The National Science Foundation and the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private foundation, are cooperating on an initiative to support national and international faculty networks that can help individual faculty across the country to rethink their own courses. The curriculum in mathematics and sciences has changed to incorporate student use of technology, and must change more. Professionals increasingly use computers, video and/or telecommunications as tools of analysis, design, construction, and research. Students who do not learn the associated new skills of thought are at a disadvantage. In many fields, pioneering faculty have made substantial progress in rethinking courses of study. However, the work of these pioneers is often unknown, even to one another. Most faculty, even at institutions with the needed equipment and logistical support, do not know what the leaders of their discipline have accomplished. In this initiative, project teams will gather useful information about how selected courses of study are already being improved at widely scattered institutions; analyze that information; and widely share their findings through data bases, on-line seminars, workshops, print materials, and other media. Heavy use of the Internet will be necessary in order to reach large numbers of faculty.
