Several other panels examined critical technology issues that span thetransformations, including Digital Divide Issues, Digital Libraries,International Issues, and Open Source Software for High EndComputing. Over the past year, each of the panels has analyzed relevantresearch data and documents; held workshop discussions and conductedinterviews with experts in their fields; and studied the fiscal,organizational, and economic implications of strategies to generatenecessary information technology research and development advancesin these key areas of our national life. The Committee plans to conveneadditional panels in the months ahead.

“Using Information Technology To Transform the Way We Learn”and the other reports in this series present targeted findings andrecommendations to the President and Congress designed to help theNation realize the vision of these positive transformations. Theirbenefits for our future can be extraordinary, but they are notguaranteed. To make the vision a reality, we need the results ofaggressive, well-funded, and well-managed Federal research programs.

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A cknowledgements

The Panel on Transforming Learning appreciates the advice andassistance of the experts who briefed us, participated in our July 2000workshop, and reviewed drafts of this report. The Panel thanks EdFurtek, the San Diego Science & Technology Council, and the Universityof California, San Diego, who hosted and provided local arrangementsfor the workshop. We thank Dr. Donn Ritchie of San Diego StateUniversity, Principal Lyn Robie and John-David Hughes of the NationalCity Adult Education Center, Barbara Allen of LemonLink, and OlgaVasquez, who hosted site visits in conjunction with the workshop andexplained their work to us.

A complete list of those who attended the Panel’s workshop isprovided in the Appendix on page 31.

The Panel would also like to acknowledge the work of the NationalCoordination Office for Information Technology Research andDevelopment in supporting its efforts to produce this report. The Panelthanks Robert I. Winner, who staffed our activities and drafted thereport, and Yolanda Comedy, who coordinated our work and kept us ontrack. We thank Martha Matzke, who edited and formatted the finaldocument. And we are grateful to Cita Furlani, Director, and the entireNational Coordination Office staff. Our meetings and deliberations wentsmoothly because of their careful preparation.

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PR E S I D E N T ’S I N F O R M AT I O N TE C H N O LO G Y A D V I S O RY CO M M I TT E E

A Vision of Learning Transformed

By Information Technology

Any individual can participate in online education programsregardless of geographic location, age, physical limitation, or personalschedule. Everyone can access repositories of educational materials,easily recalling past lessons, updating skills, or selecting from amongdifferent teaching methods in order to discover the most effectiveways of learning. Educational programs can be customized to eachindividual's needs, so that the information revolution reacheseveryone and personal digital libraries provide a mechanism formanaging one's accumulated knowledge resources. Learning involvesall our senses, to help focus each student's attention and bettercommunicate educational material.

Information Technology Research: Investing in Our FutureReport to the President, February 1999

President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

Introduction

Lifelong education and training are foundations of the moderndemocratic state and the 21st century economy. Education and trainingconsistently rank among the top concerns of U.S. industry and citizensat large. While the best U.S. educational and training facilities andprocesses are among the world's greatest, the variance in access andresults over the entire enterprise is too great – median results are toolow, the low end is far too low, and too many learners drop out of the K-12 system. There is unremitting pressure to improve U.S. educationand training for all citizens, at all ages, in all circumstances. With theadditional challenges this pressure places on the educational communitycome substantial opportunities.

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Information technology can help significantly. Information technologyhas been progressing at an awesome pace, with many advances seeded bysustained, long-term, and farsighted Federal government researchinvestments over the past six decades. Increasingly, we can useinformation technology to organize and deliver information over longdistances, in ways that adapt to different learners and contexts, tosimulate real-world processes, and to foster distributed communities oflearners. These uses evidence the promise that information technologycan improve the efficiency and effectiveness of teaching and learningacross the U.S. education and training enterprise in revolutionary ways.Information technology can enable a cultural shift in which all citizenswill be linked to education throughout their lives. This report proposesthat the Federal government – in concert with state and localgovernments, universities, foundations, and industry – act at once torealize that promise.

Much attention today is focused on providing widespread access tocurrent information technologies, such as personal computers withaccess to the Internet. Providing access is necessary for progress but notsufficient. As a first step, increased attention needs to be paid toproviding adequate software, training, and support for integratingtechnologies into the practices of learning and education. For the longterm, though, a great deal of research into and development oftechnologies, methods, and measurement methodologies are required toensure continuous improvements in technology-enhanced learning.

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committeedescribed these technical challenges in “Information TechnologyResearch: Investing in Our Future,” its 1999 report to the President,saying:

Information technology is already changing how we teach, learn,and conduct research, but important research challenges in thefield of education remain. In addition to research to meet thescalability and reliability requirements for informationinfrastructure, improvements are needed in the softwaretechnologies to enable development of educational materialsquickly and easily and to support their modification andmaintenance. We know too little about the best ways to use

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computing and communications technology for effective teachingand learning, in particular, how to use multimedia capabilities tocreate a richer, and more appealing learning experience. We needto better understand what aspects of learning can be effectivelyfacilitated by technology and which aspects require traditionalclassroom interactions with the accompanying social andinteractive contexts. We also need to determine the best ways toteach our citizens the powers and limitations of the newtechnologies and how to use these technologies effectively in theirpersonal and professional lives.

As a follow-up to that report, the Panel on Transforming Learning, co-chaired by PITAC members Susan L. Graham and Andrew J. Viterbi, hasexamined the information technology research and development needsin education in greater depth. This document details the Panel’s findingsand recommendations to the President and Congress.

Scope, focus, and appro a c h

This report covers both education and training – pre-kindergarten,K-12, university, professional, adult, community, military, government,and industrial. While these settings differ in many ways, informationtechnology is adaptable to all of them, and much of the requiredinformation technology research is applicable throughout thatspectrum. Education and training are both forms of learning; thedistinction between education and training is based on differences inthe relative importance of certain objectives and the differentinstitutional contexts for pursuing them. Information technology isapplicable to both education and training, but the objectives andlearning styles of the students in every instance determine theappropriate blend of information technology solutions and the types offurther research and development that are needed. One of the mostdesired outcomes and profound challenges of research in this field isthat the resulting education and training applications will be localizableto different settings, cultures, student capabilities, teacher objectives,local standards, and the like.

