IEEE Education Society's for Proposal a Special Issue on the "Applications of Information Technologies to Engineering and Science Education" 1. Executive Summary In August of 1996, the IEEE Education Society will publish a special issue of its Transactions, accompanied by a CD-ROM, tided "Applications of Information Technologies to Engineering and Science Education" to demonstrate how WWW/CD ROM technology can be used by engineering and science societies to review, disseminate, and most importandy, archive software and multi-media material. Although the CD-ROM may contain electronic versions of the printed contributions, its main role is to permit distribution and archiving of special material related to the printed articles, such as software, color graphics, video files, sound files and postscript files. There is no doubt that such material will become an integral part of all future publications. The EEE Vice President for Publications has already approved placing the special issue on a widely publicized, carefully monitored WWW server for four months starting two months before publication to assess the success of dhe use of information technology in publishing archival journals To maxirnize the usefulness and impact of dhe special issue, cross-platform compatibility will be achieved by treating the CD-ROM as a World Wide Web (WWW) server so dhat WWW browsers (such as Mosaic, Netscape and others) running on Microsoft Windows machines, Macintoshes or X-Windows machines can view the files on dhe same CD-ROM. This approach to cross-platform compatibility exploits the cross-platform de facto standard that has been generated by dhe recent explosive use of the WWW. Although the Ii4.141< Education Society is leading dhe effort, dle EEE Computer Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and other societies and entities are being invited to join the effort as co-sponsors. Co-sponsors will i nsure dhe multidisciplinary scope of the effort will guarantee that the special issue experiment receives widespread visibility and distribution, and answers many of the questions now being posed about dhe benefits of using inforamtion technology in this way. However, since there are added costs for the production of the issue, financial support from the co-sponsors and the NATIONAL SCENCE FOUNDATION is needed. The projected need for financial support from the Foundation is $10,000.00.
