Crosstalk planning meeting on December 12, 1996

Message from Vijay Kumar

I am happy that several of you managed to make it to the Crosstalk meeting on Thursday Dec. 12. and also enthused about the interest of the others who could not attend. The energetic discussion and the spectrum of issues raised were certainly strong indication of the interest in this activity as well as evidence of its importance in shaping the concept and effort of academic computing at MIT.

As you can see from the summary below that Naomi and I prepared, our discussions highlighted several important issues which will seed our future discussion and action.

We hope that we will be able to schedule 3-4 meetings of this group in the February-June '97 period.

The proposed format for our future meetings -- case studies of applications highlighting the pedagogical as well as the resource/infrastructure implications and presentation-discussions focusing on emerging educational technology directions, institutional initiatives and topics of interest such as evaluation of pedagogical outcomes - - should serve us well, not only in terms of the detailed information that could be made available but also the opportunity to provide rich inputs into strategic planning for educational technology at MIT.

Some of you have already expressed your willingness to present case studies of your applications in future sessions. These will be very useful in getting us started in a constructive fashion.

In the course of the next week we will post a program for the coming months. In the meantime please let me know if you have any particular ideas regarding session formats or scheduling.

I look forward to your sustained interest in this activity.

Vijay

Meeting Notes

Attendees:

• Rosalind Williams, Dean or Undergraduate Education
• Vijay Kumar, Director of Academic Computing
• John Belcher, Physics
• John Ogilvie, Physics
• Herbert Einstein, Civil Engineering
• John Williams, Civil Engineering
• Steve Lerman, Civil Engineering and CAES
• Greg Rutledge, Chemical Engineering
• Kim Vandiver, Ocean Engineering and Edgerton Center
• Joe Ferreira, Urban Studies and Planning
• Charles Stewar, Political Science and CUP
• Kurt Fendt, Foreign Languages and Literatures
• Gilberte Furstenbert, Foreign Languages and Literatures
• Ellen Crocker, Foreign Languages and Literatures
• Doug Morgenstern, Foreign Languages and Literatures
• Ruth Trometer, Language Learning & Resource Center
• Les Perelman, Writing Requirement and Dean's office
• Ed Barrett, Writing Program
• Helen Samuels, Libraries
• Eric Celeste, Libraries
• Greg Anderson, I/T Discovery
• Naomi Schmidt, Academic Computing
• Katie Livingston, Academic Computing
• Reid Pinchback, Academic Computing

Introduction

Vijay revisited some of the motivating factors/purposes to be served by this forum as well as his goals for this planning meeting of Crosstalk.

Crosstalk purposes:

• the interest in sharing strategies and solutions; identifying resources and tools of common interest.
• the need for opportunities to think about/reflect on the impact and transformations effected by it use in teaching and learning.
• inputs to IS for academic computing planning and support.

Meeting goals:

• to identify content and topics through issues that people have encountered in their use of IT
• desired format(s) of these meetings
• a tentative schedule

Rosalind presented her thoughts on what should come out of this forum:

• Communication: among ourselves and coordination with other groups (e.g. the Task Force on Life and Learning, the Ed Tech Council, the McVicar fellows)
• Reflection: we need to think about feedback loops, goals, and measurements
• How to share teaching resources more effectively: faculty needto know where to go and what is available in the way of funds and other resources
• Classroom space and renovation: this group can give guidance on what we need in the way of teaching and learning facilities for the future

Summary of the discussion

The discussion was quite far-ranging, and fell into four basic categories:

1. Courseware development and evaluation
2. Resources and infrastructure
3. Sharing and communication
4. Teaching and learning spaces

1. Courseware development and evaluation
   • Some faculty are developing interactive courseware as a new way to teach concepts. Such people would like a community of people with whom to exchange ideas, both for critique and so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. Help with evaluation of these new teaching techniques would be useful.
   • A learning environment that uses technology in unique ways changes the role of the teacher and the nature of classroom teaching. There is now a triangular relationship - student/teacher/technology - and we need to explore this.
   • If we are serious about courseware development we need to think about the expertise and support that is needed, even if the faculty member retains control of the content.
   • We need to capture process, decisions, evaluation, impact of technology on teaching and learning. Archiving of this work
   • should be part of our thinking from the beginning. We need to start by looking at concrete, specific examples os what we are doing and see what commonality comes out of that.

      

2. Resources and infrastructure
   • In certain areas (e.g. the Edgerton Center) we have one-of-a-kind of resources, but not enough for volume education. How can this be improved?
   • Hardware and software changes every year and requires much technical support to keep it going. There is frustration that the tools are unstable and changing over time.
   • It would be nice to have a library of pre-packaged courseware tools for exploration. There's lots of stuff out there, but the problem is that several of them are Mac and PC based and don't fit in with our UNIX infrastructure. This issue was raised in conjunction with many subject areas, from Physics to Writing.
   • Many areas (especially in Engineering) need the UNIX environment to teach their subject areas. We need to keep as much versatility as possible at this point in time because pedagogical issues haven't been sorted out yet.
   • We need to improve and upgrade the network to keep pace with things such as video.
   • We need more disk space to archive student work so that future students can reference it and build on it.
   • Lots of pieces of the current architecture need to be retained and others need to be transformed.
   • Concern was expressed that IS keep involved with what innovative departments are doing (e.g. Architecture) and not be left behind.
   • The desired educational goals and the software for instruction are the critical considerations for the environment.
   • We need to make tools and resources ( such as those for 3-D visualization) available in the environment that can be used across a variety of courses and disciplines.
   • We need microworlds for experimentation and exploration.

      

3. Sharing and communication
   • We don't know what's around and what other people are doing. We should circulate small reports (perhaps in a newsletter) about what people are doing and what issues are being raised. (It was pointed out that IS does a lot of information-sharing on academic applications and resources for support through its web pages. (See "Athena and Academic Computing at MIT: A Guide for Faculty" [http://web.mit.edu/olh/Faculty/index.html] and "Faculty Liaisons" [http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/fl.html])
   • Talking about architecture is putting the cart before the horse. We need communication between departments - "What did you do and did it work?"

      

4. Teaching and learning spaces
   • When we think about teaching and learning spaces we also need to think about the dormitories and libraries so that people can use technology effectively in these places as well as in classrooms.
   • The Provost wants guidance on how classrooms should be renovated to accommodate the new technologies (although admittedly, budget is low for classroom renovation.) This group can be a help in this area as an advocacy group and champion for this effort.
   • We need to think about students moving laptops around and being able to connect to MITnet easily.
   • We need to look at what other universities are doing in the area of classrooms and other teaching and learning spaces. MIT is behind in this area.
   • We should keep distance learning in mind when talking about designing buildings and classrooms. But we won't get rid of the need for bricks and mortar.
   • We need to look at what some of the process and resource implications of the transformations that technology is inducing.

      

Possible Format:

1. Case Study Presentations of particular applications with treatment of pedagogical impact, implications for computing resources and architectural requirements.
2. Guest Presentations of best practices from other institutions.
3. On-line resources and discussions.

Next Steps

• Web Page for Crosstalk with pointers to related resources.
• WFor the next meeting, we will plan a case study that examines one specific use of technology for teaching and learning and look at all aspects, from pedagogical issues, through implications for computing resources and IS infrastructure.

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Last modified by
J Littell 3/3/97