Last update at http://inet.nttam.com : Fri May 12 15:00:39 1995 A Transformation of Learning: Use of the NII for Education and Lifelong Learning Bonnie Bracey Today, we have a dream for a different kind of superhighway that can save lives, create jobs and give every American young and old, the chance for the best education available to anyone, anywhere. I challenge you. . .to connect all of our classrooms, all of our libraries, and all of our hospitals and clinics by the year 2000. Vice President Al Gore, speaking to communications industry leaders, January 11, 1994 I am a classroom teacher. I am a member of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, appointed by the President and we are involved in sharing our documents, which we wrote and the "Common Ground" that links the ideas that will allow Americans to see the future, using technology. I want to share with you scenarios of technology at work from the Office of Technology Assessment video, the overarching themes, or Common Ground of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council and the National Institute of Standards vision for the thinking which will take us into technology. Education and Lifelong Learning Communications technology is transforming the way we live by connecting us with information and each other. The National Information Infrastructure (NII) promises every business, government agency, hospital, home, library, and school in the nation access anywhere to voice, data, full-motion video, and multimedia applications. The impact of these capabilities on learning -- for the children, for higher education students, and for lifelong learners -- will be substantial. The way Americans teach, learn, transmit and access information remains largely unchanged from a century ago. We find the following conditions in American education and training: - The textbook remains the basic unit of instruction. Absorption of its contents tends to be the measure of educational success. - Teachers and instructors use "chalk and talk" to convey information. Students are often recipients of instruction rather than active participants in learning. - School teachers work largely in isolation from their peers. Teachers interact with their colleagues only for a few moments each day. Most other professionals collaborate, exchange information and develop new skills on a daily basis. - Although half of the nation's school teachers use passive video materials for instruction, only a small fraction have access to interactive video, computer networks, or even telephones in the classroom. - While computers are a frequent sight in America's classrooms and training sites, they are usually used simply as electronic workbooks. Interactive, high performance uses of technology, such as networked teams collaborating to solve real-world problems, retrieving information from electronic libraries, and performing scientific experiments in simulated environments, are all too uncommon. - "U.S. schooling is a conservative institution, which adopts new practice and technology slowly. Highly regulated and financed from a limited revenue base, schools serve many educational and social purposes, subject to local consent. The use of computer technology, with its demands on teacher professional development, physical space, time in the instructional day, and budget ... has found a place in classroom practice and school organization slowly and tentatively."[note 1] Events of the last two decades have proven that we can do better. We have found that most American children are capable of learning at dramatically higher levels -- levels of performance we now expect only of our best students. We have learned this from research in cognitive science, from the educational achievements of other countries, and from pioneering efforts in our own schools. Moreover, after 35 years of research, we have found that technology can be the key to higher levels of achievement.[note 2] Similarly, in the American workplace we have found that workers can achieve levels of productivity and quality equal to the best in the world.[note 3] Well-educated, well-trained, motivated workers can produce high-quality goods and services at low cost, enhance industrial productivity and competitiveness, and sustain high living standards. High-quality education and training payoff for the individual whose skills are upgraded, for the company seeking a competitive edge, and for the nation in achieving overall productivity and competitiveness. Our major foreign competitors place much greater emphasis on developing and maintaining workforce skills than we do. Experienced production workers at Japanese auto assembly plants, for example, receive three times as much training each year as their American counterparts. Research in our country has shown that workers who receive formal job training are 30 percent more productive than those who do not. Again, we have found that technology is the key to making training accessible and affordable -- especially for small- to medium-sized firms with few resources of their own to devote to producing and implementing the training and lifelong learning their workers need and for workers who, on their own, are attempting to improve their skills or transfer them to new areas of endeavor. Finally, in preparing students for the workplace, we have learned that interactive, high performance technology can produce immersive, real world instructional environments. These environments can smooth longterm school-to-work transitions while helping to meet the immediate objectives of both schools and workplaces. Our efforts to develop this capability have been fragmentary and shortlived at best. A Vision for the Use of the NII The NII, will be the vehicle for improving education and lifelong learning throughout America in ways we now know are critically important. Our nation will become a place where students of all ages and abilities reach the highest standards of academic achievement. Teachers, engineers, business managers, and all knowledge workers will constantly be exposed to new methods, and will collaborate and share ideas with one another. Through the NII, students of all ages will use multimedia electronic libraries and museums containing text, images, video, music, simulations, and instructional software. The NII will give teachers, students, workers, and instructors access to a great variety of instructional resources and to each other. It will give educators and managers new tools for improving the operations and productivity of their institutions. The NII will remove school walls as barriers to learning in several ways. It will provide access to the world beyond the classroom. It will also permit both teachers and students access to the tools of learning and their peers -- outside the classroom and outside the typical nine to three school day. It will enable family members to stay in contact with their children's schools. The NII will permit students, workers and instructors to