To meet the charge of a 21st Century cyberinfrastructure (CI) savvy workforce and citizenry, this workshop will bring together a diverse community of experts in order to establish specific recommendations on actions to support computational research and education activities that are cyberinfrastructure-based, cross disciplinary boundaries, use cyberinfrastructure to make revolutionary advances in the disciplines, deploy cyberinfrastructure-based technologies that enable innovative computational practices, and emphasize the central role of computation in all aspects across STEM disciplines in research and education.
The framework, characteristics, and structure of learning are being greatly impacted by CI and the emerging computational sciences and engineering (CS & E) fueling much of CI development. We are witnessing the emergence of CI-enabled learning, or cyberlearning, which holds tremendous potential, interest, and excitement for formal and informal education opportunities to work with and learn new ways of doing old things or new ways of doing new things, both essential in an increasingly competitive world. Education is no longer PK-20, but rather a lifelong endeavor affecting the general citizenry as well as future and current scientists and engineers.
As the U.S. transitions into a global, knowledge-based economy fueled by information technology (IT) and innovation, the nation faces a critical need for a diverse, competent and innovative workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Computational and data-intensive science and engineering (CDS&E) fields especially depend upon skillful use of cyberinfrastructure (CI) for knowledge creation and learning at all levels, via formal and informal settings. Seeking options for future directions, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure’s task force on Cyberlearning and Workforce Development (CLWD) envisions the emergence of a Continuous Collaborative Computational Cloud (C4) of resources and tools, including extremely large datasets designed or repurposed for learning and teaching. C4 tools and resources encompass intelligent interactivity with content and with other people, and provide capacity to work with multiple data representations and complexity. They enable modeling, manipulation and simulation of real and virtual phenomena –tools integral to cyberlearning. The confluence of CDS&E, computer science, interdisciplinary computational approaches, cognitive and learning sciences, and rapid developments of a pervasive C4 environment portend a sweeping transformation of classrooms, assessment, course structures, pedagogy, and all else that constitutes our current educational system. These interdisciplinary computational approaches encourage "computational thinking," an approach and set of problem-solving tools that complement those provided by mathematics and scientific logic, and that should be considered essential to students’ education and professional preparation from the earliest stages and regardless of discipline. C4 accommodates learning approaches that have served primates from early in the evolutionary landscape to today’s cutting edge learning sciences. It restores play, exploration and personal discovery to prominence in learning. It promises to scale the Socratic method of engaging critical thinking skills— as well as best practices of teaching and learning since Socrates—to all members of the population, raising a realistic prospect of eliminating the underrepresentation in STEM of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities; especially critical today in light of growing inequalities and the falling international standing of the US in STEM education! The recommendations in this workshop come at a time ripe for harvesting an expanding field of rapidly emerging opportunities, such as, the successes of Open Courseware and very large online courses, new forms of credentialing by major universities, as well as changes in the publication industry and the rapid adoption in K-12 and higher education of electronic textbooks. This seemingly small, incremental change can become radical change on a vast scale if the linear concept of the "textbook" is exchanged for one of a personalized, dynamic, interactive, playful, and learner-actuated social learning environment that is enabled by a C4 cyberinfrastructure. Perhaps the most crucial recommendation from this workshop is that the NSF structure its programs foundation-wide to encourage bold revolutionary proposals that integrate the communication models and learning approaches of the future Internet and target the generations whose lifestyles assume it; exploiting and transforming CI-enabled STEM research advancements, tools, and resources for cyberlearning and workforce development purposes. A key aspect of the revolutionary approach that we associate with C4 is adoption of the Internet architecture ab initio rather than using it to augment existing programs, materials or curriculum. We offer a vision of: Systemic change through interdisciplinary cross-institutional, international programs educating the Net Generation of scientists and engineers using and developing C4, catalyzed by the changes these technologies are bringing to our understanding of the science of learning. Many more specific recommendations stemming from this workshop are presented in the CLWD Task Force report, www.nsf.gov/od/oci/taskforces/TaskForceReport_Learning.pdf.