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Although this report's scope is broad, it focuses on the technologicalaspects of education and training and actions needed to makeeducational and training technology useful. Thus, it does not addressresearch into childhood cognitive development or theories of learningand pedagogy, even though these are very important in the largercontext. The PITAC suspects that, as with most technologies, scientificunderstanding of why certain information technology education andtraining technologies and methods do or do not work will be solidifiedonly after the technologies have been developed, used, and evaluated. Aswith technologies more broadly, the greatest utility and marketplacesuccess will be gained by involving user communities in identifyingneeds and in the design and improvement of the technologies.

To conduct its study, the Learning Panel met with researchers,visionaries, practitioners, teachers, and commercial deliverers of onlineeducation and training. With the help of the San Diego Science andTechnology Council and the University of California, San Diego, thePanel held a workshop in San Diego July 17-18, 2000, and there wereseveral Panel meetings from December 1999 through September 2000.

This report assumes the reader is familiar with the need forimprovements in learning throughout our education and trainingsystems and with the increasing requirement for lifelong learning toadapt to changing circumstances. It does not attempt to analyze the stateof education and training in the U.S., a well-documented topic. Thereport has a narrower focus than the study conducted by the Web-BasedEducation Commission chaired by then-Senator Bob Kerrey ofNebraska, which released its findings to the Congress, President, andNation on December 19, 2000, in “The Power of the Internet forLearning: Moving from Promise to Practice”(http://www.webcommission.org). The commission, composed of 16members who were selected by the President, Secretary of Education,and congressional leadership, conducted a detailed study of the criticalpedagogical and policy issues affecting the development and use of Web-based content and learning strategies to improve achievement at the K-12 and postsecondary levels.

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Findings

Information technology is just part of the solution to the Nation'seducation and training requirements. The following findings andrecommendations do not address the entire span of productiveeducational reforms that might be envisioned, but they do extendbeyond information technology per se. That should not be surprisingsince industrial experience over the last two decades demonstrates thatsuccessful information technology-assisted process improvement almostalways requires that information technology be coupled with a carefulrethinking of the targeted processes and social institutions.

Overarching FindingOne of our most important national goals is education andtraining of all citizens throughout their lives. Informationtechnology promises to play a significant role in empoweringteachers and learners.

Improving the reach and effectiveness of education and training arecritical to the solution of many societal problems. This is what makesaddressing education and training issues so vital for the Nation.Although many people have recognized that information technologiescan be used to facilitate education and training, there is a huge gapbetween the potential of using information technologies for thatpurpose and the accomplishments. Information technologyaccomplishments in education and training lag those in other areas,whether in research, commerce, or communications. It is hard to findanother application area of information technology where the promise-to-performance gap is wider, and some assert the gap is widening. Thebarriers that continue to prevent the realization of the promise must beaddressed by large-scale, aggressively managed methodological andtechnological research and development as well as increasedopportunities for teacher education. The information technologies thatemerge from this research and are put into use through deploymentvehicles such as teacher education will enable both incremental andrevolutionary improvements. Seven specific findings follow.

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Finding 2. Information technology, used both within classroomsettings with well-educated and motivated teachers and by individuals,can provide access to world-class facilities and experiences. It has thepotential for simultaneously providing many of the benefits of one-on-one tutoring and group interactions.

Information technology provides intellectual advantage much asindustrial machines provide mechanical advantage. The Panel envisionsenvironments where students guided by mentoring teachers activelypursue their education. Fully automated learning and the substantialdiminution of the need for teachers are not on the horizon, nor shouldthey be. The critical roles of teachers and group learning need to bebetter understood to maximize the benefits of integrating informationtechnologies into the teaching and learning process. These basic ideasguided the Panel's thinking about the required research agenda andassociated initiatives.

One striking advantage of technology-enhanced education andtraining, already being realized in the research world, is that onlinestudents can have access to distant world-class facilities such astelescopes, electron microscopes, undersea laboratories, and universityand government libraries. Access can be provided to real devices orsimulated ones, as appropriate for cost, flexibility, or safety reasons.Group interactions can be enhanced through cooperative learning withstudents at distant locales and experts at workplaces to which studentsotherwise would not have access. Teachers also benefit from enhancedcooperation with others; they can share lesson plans, learn how toimplement higher learning standards, develop cooperative projects, andalso learn from experts in various fields. Simulations can be used forexperimentation that would be unaffordable or unsafe if implementedin the physical setting.

In certain circumstances, one-on-one tutoring has been found tobenefit instruction, improving the mean of student performance by twostandard deviations (2σ) with an accompanying reduction in variance

1 Bloom, B. S., “The 2-sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction aseffective as one-to-one tutoring,” Educational Researcher, 13 (6),1984, pp. 4-16.

2 Fletcher, J. D.,“Defense Training and the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)Initiative,” presentation to the PITAC Workshop on Transforming Learning, San Diego,July 17, 2000.

3 Reported in Brown, J. S., “Growing up Digital,” Change, March/April 2000, p. 13, athttp://www.aahe.org/change/digital.pdf .

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(or spread).1 (See Figure 1.2) This benefit is roughly equivalent toraising the achievement of 50th percentile students to the 98thpercentile level. Other research has demonstrated the importance ofgroup interactions in the absorption of knowledge. Gibbons, forexample, has found that students who viewed videotaped university-level lectures in an active discussion group performed half a grade-levelbetter than those who attended the lectures in person.3 Since one-on-one tutoring is unaffordable in most cases, our goal should be to usenew methods and technologies to achieve similar results at reasonable

Why Technology-Assisted Instruction?

Figure 1: The effect of one-on-one tutoring

4 One-on-one tutoring and evaluation are used where learning performance isdeemed critical. For example,in driver and pilot training where societal safety is aconcern, one-on-one tutoring and evaluation are required and found affordable. In pilottraining, at least for military and commercial pilots,information technology, in the formof flight simulators, has been used for many years as a supplement in order to increaseeffectiveness and decrease costs. But in no instance is a student allowed a license withoutone-on-one evaluation by an instructor.

