Educational Technology Council Report, 1997

Table of Contents | Summary | Vision | Context | Purpose | Recommendations | Appendices


2. VISION

Before proceeding to the details of our recommendations, we begin with some future scenarios that illustrate the main elements of the council's vision—the kinds of activities we have in mind within the suggested experimental framework supported by the infrastructure we propose. These scenarios are only intended to suggest possibilities. Their details should not be taken too literally, because they will depend on the opportunities that faculty and students decide to pursue.

2.1 Educational Uses of New Analytical and Synthetic Tools

Freshman Calculus

Freshman Electromagnetism

Virtual Telescope

The Computer Music Laboratory

2.2 Educational Uses of New Information Linkage Tools

In Class While on the Road

Virtual Cross-Registration

A New "Virtual Green Series" for EECS

Historicopter

As these scenarios and experiments suggest, information linkage tools will help learners explore the richly webbed world of information that is provided by many independent agents, with links that can easily be established and pursued. As everyone is now realizing, however, effective use of these tools depends on solving difficult problems of finding, trusting, organizing, and disseminating information. We expect to learn a great deal about learning by experimenting vigorously and imaginatively with these powerful but not yet fully understood capabilities.

2.3 Learning through Collaboration

MIT Europe and MIT Japan

Industrial Partners Advise MIT Students

Students Rub Shoulders with Key Government Officials

Co-Op Student Teams

Learning International Negotiation

Robot Olympics

The electronic proximity created by interconnected computers increases our ability to reach other human beings by an enormous factor—perhaps a thousandfold over that which the automobile helped us achieve. But this increased capacity comes with many associated costs; we should not widen the radius of our MIT community simply because it is now electronically feasible to do so. We should consider extending it, however, where this can be shown to result in rich and effective ways of augmenting our learning processes—as many of these examples suggest. We should identify and focus on the truly important educational benefits of these potential new endeavors.

2.4 Lifelong Learning

Young People's MIT Science Club

MIT Early Admissions

MIT Alumni College

Graduate Students in Lifelong Learning

Creation and exploration of opportunities for lifelong learning is another major element of our vision. We believe that proper blending of our existing resources with new technologies may help us extend the reach of our institution on both sides of our current age group to include MIT-bound young students, MIT alumni, and the professionals of our corporate partners. Though it is a difficult task, it should be possible to arrive at a size, mix, and orientation of these new members that will enhance their learning prospects and the goals of our institution.

The objectives of developing new educational approaches and exploring opportunities for lifelong learning are connected and complementary. Electronically mediated distance education is unlikely to be very exciting if it is just televised chalk-and-talk. At the same time, investments in the development of innovative educational tools will be difficult to justify and sustain if the benefits are available only to a relatively small on-campus population. A good deal of experimentation will be needed to help us discern the effective from the merely possible.

2.5 The Reinvented Campus

The Electronic Seminar Room

Anytime, Anyplace, Ad-Hoc Access to Resources

The Collaborative Laboratory

The Virtual Design Studio

Books On Demand

The Virtual Shakespeare Library

Information Everywhere

These examples and scenarios suggest a new "architecture" for tomorrow's MIT: a reinvented campus that includes virtual places as well as physical rooms and laboratories, electronic library collections as well as rare books and unique manuscripts, updated classrooms and dormitory rooms that support seamless integration of new electronic tools and resources into the educational process, electronic links as well as corridors, and software tools as well as furniture and equipment—all reinforcing one another and creating a new whole that current and future community members will be eager to inhabit and utilize.

2.6 A New Sense of Place

This reinvented, extended, and transformed campus should be as immediately identifiable and symbolically evocative of MIT as the existing one has become. The "Virtual Infinite Corridor" for network surfers should be a powerful complement to the famous physical passageway for pedestrians. Its interface should be unique and memorable, like the great dome that looms over Killian Court. It should enhance the quality of our on-campus experiences, facilitate the distribution of our educational "materials" worldwide, provide access to information through our new libraries that will manage pointers to shared knowledge wherever and in whatever form it may reside, and support the convening of people in coffee-klatch discussions, collaborative research projects and alliances with our partners, instructional activities, and much more.

The reinvented campus—symbolized by the Virtual Dome—is our vision of a new MIT for the twenty-first century, where physical facilities, information tools and infrastructure, and social organization are in balance and support each other, as the following scenario optimistically anticipates.

It All Hangs Together

This partly electronic, partly architectural infrastructure is not an end in itself. It is, however, an essential means for realizing the substantive educational vision that we have put forward, and it represents the major part of the investment that we must make.

2.7 The Vision's Guiding Assumptions

In putting forward this vision, we assume that in the twenty-first century MIT will preserve and enhance its emphasis on experimentation, exploration, and design. It will focus on science and technology, and embrace management, the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It will also continue to select and sustain excellent faculty, staff, and students who become involved in exciting forefront projects and activities that benefit worthy societal goals.

We also assume that MIT will want to remain a unique community with a very particular character. Its ability to attract and retain the very best faculty, staff, and student talent, its capacity for research innovation, and its ability to provide outstanding educational experiences will all depend on this.

We expect that the MIT of the twenty-first century will operate in a highly competitive environment, and that a "business as usual" strategy will not suffice if it is to maintain its leading position or even perhaps its continued viability. The new technologies present opportunities for change that are reflected in our vision. They also carry pitfalls we should avoid: possible reduction of face-to-face contact, dilution of community, marginalization of the Institute's rich history and contributions to society, devaluation of teaching skills, loss of faculty control, superficiality and diversion of resources.

We recognize that the cost of education is a critical issue, but we emphatically reject the idea that educational technology should be used for inexpensive delivery of a lower-quality product. Instead, we believe that MIT should focus on the new ways in which educational technology can add value to its human resources, physical facilities and equipment, and intellectual property. In addition, MIT should seek necessary efficiencies by looking for optimal mixes of traditional and electronically mediated means.

2.8 Summary of Project Goals

In responding to these conditions and challenges, MIT's goal should be a continued and enhanced position of global leadership in research and education. Specifically, MIT should seek to become, within five years, the recognized leader in effective, practical applications of advanced educational technology; it should also strive to create an exportable model for higher education. It should accomplish this by building effectively on Athena and other existing resources, and by forming mutually beneficial alliances with other academic, industrial, and government organizations.

We need to operate on a sufficiently large scale to make a real difference. We estimate the cost of the project to be $100 to $150 million over a five-year period—comparable to Project Athena in expenditures and time duration. This is a project with the potential to involve a wide cross-section of the MIT community in an exciting, visionary effort that will create a positive momentum as we move into the twenty-first century.


Table of Contents | Summary | Vision | Context | Purpose | Recommendations | Appendices