converse with scientists, scholars, and experts around the globe. Workplaces will become lifelong learning environments, supporting larger numbers of high skill, high wage jobs. Printed books made the content of great instruction widely and inexpensively available in the 18th Century. The interactive capabilities of the NII will make both the content and interactions of great teaching universally and inexpensively available in the 21st Century. Education and Lifelong Learning Applications for the NII The NII will provide the backbone for a lifelong learning society. Education and training communities will better accommodate an enormous diversity of learners in an equally diverse variety of settings. In addition to schools and work places, interconnected, high-performance applications will extend interactive learning to community centers, libraries, and homes. Education, training, and lifelong learning applications available from the NII may include: - Multimedia interactive learning programs delivered to homes to immigrant children and their parents to collaborate on learning English as a second language. - Troubleshooting and operating applications that access the computer-assisted-design (CAD) databases used to design workplace technology and to integrate the CAD data with instructional and job-aiding capabilities to provide just-in-time training and maintenance assistance. - Comprehensive interconnectivity for students that allows them to receive and complete assignments, collaborate with students in distant locations on school projects, and interact with teachers and outside experts to receive help, hints, and critiques. - Simulated learning activities such as laboratory experiments and archeological digs. - Universal access interfaces for computers and telecommunications devices for students, workers and others with disabilities to allow access to the NII. - Affordable, portable personal learning assistance that tap into the NII from any location at any time and provide multimedia access to any NII information resource. - Immersive, realistic interactive simulations that allow emergency teams made up of geographically dispersed members to practice together on infrequently used procedures that may be urgently needed to meet local exigencies. The Educational Benefits of Technology Evidence from research, schools, and workplaces around the country tells us that communications technologies are powerful tools in reaching the highest levels of educational performance. - Students with disabilities, who previously had at best limited access to most educational and reference materials, will have fuller access and will have the ability to participate in the learning experience with their peers. - A 1993 survey of studies on the effectiveness of technology in schools concluded that "courses for which computer-based networks were used increased student-student and student-teacher interaction, increased student-teacher interaction with lower-performing students, and did not decrease the traditional forms of communications used."[note 4] - Research on the costs of instruction delivered via distance learning, videotape, teleconferencing, and computer software indicates that savings are often achieved with no loss of effectiveness. Distance learning vastly broadens the learning environment, often providing teaching resources simply not available heretofore. Technology-based methods have a positive impact on learner motivation and frequently save instructional time. Savings in training time produce benefits both by reducing training costs and by shortening the time required to become and remain productive in the workplace. - A review of computer-based instruction used in military training found that students reach similar levels of achievement in 30% less time than they need using more standard approaches to training.[note 5] - A Congressionally mandated review covering 47 comparisons of multimedia instruction with more conventional approaches to instruction found time savings of 30%, improved achievement, cost savings of 30-40%, and a direct, positive link between amount of interactivity provided and instructional effectiveness.[note 6] - A comparison of peer tutoring, adult tutoring, reducing class size, increasing the length of the school day, and computer-based instruction found computer-based instruction to be the least expensive instructional approach for raising mathematics scores by a given amount.[note 7] - A landmark study of the use of technology for persons with disabilities found that "almost three-quarters of school-age children were able to remain in a classroom, and 45 percent were able to reduce school-related services."[note 8] Of course, these benefits depend upon several contextual factors, including the instructional methods used, the quality of the applications, the availability of professional development for educators, accessibility of instructional materials, the presence of school technology support staff, and family involvement.[note 9] We must learn through experience how best to ensure that the benefits we intend to obtain from NII-based applications become routinely realized in practice. Telecommunications networks provide a range of resources to students and educators that were never before available or affordable. Students and workers can now gain access to mentoring, advice, and assistance from scientists, engineers, researchers, business leaders, technicians, and local experts around the globe through the Internet, using a level of access and connectivity that was previously unimaginable. High school students in West Virginia, for example, can now study Russian via satellite and telephone with a teacher hundreds of miles away. Few West Virginia school districts could afford to offer such a course any other way. Less well understood are changes in the types of learning that occur with the use of certain technologies. Current evidence suggests that some technology applications are more effective than traditional instructional methods in building complex problem solving capabilities for synthesizing information and in improving writing quality. The effects are achieved in part by permitting alternate methods of "reaching" and motivating learners. The Administration's National Information Infrastructure initiative can trigger a transformation of education, training, and lifelong learning by making new tools available to educators, instructors, students, and workers and help them reach dramatically higher levels of performance and productivity. The impact of this transformation in teaching and learning is in-estimable, but clearly enormous. Knowledge drives today's global marketplace. The NII will permit us to take learning beyond the limitations of traditional school buildings. It will take our educators and learners to worldwide resources. Learning will be our way of life. PART II: Where Are We Now? Today, compelling teaching and learning applications are the exception, not the