5 Fletcher, op. cit.

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cost while at the same time realizing the benefits of group interactions(perhaps over long distances).4

In a study of studies covering a wide range of contexts, Fletcherreports:

We found significant improvements in knowledge and skillsgained through the use of technology-based instruction. We arenot yet at the 2 standard deviation, or '2 sigma' level, but we havefound across 233 assessments that computer-based instructionproduced an improvement of 0.39 sigma (roughly raisingachievement from the 50th percentile level to the 65th percentile),44 assessments of interactive multimedia instruction produced animprovement of 0.50 sigma (roughly raising achievement fromthe 50th percentile level to the 69th percentile), and 5 assessmentsof some recent intelligent tutoring systems that directly mimicone-on-one instruction produced an improvement of 1.05 sigma(roughly raising achievement from the 50th percentile level to the85th percentile).5

Finding 3. The role of the teacher is changing and will continue tochange, but current teacher education and training in the methods ofusing technology and its potential are insufficient.

Some of the most successful teachers use information technology inconcert with a shift in the teacher's role from lecturer to mentor ofstudent learning through inquiry. The main idea is to encouragestudents to learn by finding information about assigned subjects and toencourage them to piece together the information in some well-structured way that can be reported and discussed with the class. In this

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way, the student actively constructs an ordered view of the informationin his or her mind that tends to be remembered and understood betterthan information absorbed through passive listening. The teacher's rolehere is to structure the sequence of assignments, help the student findand understand the information, help the student piece the informationtogether, perhaps establishing a larger context, promote discussion,evaluate results, and redirect as needed. In some cases, teachers havebuilt Web sites for students to explore, often with links to outsidematerials. Such student inquiries are often conducted in collaborativegroups. The learning skills developed by these students form a basis forindependent lifelong learning.

Current teacher education is inadequate for the promotion of suchmethods. The Department of Education reports that in 1999 only one-third of teachers reported feeling well prepared or very well prepared touse computers and the Internet for classroom instruction.6 Substantiallyagreeing with the Department of Education, Market Data Retrieval7

(MDR) found that more than 60 percent of K-12 teachers areuncomfortable integrating technology into the classroom. One mighthope that this is a generational problem being taken care of in theeducation of new teachers, but the MDR report suggests otherwise. Itstates that only one-third of new teachers reported that their collegeexperience left them “very well prepared” or “well prepared” to integratetechnology into classroom instruction. And, perhaps due to emergingteacher shortages, school districts are not requiring new teachers to beproficient in information technology. Nor do certification authoritiesgenerally include information technology competence in their criteria.Even if school districts and teacher certification criteria were to requirethe ability to use information technology in teaching, adequateperformance measures have not been developed for either thetechnologies themselves or for teachers' use of them.

6 U.S. Department of Education,Office of Educational Research and Improvement,Teachers' Tools for the 21st Century, September 2000.http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000102

7 Market Data Retrieval, Press Release,at http://www.schooldata.com/pr19.html,September 17, 1999.

8 Van Moorlehem, T.,“Recruiters are wary of a teacher shortage: School districtsforced to hire fast and early,” Detroit Free Press, May 19,1999, also athttp://www.freep.com/news/education/qshort19.htm.

9 Yasin,S., “The Supply and Demand of Elementary and Secondary School Teachers inthe United States,” ERIC Digest, December 1999,athttp://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed436529.html.

10 Hussar, W. J.,“Predicting the Need for Newly Hired Teachers in the United States,”NCES 1999-026, by U.S. Department of Education, National Center for EducationStatistics (1999), http://nces.ed.gov/pubs99/1999026.pdf.

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Even though the Nation's schools need more information technology-fluent teachers, it is not clear that the educational system can competeeffectively with industry and commerce in attracting them. Statistics onthe well-documented shortage of information technology professionals,for example, do not include K-12 teachers since teaching is not classifiedas an information technology profession. However, many people whomight otherwise be qualified to become information technology-fluentteachers can also train to enter the information technology workforcewhere opportunities are plentiful, salaries are higher, and future careeropportunities more plentiful and varied. Other professions also competewith school systems for the brightest college graduates, and it seems thatover the past several decades, the other professions have won.

It appears that a shortage of teachers is rapidly approaching,8,9 with1.7 million to 2.7 million new public teachers needed by 2008.10 Eventhough the PITAC feels that information technology is primarily aneffective tool for well-trained, supported, and motivated teachers to use,it may turn out that information technology can make teachers moreefficient in aggregate. One way in which information technology can doso is by increasing the sharing of materials, approaches, methods, andlessons learned.

In the K-12 context, many observers feel it is important to engageparents more in their children's learning. The combination of increasedinformation technology use in classroom settings and the desire toincrease parental involvement suggests that there is a need to trainparents better in learning technologies and to provide parents betteraccess to the technologies. Shared use of information technology canalso lead to closer and more frequent communication between teacher

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and parent, for example, by providing a protected Web pagesummarizing each student's progress and areas for improvement. Butthe home is also a realm in which the U.S. Department of Commercehas documented a significant “digital divide” in parent and studentaccess to computing and the Internet, as a function of income level,educational level, race, and ethnic origins, among other variables, thathas become a focus of social policy concern.11

Finding 4. Information technology has been applied successfully inindustrial and military training contexts: it has been effective andreduced costs. In the military context alone, cost, effectiveness, andproductivity improvements due to increased use of informationtechnology in training could save hundreds of millions of dollars peryear.

Information technology has been successful in military and industrialtraining. For example, 65 studies since the 1960's have shown an averageof over 30 percent savings – attributable to information technology-assisted training – in the time students take to achieve mastery overvarious subjects. Achieving 30 percent time savings with 60 percent ofmilitary specialized skills students (such as for vehicle mechanics,electronics repair, and radar operation, but not pilot or recruit training)could save about $789 million per year, not counting ancillary savingssuch as reduced travel and increased use of simulated equipment.12

Finding 5. Current research demonstrates the potential forfundamental transformation in education and training.

Today's Web and computer technologies make possible a good start onexciting new hypermedia-based educational content, but the best maybe yet to come. Limitations in technology and our inexperience intaking advantage of what is essentially a new medium have led to

11 “Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion,” NationalTelecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department ofCommerce, October 2000, athttp://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html.

12 Fletcher, op. cit.

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content that is largely evolutionary, a revamping of existing materialsand traditional means of delivery. Thus we find, for example, streamingvideo of classroom lectures, perhaps embedded in a Web context ofindices and supporting materials, replacing or supplementing livelectures and textbooks, and online chat between learners and instructorsreplacing or supplementing classroom interaction. While useful andlikely to be profitable for the schools, startup companies, and universityprojects delivering such materials, these are near-term and transitionalmeans for e-learning. Expected improvements in technology hold thepromise of dramatic, paradigm-shifting ways of making far moreambitious content available and having new forms of communicationand collaboration between learners and instructors that may maketoday's practices obsolete. The goal is to combine the best of human andmachine teaching and mentoring capabilities while providing access tocapabilities not available locally, not to eliminate the human element.

