My colleague John Gehl, editor and publisher of Educom Review, welcomes
ideas for interesting articles, but when I recently called him to
suggest that he reprint "A Transformation of Learning: Use of the NII
for Education and Lifelong Learning," published by the federal
Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), I could see the look of
horror on his face, even though I wasn't using a videophone. An
"interesting government report"? Isn't that an oxymoron?
John suggested that, as an alternative to competing head-to-head with
the U.S. Government Printing Office, I go ahead and tell you why I think
that report is worth reading.
The developing National Information Infrastructure (NII) will create
both a major opportunity and a major challenge for the higher education
community during the next decade. Estimates say that society at large
will invest in excess of a trillion dollars in the NII, primarily
through private-sector organizations that are building the information
infrastructure and driving its applications. The impact of those
investments on education will be substantial. The IITF report
effectively explores the impact, including the potential opportunities
and obstacles facing people and educational organizations in using the
NII.
Representing the highest levels of the federal government, the IITF
shares with Educom the common vision of a learning society. The two of
us even use the same language to describe the "transforming" effect of
technology on education. The IITF's portrayal of current conditions in
American education mirrors our description of today's teaching
infrastructure, in which teachers use "chalk and talk" to convey
information to passive student recipients. The IITF advances the vision
of a learning infrastructure based on interactive, high-performance
technology producing immersive, real-world instructional environments
that can smooth the school-to-work transition.
Many in higher education are fond of maintaining a conceptual separation
between education and training. The authors of the report, however,
explicitly link education and training to the theme of lifelong
learning, viewing the NII as "the backbone for a lifelong learning
society." Part I defines a vision of what the NII can do for education,
emphasizing the theme of anytime, anywhere learning. Concrete examples
of educational applications available from the NII are described. The
authors do a decent job of outlining the educational benefits of
technology, including specific mention of cost-effectiveness, something
few written pieces on educational applications do.
Part II of the report provides a succinct and accurate description of
current applications, pointing out that "compelling teaching and
learning applications are the exception, not the rule." The authors note
that video-based distance learning dominates the current learning and
technology scene, in regard to both the installed base in schools and
the numbers of students taking video-based courses. They conclude that
the infrastructure and applications to realize the NII's potential---
which they see as computer based and multimedia instruction--"have yet
to be developed."
Developing such "compelling applications" is the major thrust of
Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII). Similarly,
the report's approach to the roles of the private, nonprofit, and public
sectors resonates with the NLII's themes. In addition to building the
telecommunications infrastructure, they note, the private sector must
make "75 percent to 95 percent of the nation's investments in
applications development for education and lifelong learning." This is a
critical point that the higher education community must understand.
The author's description of the installed base of telecommunications
technology in the schools, 80 percent of which is obsolete, is as good
and succinct a summary as you will find. It points out clearly why the
telcos' promise to connect schools to the information highway just won't
do the job. Without internal high-speed connections, a dramatic
improvement in the number and types of computers available, and
acquisition of technical expertise, schools will be unable to realize
the promise of NII applications. The authors recognize that lack of
infrastructure investment in schools has as its source the fact that
educational applications development has not kept pace with other grand-
challenge NII applications, for example, in the research community.
Part III delineates immediate objectives and long-term goals for
realizing the Clinton-Gore vision of connecting every home, classroom,
library, and workplace in the nation to the NII. The distinction between
short-term and long-term goals is useful in helping educators think
about what they should be doing now in anticipation of the future. A
strategy that ascribes distinct roles for institutions, governments, and
the private sector is another of the report's strong points. Key
conditions for success include public awareness of the instructional
benefits offered by the NII, comprehensive plans at the institutional
and statewide levels for integrating technology into education,
increased levels of R&D investment by government at all levels, and
private-sector investment in developing network-accessible software
packages and learning tools based on open standards.
Because most educators don't read the many NII "specs" documents that
emerge from the technological community almost weekly, they will
appreciate the condensed version of the NII's desired attributes that is
included in the long-term-goals section. I especially like the authors'
final point concerning institutional integration: the difficulty of the
challenge of integrating new instructional capabilities into the
routine, daily practice of our current instructional and workplace
institutions.
Part IV asks, How are we going to get there from here? It poses a number
of policy issues and questions, focusing on the role of the federal
government. The answers to the questions form a real agenda for action.
The substance of most current discussions between educators and
government centers on the demand for "free access" to the NII. The
questions posed in Part IV go a long way toward elevating the level of
those discussions. Our challenge is to formulate a response.
Don't get me wrong; not every word of this report is scintillating. The
section on key federal agencies, for example, is a real snooze. But I
have yet to run across any other statement on instructional applications
of the NII that discusses with such clarity where we are, where we need
to go, or strategies for how we're going to get there. And it does all
this in only 13 pages. What? Is this possible? Here we have yet another
oxymoron: a short government report!
["A Transformation of Learning: Use of the NII for Education and
Lifelong Learning" is one section of NIST Special Publication 857,
Putting the Information Infrastructure to Work: A Report of the
Information Infrastructure Task Force Committee on Applications and
Technology. Copies of the report may be requested by phone (301-975-
4529) or by e-mail (cat_exec@nist.gov). In addition, the report may be
accessed via FTP (login=anonymous on host enh.nist.gov) or WWW (URL
http://iitf.doc.gov).]
Carol A. Twigg is vice president of Educom. twigg@educom.edu
Call toll-free 800-254-4770 for a subscription to Educom Review.