rule. Several federal agencies provide services that meet specific, focused needs, while hundreds of state and local networks and private service providers have begun to address the technology needs of education. Current uses, while expanding rapidly, reach only a small number of technologically-literate school communities. Current application of NII capabilities to work place training is more extensive and technologically advanced than educational applications, yet it lags well behind what is needed and available. The story of workplace training seems to be a case of the haves receiving more and the have-nots remaining neglected. Small firms, those with 100 employees or less, provide about 35 percent of total U.S. employment, but they lack the expertise to provide in-house training, the resources to pay for outside training, and sufficient numbers of people who need training at any one time to justify focused training efforts. Larger firms are more likely to provide training than smaller ones, but the training they provide is mostly limited to college-educated technicians and managers. The lower the level of skills possessed, the less likely the worker is to receive training from any source. Transportable, quality controlled training and lifelong learning could be made readily and inexpensively accessible using the NII and will have a major impact on improving worker skills and workplace productivity. While much remains to be done, the opportunities offered by the NII put many of the needed capabilities within reach of schools, homes, and the workplace. Current Uses of Telecommunications for Education The existing telecommunications infrastructure is composed of telephone, broadcast, cable, and electronic networks. It is used for education, training, and lifelong learning in five basic ways: 1) instructing with video; 2) gathering information from remote libraries and databases; 3) communicating using two-way asynchronous capabilities such as e-mail and information bulletin boards; 4) distance learning; and 5) electronic transfer of instructional software and simulations. - Instructional video. Seventy-five percent of America's schools have cable television, and half of its teachers use video material in their courses.[note 10] The Stars Schools program is reaching 200,000 students in 48 states with advanced placement courses in mathematics, science, and foreign language instruction using fiber optics, computers, and satellites.[note 11] Cassette videotapes for instruction are widely used in schools and work places, and the development of these videotapes for both education and training has become a vigorous industry. - Information collection. This activity includes location and retrieval of documents such as lesson plans and research reports, but it also includes newer data sources such as CAD databases for workplace technologies and equipment, and multimedia information retrieval from digital libraries that can be accessed by students, workers, or people in homes, libraries, and museums. Over 60,000 electronic bulletin boards are used by more than 12 million Americans every day.[note 12] The annual rate of Gopher traffic on the Internet, which directly represents an effort to use NII facilities to gather information, is growing at an annual rate of approximately 1000%[note 13] The Department of Education has a Gopher server which points to or contains educational research information, such as the AskERIC service and information from sources such as CNN, Academy One, and the Educational Testing Service. NASA Spacelink makes lesson plans on space flight and related science topics available on the Internet. - Two-way communication. This includes communication via electronic mail and conferencing among teachers, students, workers, mentors, technicians, and subject matter experts of every sort. Approximately one-quarter of the teachers in Texas regularly sign on to the Texas Education Network, or TENET, to share information, exchange mail, and find resources. A professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University teaches a writing course entirely online. Students swap writing projects and discuss their assignments online. In the workplace, electronic mail is used by more than 12 million workers, increasing to over 27 million workers by 1995. Just less than a sixth of U.S. homes now have at least one computer connected to a modem, and this percentage is growing rapidly. As of July, 1993, there were four Internet hosts for every 1000 people in the United States. There are now 60 countries on the Internet. About 137 countries can now be reached by electronic mail.[note 15] - Distance learning. Hundreds of thousands of students in schools, community colleges, and universities now take courses via one-and two-way video and two-way audio communication. In South Carolina, high school students across the state study with a teacher of Russia based in Columbia through South Carolina Educational Television. Boise State University offers a masters degree program conducted entirely over networked computers to students all over the country. The Department of Defense is investing well over $1 billion in the development and implementation of networked distributed interactive simulation. This technology, which allows dispersed learners to engage in collaborative problem solving activities in real time, is now ready for transfer to schools and workplaces outside of the defense sector. - Transfer of instructional software and simulations. Instructional programs, simulations, materials, and databases can all be accessed over the NII and delivered to schools, homes, libraries, and workplaces wherever and whenever it is desirable to do so. Currently, there are massive exchanges of software, databases, and files using the Internet, but relatively little of this activity occurs in the service of education, training, and lifelong learning. Nonetheless, compelling applications that will become indispensable to teachers, students, and workers are not yet available. All the capabilities of computer-based instruction and multimedia instruction can be distributed using NII facilities to schools, workplaces, homes, libraries, museums, community centers, store fronts -- wherever and whenever people wish to learn. Yet the infrastructure and applications to support this level of accessibility for education, training, and lifelong learning uses have yet to be developed. Until compelling applications are available, educations will not realize the potential of the NII. Efforts to Build the NII for Education and Lifelong Learning: Roles of the Private, Nonprofit, and Public Sectors Successful implementation of the NII to serve the nation's education and lifelong learning needs will require significant contributions by the private sector, state and local governments, Reference D. Lewis and E. McCracken, Common Ground: Fundamental Principles for the National Information Infrastructure, NIIAC, March 1995.(gopher@ntiaunix1.ntia.doc.gov)