Examples of what we may expect in the future include far greaterreliance on distributed learning communities, intelligent tutoringsystems that model subject matter as well as learners and theirpreconceptions, families of interoperable, simulation-based “clipmodels,” collaborative learning-by-design environments, and learningenvironments for core subject disciplines that have more in commonwith massive multi-player Internet video games – with their compleximmersive worlds and constantly evolving rules – than with textbooks.Content will be available not just on desktops but on wireless devicesusing many different form factors, including cheap, non-obtrusivevirtual reality displays that will provide a revolutionary sense ofimmersion and presence. But these new, richly expressive forms ofcontent cannot be created without significant, sustained basic andapplied research in learning science and technology.

Finding 6. Grassroots applications of current Web-basedtechnologies are occurring in many educational and training contexts,but there are critical barriers to more rapid dissemination of existingbeneficial technologies and materials. These barriers includeinsufficient teacher preparation for appropriate uses of informationtechnology, absence of adequate educational performance metrics, the


13

expense of developing materials, lack of standard, application-levelinfrastructures, and lack of knowledge about research-documentedeffective strategies.

Individuals and research groups have been producing stand-alone,online educational materials for many years. The common approach toindustrial training materials is custom-built courseware designed to runon a specific platform for a specific audience. The advent of the WorldWide Web has sparked the creation of Web-based materials in theindustrial arena and in educational environments. This shows thatcreative and exploratory desires exist and that leading-edge teachers seethe possibilities. However, these efforts remain disconnected, sporadic,custom-built, and largely unevaluated.

Inadequate technology infrastructures cause multiple problems:duplicative content development for multiple platforms, lack ofinteroperability among learning modules, lack of data sharing amongsystems, difficulty in locating existing materials, issues of unreliablequality of service, absence of a convenient way to charge for use ofmaterials, and a disincentive to develop and publish materials a smallamount at a time. The Panel saw evidence that supplying Web-basedtemplates and basic usage standards accelerated the production ofmaterials by K-12 teachers. A well-thought out, flexible, easy-to-useinfrastructure might ignite a huge amount of activity.

Another barrier is the cost of entry for new materials. Education andtraining content development is hard and expensive. It is not unusual tospend 100-200 hours developing one hour's worth of interactivematerials; simulations are even more costly. And any materials thatincorporate sophisticated media, such as video, inherit the costs ofmedia production. Tools to decrease these levels of effort are desperatelyneeded.

Even though there is widespread experimentation with existing andemerging educational technologies, there is very little dependableinformation on what works, in what circumstances, and why. Theefficacy of computer-aided and distance learning in a trainingenvironment has been studied. But we need far more analytical andempirical explanation for successes and failures, particularly in K-12


14

and university education, with research methodologies thatacknowledge the complexities of such interventions.

Finding 7. Education and learning R&D are dramaticallyunderfunded, both on an absolute basis and compared with otherdomains.

Given its importance to the Nation, it is hard to understand why R&Din K-12 education is funded at only 0.03 percent of total K-12expenditures ($100 million out of $300 billion expended).13 The PITACrecognizes that the total expenditure for education and training R&D isdifficult to determine due to the highly distributed nature of thefunding and effort, but the numbers we were able to find seemalarmingly low. For example, a 1997 report14 on educational technologyby the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology(PCAST) compared U.S. R&D in pharmaceuticals and K-12 educationas follows:

The magnitude of the problem is illustrated by a (somewhatoversimplified) comparison between the American educationsystem and the American pharmaceutical industry. In 1995, theUnited States spent about $70 billion on prescription and non-prescription medications, and invested about 23 percent of thisamount on drug development and testing. By way of contrast,our nation spent about $300 billion on public K-12 education in1995, but invested less than 0.1 percent of that amount todetermine what educational techniques actually work, and to findways to improve them.

Moreover, while pharmaceutical research expenditures have increasedsignificantly over the past few decades as new technologies opened newavenues for medicinal innovation, research funded through the National

13 Fletcher, op. cit.14 President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, Report to

the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in theUnited States, Section 8.4, March 1997, at http://www.ostp.gov/PCAST/k-12ed.html.


15

Institute of Education dropped by a factor of five (in constant dollars)between 1973 and 1986. Although this situation has improved somewhatover the past decade, the Department of Education continues to allocatea relatively insignificant portion of its $30 billion annual budget toresearch.

The PCAST went on to argue for a more reasonable level of Federallyfunded research into improving the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of U.S.K-12 education:

In view of both the importance of elementary and secondaryeducation to America's future and the enormous investment ournation makes in such education each year, the Panel recommendsthat after a brief transitional period involving substantial yearlyincreases, a steady-state allocation of no less than 0.5 percent of ournation's aggregate K-12 educational spending (or approximately$1.5 billion per year at present expenditure levels)15 be made tofederally sponsored research aimed specifically at improving theefficacy and cost-effectiveness of K-12 education in the UnitedStates.

While this sum may seem quite large in absolute terms, whenexpressed as a fraction of total educational expenditures, it is someten to twenty times lower than the comparable ratio in mostknowledge-based industries. More importantly, because even amodest improvement in the cost-effectiveness of the educationalprocess would result in an enormous reduction in the publicexpenditures required to achieve a given level of educationaloutcomes, the Panel believes that such an investment could resultin substantial savings over time. Even these savings, however, would

15 More recent figures from the December 2000 Web-Based EducationCommission report indicate that “the current budget for the Office ofEducational Research and Improvement, the major research arm of the U.S.Department of Education, is $540 million. Even adding the $60 million spentby the Research, Evaluation, and Communication Division of the NationalScience Foundation's Education and Human Resources Directorate, bestestimates suggest total spending for education research is in the $600 millionrange.” (p. 73). At http://interact.hpcnet.org/webcommission/index.htm.


likely pale by comparison with the long-term dollar impact that asignificantly improved K-12 educational system could be expectedto have on our nation's economic competitiveness throughout theearly decades of the 21st century.

Finding 8. The breadth and scale of the needed research effort andthe necessity for learning technology innovation and diffusion requiresunprecedented partnerships among government, industry, foundations,universities, and schools.

