Being Fluent with Information Technology (1999) / Chapter Skim
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4 Implementation Considerations
4 Implementation Considerations
Pages 51-64
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From page 51... ...
As noted in the preface, issues of committee expertise and budget imposed some practical constraints, and the committee ultimately decided to restrict the implementational focus of the report to the highereducation community with which it was most familiar the four-year college or university graduate. Box 4.1 offers a few comments on FITness and K-12 education.
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From page 53... ...
Such segmentation poorly serves a world where career changes are frequent and cross-disciplinary communication is needed to solve systemic problems. The committee has considered the challenge of undergraduate education in two ways.
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From page 54... ...
Projects of appropriate scale and scope inherently involve multiple iterations that provide opportunities for instructional checkpoints or interventions. And, an appropriately scoped project will be sufficiently complex that intellectual integration is necessary to complete it.
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From page 55... ...
By working on a number of projects, students will have opportunities to use similar principles of technological solutions in different settings, to recognize technological analogies, to develop reasonable expectations for technological solutions, and to find work-arounds when technology falls short. A series of projects can provide sufficient breadth and diversity of experience that students can realistically "learn the rest" on their own, thus providing the intellectual foundation for self-directed, lifelong learning that can occur in many non-classroom settings.4 Doing Social, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, New York.
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From page 56... ...
The fundamental concepts are somewhat harder to integrate into standard curricula. However, as instructors develop and structure their courses to use information technology for enhanced pedagogical effectiveness, it will be increasingly possible to take advantage of the opportunities thereby provided for discussing the fundamental concepts and the application of these concepts in terms that are relevant to the disciplinary content of those courses.
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From page 57... ...
With such a foundation in place, pedagogical efforts involving information technology should be easier and more efficient to undertake in subsequent courses. This college-wide course would require students to complete a series 5See, for example, "Computers Across Campus," Communications of the ACM, January 1998, pp.
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From page 58... ...
Over time, a series of these initiatives can help an institution educate graduates with a considerable measure of FITness, regardless of their major field of study. In the long run, faculty in various subject areas would offer courses that allow students to develop further their mastery of the concepts, skills, and capabilities of FITness in the context of problems drawn from their own fields; such courses would build on the foun 6Because the concepts of information technology may be harder to teach in the context of other subject material (especially non-technical subject material)
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From page 59... ...
For example, many analysts believe that a faculty reward system that actively discourages junior faculty from developing innovative courses (because such work takes time away from research and publishing efforts) is a major impediment to change (see, for example, National Research Council, 1999, Information Technology and the Transformation of Undergraduate Education, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.~.
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From page 60... ...
60 BEING FLUENT WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY egated to a minor role or no role at all (e.g., the humanities )
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From page 61... ...
That is, to offer courses that seriously integrate appropriate information technology concepts, skills, and capabilities, instructors themselves will need to learn and utilize effectively the appropriate technologies as they become available for teaching and research in their respective disciplines. For instance, many fields within the social sciences are beginning to use computational-modeling software
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From page 62... ...
Currently, the level of FITness among college and university faculty is uneven, both among the disciplines and within any single discipline. For faculty who accept the idea that FITness is both fundamental to their students' mastery of their discipline and to their academic careers, support for faculty and curriculum development is necessary to help them become more FIT.
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From page 63... ...
and learn how best to use that technology. For most students, the effectiveness with which they can use the university's information infrastructure will to a great extent determine the value of their educational experience.
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From page 64... ...
Pre-publication copy- subject to further editorial correction \\GT 1 \DATA\CPSMA\CSB\COMMON\LITERACY\REPORT\prepubWPEND-B . DOC B-2 The start of the modern era of educational standards can be said to date from the publication of Nation at Risk in 1983,1 which stated, "The educational foundations of our society are presently eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.
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