This project will explore present and potential future use of the Internet and World Wide Web in undergraduate SMET education. It will focus, in part, on the barriers to the use of electronic technologies in education and will describe the characteristics of adopters and non-adopters, including the characteristics of institutions or situations that promote or inhibit adoption. A team of three or four engineering, science, or management students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute will work full time at NSF headquarters for two months under the guidance of full time WPI faculty and with the consultation of NSF personnel. The team will use Rogers' model of the adoption of innovation as a starting point. Because an explicit goal of this project is to provide research experience for the students, they will participate in a research methods course prior to arriving in Washington. Their preparation will include developing a complete literature review of their subject and a description and justification of appropriate methodology -- for example, the use of focus groups. They will also discuss how they will organize and analyze their data. The literature review and methodology will form part of a research proposal that they will submit to their professors and DUE personnel before undertaking the on-site portion of their work. The outcome of the project will be a substantive report that will be submitted by the students to their faculty for academic credit as well as providing input to NSF. Students are expected to develop skills in formal presentations, in research proposal development and writing, and in the systematic analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. In addition, they will have participated in serious research on a topic that has major implications for education in this country and abroad and for education public policy.