Taking the potential role of information technology in all of educationand training, from pre-kindergarten through military, industrial, andlifelong learning as the target, there is a great deal of work to do. ThePanel feels that the barriers listed above will yield to well-managed,aggressive efforts and that a community of researchers, industrialparticipants, educators, and educational institutions is available to carryout the work. Current funding and research management mechanismsare, however, grossly inadequate. To pursue the role of informationtechnology in learning, Federal government expenditure ofapproximately one tenth of one percent of total K-12 educationexpenditures should be possible when matched by available industrialand foundation funds and managed aggressively and non-bureaucratically. That would imply a Federal funding level of about$300 million per year plus foundation and industry matching for a totalof $600 million per year. An additional Federal investment of at least$100 million per year, again matched from other sources, is needed toinclude those aspects of the research more associated with adults,pertaining to university, corporate, and lifelong learning technologies.16

16 Total expenditures for university education and corporate training arebelieved to be on the order of $400 billion.

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Recommendations

Overarching RecommendationMake the effective integration of information technology witheducation and training a national priority.

More effective – and cost-effective – education and training are key toour well being, as individuals, families, communities, and as a Nation.Information technology, in the hands of well-educated teachers andtrainers, has the potential to provide enormous leverage in the pursuitof better and less costly education and training. Pre-kindergarten, K-12,and university education are conducted primarily at the state, local, andprivate levels, and training is conducted by the military services,thousands of companies, professional schools and societies, and the like.This widely dispersed effort has its merits, but the diffuse operationalentities are unable to fund the type of far-reaching research proposedhere for a national initiative. The Federal government has to takeprimary responsibility to fund the research required to improve theprocesses executed by these many thousands of operational entities.

The PITAC recommends the following four specific actions at theFederal level: (1) establish and coordinate a major research initiative forinformation technology in education and training; (2) establish focusedgovernment-university-industry-foundation partnerships to aggressivelypursue the information technology research program required toadvance education and training technology in the United States; (3)enable educators and related professionals to use informationtechnology effectively; and (4) develop and promote standards forinformation infrastructures for education and training.

Recommendation 2. Establish and coordinate a major researchinitiative for information technology in education and training.

Having reviewed past studies, proposed technologies, and currentprograms, the PITAC has concluded that there are critical, long-termtechnical issues that need to be addressed to realize its vision oftransforming the way we learn. The following non-exhaustive list

17


illustrates the many topics encompassed by such an initiative. The list isdivided into (1) learning technologies and sciences, (2) informationtechnologies for education and training, and (3) requirements forlearning and teaching information technology fluency.

Some of these research areas overlap with existing activities such as theInformation Technology R&D Programs (which include the NextGeneration Internet Initiative). That is to be expected and is beneficial.These overlaps, however, place a burden on the Administration toensure appropriate coordination and on Congress to make sure researchfunding is sustained so that coordinated plans can be executed.

Learning sciences and technologies

• Identifying effective information technology-enhanced learningstrategies and methods – determining the kinds of methods andmaterials that engage the learner and groups of learners; developlasting knowledge, understanding, and skills; assess progress; andidentify weaknesses and misunderstandings. This is both aresearch and a knowledge-diffusion problem. It has criticalimplications for the development of curriculum materials andassessments, teacher professional and training programs, andschool leadership.17

• Learning how to learn using information technology – enablingstudents and teachers to gain maximum advantage from newtechnologies. The increasing requirement for lifelong just-in-timelearning can be supported by a richly populated education andtraining infrastructure (recommended below). But students needto be taught how to use such an infrastructure for self- andmentored learning. Methods need to be developed to teachstudents these skills, not as a chore but as an exciting way toprogress through life.

• Improving student assessment using information technologies –determining the knowledge and skills of the learner through

17 “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: ExpandedEdition.” National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2000.

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psychometrically validated performance assessments that alignclosely with the desired uses of knowledge acquired throughlearning. A research program could lead to embedded assessmentsthat go far beyond current standardized tests and could be used tohelp guide instruction continuously. For example, it ought to bepossible to develop and evolve an effective English compositionevaluator at some useful level, or to assess a student's problem-solving skills by analyzing the sequence of actions taken by thestudent. Developing a sophisticated, adaptable, IT-based capabilityfor student assessment is essential to the effective implementationof education reforms that place increased emphasis on measurableresults and accountability. Such assessment is emphasized inPresident Bush's initiative, “Transforming the Federal Role inEducation So That No Child is Left Behind.”

• Assessing the effectiveness of information technology in educationand training – distinguishing the solutions that really work. Therecommendations here envision new educational methods andtechnologies, perhaps radically new. Research into how to measurethe effectiveness of those methods and technologies should beintegrated with the methodological and technological researchprojects funded by the programs and initiatives recommended inthis report.

• To assess technological effectiveness requires that there be a set ofconsensus objectives against which results can be measured.Although the PITAC lacks standing to recommend actions in thecontroversial area of educational content standards, we believe thatour education and training establishments must articulate theirgoals, measure them, and improve performance measured againstthose goals. Failure to take these steps would result in informationtechnology being applied to educational processes withoutadequately understanding the underlying objectives of theprocesses and their critical drivers of effectiveness and efficiency –therefore, without being able to argue persuasively about benefitsor deficits of the new methods and technologies. Anecdotal,sometimes astonishing, successes will undoubtedly occur even inthe absence of such well-articulated goals, but the longstanding

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difficulty of diffusing improvements in education and training sothat they become systemic will remain.

• Leveraging socioeconomic factors in using information technologyin education and training – understanding and exploiting culturaland economic differences that affect learning. Examples includethe use of relevant readings and math problems, roles ofmultilingual content and technologies, accounting for externaldemands on the student, and socioeconomic factors in perception.

• Searching, discovery, and selection of appropriate content – enablingefficient and effective use of information. We need technologies fortagging materials with information about content, applicability,certification, ownership, royalties, and the like, and ways to lookfor, screen, and select materials appropriate for individual contextsand users. Materials might self-adapt, for example, to differentstyles of access devices, cultural contexts of the user, usercapabilities or disabilities, and so on. Materials and accessprocesses might respond to a student's personal digital educationalrecord and library if so authorized.

• Learning for cognitively disabled students – using informationtechnology to facilitate learning and training for students withdifficulties such as low I.Q., attention-deficit disorder, anddyslexia.

Information technologies for education and training

• Advanced, complex technologies for education and training –enhancing universal learner understanding of complex subjectmatter using visualizations, simulations, design environments,multi-player gaming, and other technological strategies. Some ofthese may require access to high-end computing and many willrequire access to high-speed communications.

• Content development tools and technologies – addressing the cost-of-entry problem. While responsibility for content developmentand content selection lies with state and county administration,the tools that facilitate these tasks would benefit from Federallydriven R&D and offer a significant opportunity for leverage across

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the Nation. Online educational materials, ranging from traditionalcomputer-based training courses through real-time simulators andlarge-scale digital libraries, are essentially software. Materialdevelopment is an art that shares the attributes of most softwaredevelopment: it is hard, labor intensive, expensive, error prone,and not very well understood. Educational materials that requirean hour of student effort to execute might typically take 100-200hours to develop, assuming no new underlying technology is used.Shortages of well educated, disciplined, and creative developersexacerbate this difficulty, so there are serious personnel-development needs for the learning technologies field. Many of theissues for research in software development carry over into thisarena, but focused education- and training-specific efforts arerequired. We need a wide range of materials and systems that arepredictably trustworthy and durable, predictably well-performing,adaptable to various users and contexts, easy to use, evolvable andreusable, maintainable, extensible, interoperable, and scalable. Theemergence of component software paradigms may help in thisregard.18

• Collaboration and community tools – enabling sharing of learningproblems and projects and access to expertise among mentors,tutors, experts and peers for learning support. Emerging researchin this field demonstrates how little we know about how toestablish, support, scale, and maintain such communities oflearning, and the new problems that arise in such distributedlearning environments (e.g., security, safety, knowledgemanagement). Determining appropriate and effective roles forsuch social computing in learning and education will require long-term, multidisciplinary research in the social and learning sciences.

• Online safety and protection – knowing that we can control ourown information. Educational records and processes are verysensitive, like financial records and processes. For example, the

18 Roschelle, J., DiGiano, C., Koutlis, M., Repenning, A., Phillips, J., Jackiw,N., Suthers, D. (1999),“Developing educational software components,” IEEEComputer, 32(9), 50-58.

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envisioned personal digital educational record and library shouldbe private to the owner. A great deal of work is yet to be done tohave high-confidence, scalable, secure systems.

• Discernment, archiving, search, and navigation – knowing how touse the vast amount of available information. Many of these mostimportant topics are addressed under the umbrella of digitallibraries. The potential is to allow all students and researcherssimultaneous, usable, and useful access to the vast stores ofinformation available in collections throughout the world.Discernment, the ability to distinguish usable and validinformation among all the available information, is a very difficultproblem that will require substantial, long-term research. Ineducation, discernment may interact in unknown ways withlearner interests and background knowledge, requiring significantnew scientific research to understand.

• Low-cost, scalable, ubiquitous information infrastructure – applyingaffordable, high-capacity, ubiquitous communications platforms.The education and training environment of the future will enableaccess to learning materials and systems anywhere, anytime, by anyauthorized user. Technologies emerging from efforts such as theNext Generation Internet project, and beyond, will be importantfor education and training. The research on the education andtraining side should focus on using the new technologieseffectively and efficiently, including research on new applicationsand on the new interactive learning contexts of such ubiquitoususe of information technologies outside classrooms. Educationand training will require highly reliable, seamless, wireless, accessto systems that may run on distant, perhaps very high-end,computers with front-ends that may run on hand-held, book-sizeddevices. Or there may be special places that students go to usemultidimensional immersive environments tied to large numbersof computers elsewhere. Transfer of very information-densemedia, such as realistic-definition 3-D video with interactive, real-time response to user motion, will be available, perhaps to displaysworn as eyeglasses. To accomplish this in a way that scales to thepotential population of learners at any given moment requires the

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PR E S I D E N T ’S I N F O R M AT I O N TE C H N O L O G Y A D V I S O RY CO M M I TT E E

Nation to fund research that goes beyond the Next GenerationInternet but that will be useful in many domains, not justeducation and training.

• Access for physically disabled students and teachers – opening thenew educational frontier to all citizens. This is a rich area forresearch with many potential benefits, not only for the disabledbut also for all human-computer interactions. It requiresintegrated hardware and software research.

Requirements for learning and teaching information technology fluency

• Bringing teachers and students up to speed – What do teachers andstudents need to know in order to take advantage of today andtomorrow's information technologies and infrastructures? Howcan we promote the necessary learning-how-to-learn skills in thisrapidly changing knowledge area? This goes beyond using theinformation technologies for learning; it includes using systemsand networks for various applications in business, science,humanities, the arts, health, and citizenship, to benefit theindividual, family, and community.19

Recommendation 3. The Federal government should collaboratewith industry, state governments, and private foundations toaggressively pursue the information technology research programrequired to advance education and training in the United States.

The Federal government should collaborate with industry and privatefoundations to co-fund the information technology research requiredfor the national education initiative. Large-scale, sustained efforts arerequired, each involving multiple disciplines and drawing on expertisefrom academia, industry, and government laboratories. These researchpartnerships will need aggressive, activist program managers who canseek out, fund, encourage, assess, and sustain long-term, long-range,pre-competitive research. Huge procurement efforts that draw

19 See “Being Fluent with Information Technology,” Computer Science andTelecommunications Board, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press,1999.

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thousands of small grant proposals should be avoided since the NationalScience Foundation (NSF) and other agencies already perform that role.Instead, the activist model continuously engages the program managerin the targeting, solicitation, rapid funding, and continuing constructiveevaluation of a smaller number of large research efforts that may lastfive to ten years each. These efforts should focus on non-incremental,high-risk, high-potential research that spans theory, experiment, andapplication.

Efforts that cost several million dollars per year should not be unusual.The Explorations into the 21st Century described in the PITACFebruary 1999 report are the appropriate scale here. Research effortsshould not be diluted by the requirement for frequent elaborate formalproposals for re-funding nor for voluminous written reporting to thevarious funding agencies. It will be the partnerships’ responsibility tobalance the wide variety of agendas and vested interests of the fundingagencies and industrial participants by drawing them together intoproductive collaborations.

On the government side, various interested agencies – including theDepartment of Defense (DoD), the Department of Education (ED), theDepartment of Energy (DOE), the Department of Labor (DOL), theNational Institutes of Health (NIH), and NSF – should be providedinsight into the partnerships' activities. They should all be encouragedto provide funds to the partnerships to pursue broad programmaticobjectives. State governments20 should be encouraged to participate aswell, since most K-12 educational funding is provided by states, givingthem a high stake in the advances outlined in this report. Currentlystates provide virtually no education or learning technology R&Dfunding. The recent establishment of the California Institute forTelecommunications and Information Technology in San Diego,California, serves as a good example of a substantial research

20 State governments can play a significant role. For example, California isspending $1 billion to establish three California Institutes for Science andInnovation. One major focus of these institutes is how education will betransformed by the technologies they address. Seehttp://www.ucop.edu/california-institutes/.

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partnership between industry and state government. Cal-(IT)2 willstudy the science and technologies required to expand the reach andcapacity of the global Internet. That work, in turn, will enablerevolutionary advances in applications important to California'seconomy: environmental monitoring, transportation, health care delivery,artistic expression, e-commerce, and education. We believe similarpartnerships can be established that focus on information technologyresearch to advance education and training in the United States.

The purpose of the research partnerships is not to pursue genericinformation technology such as improving the bandwidth, quality ofservice, and security of the Internet or developing higher-resolutiondisplays. For these requirements, partnerships should remain cognizantof and import the results of other information technology R&D effortsand should export requirements to that community through closerelationships with Federal funding agencies and industry.

Total Federal funding for such partnerships should ramp up rapidly to$400 million per year with an expectation of equal funding from othersources. Each partnership might be able to manage effectively andefficiently as much as $200 million per year including matching funds.

Our recommended level of funding, while still modest, is based on the1997 PCAST report on educational technology, which compared U.S.R&D in pharmaceuticals and K-12 education. Our recommendationstrikes a balance between the Panel's desire to achieve a meaningfulinvestment increase, capable of generating the quantum leap forwardthat is needed, and our realistic assessment of the Nation's ability toappropriately identify, qualify, staff, and manage the research projectsencompassed in our proposed agenda.

Recommendation 4. Enable educators and related professionalsto use information technology effectively.

Teacher development is lagging development of applicable technology.Teachers and others required for the deployment of new learningtechnologies need to be better supported in learning how to takeadvantage of new and emerging technologies. Such professional

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development is needed for both existing and student teachers and hasimplications for universities in general, for their schools of education,and for school systems and teacher professional developmentorganizations that provide in-service training. It will require thatfunding and mechanisms be made available to better reach currentteachers. More materials developers and authors need to be trained.Even with the shift from school-centered technology management to anoutsourced model for application-service provision (ASP) via the Web,as within corporations, more staff for the management of in-schoolnetworks is required.

In addition to the obvious requirement that teachers need to be able touse the new technologies effectively with students, teachers need to betrained in how to engage parents with information technology-enhanced learning. For industrial trainers, the Panel assumes theeconomic incentives are sufficient for industry to fund the requiredefforts, but for government and military training the Federalgovernment will have to accelerate current programs. For industrialretraining of unemployed workers, industry, state, and Federalpartnerships such as those promoted by the U.S. Department of Laborare appropriate funding mechanisms.

Current grassroots efforts indicate that some teachers and trainers areable to use technology not only effectively but also creatively. Teachersand trainers, for example, can create online courses and materials,especially if given the appropriate authoring tools. Students canparticipate, providing valuable learning experiences. These efforts needmore fundamental guidance from pre-service training of teachers to in-service support. The $60-million-per-year U.S. Department ofEducation PT3 program is an important initiative supporting schools ofeducation to prepare tomorrow's teachers to use technology forimproved teaching and learning (http://www.pt3.org/).

However, the current lack of a coherent information infrastructure forlearning materials tends to make each set of materials monolithic andone-of-a-kind. As the infrastructure described in the followingrecommendation emerges, teachers need to be trained in how to use theinfrastructure to develop materials in cooperation with others.

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PR E S I D E N T ’S IN F O R M AT I O N TE C H N O LO G Y A D V I S O RY CO M M I TT E E

The Panel cannot know how the emergence and deployment ofinformation-based learning technologies will affect the number ofrequired teachers. Information technology will not reduce the need forteachers, but it may enable them to reach more people. However, theskills needed by tomorrow's teachers will be different and may requiremore training. In the near term, since shortages are a certainty,incentives must be developed and must quickly be used to attract moreteachers, to educate them better in information technology, and toretain them. The Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching forthe 21st Century led by former Senator John Glenn documented in itsSeptember 2000 report many of these challenges and proposed anaggressive partnership of government, industry, and other sectors totackle the problems (http://www.ed.gov/americacounts/glenn/).

Recommendation 5. Work with industry and academia todevelop technical standards for extendable component-basedtechnologies and infrastructures that can be widely used in onlineeducation and training.

The Panel visited research sites and Web sites and has reviewedliterature that illustrates that teachers will develop and publisheducational materials more readily if they do not have to start fromscratch. The result is greater sharing and reuse of materials and methodsthat teachers believe to be effective, potentially helping to make teachersmore efficient. The World Wide Web and other Internet technologieshave provided a basis for an education and training infrastructure, butthere is a great deal more to be done. It should be possible, for instance,for a teacher to develop an example illustrating some concept and hookit easily into a larger course that includes materials on that concept. Inthis way, culturally appropriate examples can be substituted in analready existing course. In some contexts, it may be desirable to developan economy for such small, medium, and large materials such thatroyalties could be collected and distributed automatically.

Recently, several broad-scale consortia have developed to define andestablish technical standards, recommended practices, and guides forsoftware components, tools, and design used in the development,deployment, maintenance, and interoperation of computer

27

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implementations of education and training components and systems.These groups include the IEEE Learning Technology StandardsCommittee (ltsc.ieee.org), the IMS Project (www.imsproject.org) of theIMS Global Learning Consortium, and SCORM (Sharable CoursewareObject Reference Model) from the DoD Advanced Distributed Learninginitiative (www.adlnet.org). Many Federal agencies that either requireeducation and training (such as DoD) or support it (such as ED, DOL,and NSF) have an interest in these standards. They need to work withall of their relevant programs, and with the private and educationalsectors, to define and promote the adoption of common technicalstandards for the design of online courses, meta-tagging of digitallearning content, and universal design standards for access for thedisabled. Government should not establish or try to maintain controlover a separate set of standards. Industry must be heavily involved,particularly companies commercially committed to education andtraining. Once the infrastructure standards have been established,agencies may have to provide grants and contracts to seed anddemonstrate the infrastructure appropriate to their domains.

ConclusionsEducation and training are of central importance to national progress.

Most people who have investigated the state of U.S. education andtraining recognize that there is plenty of room for improvement, andmany feel that the current situation requires drastic nationwide action.Current grassroots efforts to apply Web-based approaches to educationand training are just early stirrings signaling the potential ofinformation technology to assist in the needed improvements. Existingresearch and development in learning sciences and technologies areseriously underfunded. Improved use of existing and emerginginformation technologies, research and development of new informationtechnologies and infrastructure standards, development andpromulgation of new learning methods and interactive learningenvironments, and development of metrics, goals, and assessmenttechniques are all part of the answer to the pressing national need totransform the way we learn. w

PR E S I D E N T ’S IN F O R M AT I O N T E C H N O LO G Y AD V I S O RY CO M M I TT E E

Note on access to computingand communications

Widespread access to computing is not sufficient to achieve improvedinformation technology-enhanced learning and education. However, itis a necessary precursor. Society-wide transformation in learning willrequire a critical mass of networked computers in every classroom,along with well-educated, information technology-knowledgeableteachers, appropriate software, and budgets to cover ongoing costs ofownership. The ability to access computers and the Internet must extendbeyond the schoolroom, however, into the communities and homes ofthe students.

As a basis for future progress, current levels of computer access areinadequate. We must move beyond measuring national progress ineducational technology in the unit of students-per-computer. We muststart measuring student learning in relation to access time to computer-enhanced learning environments. Computers, software, and high-speedInternet connections are needed in every classroom for every studentand must also be accessible from outside the school, preferably fromevery home or at least in readily accessible community centers that canprovide access and appropriate training.

To reach the goals this Panel recommends, a nationwide effortinvolving governments, industries, and schools at all levels is required,and all of society must be addressed. While progress is being made inrolling out information technology to the schools, the rollout is unevenand inadequate. Current Federal efforts are helpful, but not enough;these include the e-rate, the Technology Challenge Fund, CommunityTechnology Centers, and PT3.

A variety of approaches can be used here. The program of the NationalCity (CA) Adult School, a site near San Diego visited by the Panel, is anexample. San Diego County retires about 3,000 desktop computers peryear and turns them over to this school. Students who are learningcomputer repair and network management fix these machines and getto keep one each for home use; the rest are placed in the community, the

29


second-poorest in California. Free Internet access is provided throughlocal schools.

The Federal government should continue to encourage and co-fundsuch creative solutions, increase the size and scope of access programs,and establish mechanisms so that creative approaches can be scaled upnationwide.

The Panel suggests that for current Web-based technologies andmaterials, state-of-the-art desktop personal computers are not necessaryfor every seat at every school. Programs may gain leverage, as in theNational City example, from trailing the hardware state of the art,perhaps substantially. Low-cost hand-held computers appear to holdparticular promise for enabling all learners to have low-cost access tolearning applications, particularly as wireless infrastructures becomewidespread.

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Appendix

Participants in Learning Panel Workshop

31

Alice AgoginoUniversity ofCalifornia-Berkeley

Nick AguilarUniversity of California-San Diego

Barbara AllenLemonLink

Doris AlvarezPreuss Charter School

Eric BenhamouPITAC

Terri BergmanWorkforce Partnership

Bruce BraciszewskiSan Diego County Officeof Education

Ching-chih ChenPITAC

Yolanda L. ComedyNCO

Al CorbettCarnegie MellonUniversity

Dexter FletcherInstitute For DefenseAnalyses

Janet DeandaHewlett Packard

John EgerSan Diego StateUniversity

Noah FinkelsteinUniversity of California-San Diego

Larry FitchWorkforce Partnership

Susan L. GrahamPITAC

Joe ThompsonPITAC

Randy HinrichsMicrosoft

Kay HowellNCO

Paul HorwitzConcord AcademyLearning Consortium

Chip JohnstoneWestern GovernorsUniversity

Ted Kahn Design Worlds forLearning

David Katz3Com

Henry KellyFederation of AmericanScientists

Darryl LaGaceLemon Grove

Anthony MaddoxNSF

Joy MarquezEdmin.com

Michael MoeMerrill Lynch KnowledgeWeb

Jeff MunksDigital Think

Susan MyrlandInteractive MediaManagement

Don NormanUnext.com

Roy PeaSRI International

Lori PerineOffice of Science andTechnology Policy

Robert PozosSan Diego StateUniversity

Ann RedelfsUniversity of California-San Diego

Larry RosenstockHigh Tech High

Michael SchudsonUniversity of California-San Diego

David SharpeSan Diego StateUniversity

Jane Signaigo-CoxSan Diego RegionalEconomic DevelopmentCorporation

Kris StewartSan Diego StateUniversity

Andries Van DamBrown University

Andrew J. ViterbiPITAC

Olga VasquezUniversity of California-San Diego

Robert I. WinnerNCO


Publications of

The President’s Information Technology

Advisory Committee

Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future,

February 1999, 80 pages.

Resolving the Digital Divide: Information, Access, and Opportunity,


Transforming Access to Government Through Information

Technology, September 2000, 32 pages.

Developing Open Source Software To Advance High End Computing,

October 2000, 28 pages.

Transforming Health Care Through Information Technology,


Using Information Technology To Transform the Way We Learn,


Digital Libraries: Universal Access to Human Knowledge,


32

Ordering Copies of PITAC Reports

This report is published by the National Coordination Officefor Information Technology Research and Development. To requestadditional copies or copies of other PITAC reports, please contact:

National Coordination Officefor Information Technology Research and Development

4201 Wilson Blvd., Suite II-405Arlington, VA 22230

(703) 292-4873Fax: (703) 292-9097

E-mail: [email protected]

PITAC documents are also available on the NCO Web site:

http://www.itrd.gov

Cover creditsThe cover is by National Science Foundation designer-illustrator

James J. Caras.

Janet Ward, computer specialist with the High PerformanceComputing and Communications program of the NationalOceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, developed thecomputer graphic image used in the cover illustration.

using information technology · recommendation is that the federal government set as a national...

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