ASU Research E-Magazine: Learning for the Next Century

Spot. See Spot. See Spot run . . . via a real-time, interactive, virtual reality display. And while you are at it, go ahead and calculate Spot’s momentum, the degree to which he is genetically predisposed to hip dysplasia, and his probability of living to age 10. When finished, please register your answers electronically. Oh, and class, welcome to first grade!

Talk to educators, scientists, and business leaders and you sense a very common thread. All seem genuinely concerned about preparing people of all ages for the century ahead. There are problems. The supersonic rate of technical evolution is just one. How, then, can businesses and educators possibly keep up, let alone keep their students in step with such fast-paced change? The answer, according to experts at Arizona State University, is to boldly go where no university has gone before.

“Higher education is in a state of permanent white water,” Ruth Jones insists. “Institutions must be nimble, quick to adapt, or they will drown.” Jones is charged with ensuring that ASU President Lattie Coor’s University of the Next Century initiatives become reality.

“As a Research 1 Institution, ASU’s job is to both create and disseminate new knowledge,” Jones explains. “The only way we can accomplish this is by placing truly equal emphasis on research, teaching, and community outreach.” All three missions are critical if ASU is to prepare people for the future world—not just the world we now know.

Jones estimates that at least half of ASU’s current faculty will still be here in the year 2010. Change must begin with them, she says. Perhaps that is why so many unique partnerships between Kindergarten through 12th grade, ASU and industry are already under way. These partnerships blur the lines between traditional roles and disciplines.

Visitors to ASU can see an array of projects in motion. For example, on one side of campus, artists, geologists, and engineers work side-by-side to develop three-dimensional computer images of musculoskeletal surfaces or the terrain on Mars. At another site, botanists, mathematicians, and educators help middle-school teachers upgrade their math, science, and teaching skills. In still another, multimedia specialists design interactive software and Web-based courses that help global companies train employees in other lands.

There is more. In yet another area, visitors will find ASU instructors working directly with 8 to 10 year olds who take a robotics design class.

“One of the president’s first visions involved redefining ASU’s ‘customer’,” Jones says. “We’re not just serving 18-24 year-olds. We’re serving K-12 students, their teachers, our own staff and faculty, older adults, and businesses—all of whom must be taught simultaneously.”

That, she says, is because the pace of change has rendered hierarchical learning structures obsolete. All of which present some challenges in terms of time, money, and traditions.

How, for example, are faculty supposed to take time out to retrain and reach out when they already are carrying heavy loads? Few have enough time now for family after fulfilling work, teaching, research, fund raising, and other obligations. When, exactly, would one expect them to squeeze in technological retraining, related curriculum redesign, colleague collaboration, and community outreach?

“There’s no denying that we need to make changes,” Jones says. “Everything from our reward/compensation structure, to providing resources that allow our faculty and staff to better use technology, to fostering multidisciplinary relationships. The good news for us, at least,” she continues, “is that ASU is large enough to shift resources to where and when they’re needed. Our people are also wonderfully dynamic and adaptable.”

Many government agencies have helped by restructuring their grant guidelines to promote such change.

One catalyst was the decline of communism. The end of the Cold War eased the pressure on the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other government agencies. They have shifted funding focus away from space race and military concerns toward more “brain gain” related initiatives. The new economic weapons are information access, technological proficiency, and critical thinking skills.

Culling Forces
Workforce statistical estimates indicate that children who opt out of advanced math and science classes after 7th grade may now eliminate up to 75 percent of their career choices for the next century. Girls, minorities, and children in rural communities are considered especially at risk because such groups are already severely underrepresented in math and the sciences. Technological access and lower living costs in other lands are helping even the most geographically remote peoples gain financial ground. How then are highly paid Americans supposed to survive in an ever more economy-based world?

Several government agencies stepped in by diverting resources away from pure defense projects, directing them, instead, toward science, mathematics, and education reform initiatives. Such efforts quickly led to the establishment of new, national math and science standards. Agency members then began aggressively directing billions of dollars in grant monies toward projects with documented multidisciplinary problem-solving strategies and applied K-12th grade outreach.

The reality at universities across the country is that fewer dollars are being awarded to support basic research. As the 1990s draw to a close, the really big grants are going to groups that combine leading edge, multidisciplinary research with an aggressive plan for applying knowledge and getting it out for mainstream use.

K-12 outreach appears to be a particularly “hot” button for NSF, NASA, and corporations. Teaching the teachers, they seem to believe, is the fastest way to reach critical masses. Not surprisingly, then, millions of ASU grant dollars are earmarked for programs that purchase equipment for, then train K-12 teachers.

“Most of our efforts now reach way beyond simply buying computers and helping schools get hooked up to the Internet,” says Sam DiGangi, a College of Education professor who also manages ASU’s Information Technology Instruction Support group. “The real emphasis today is on effective content use, that is, leveraging technology so that it enriches the curriculum.”

Bolstered by a two-year, $1.2 million grant from the U.S. West Foundation, for example, DiGangi’s group has begun actively immersing 430 Arizona public school teachers in technology-based learning.

Computer novices, the teachers all were given a laptop computer, a modem, free Internet access, and several weeks of hands-on, in-person instruction. Follow-up instruction is delivered primarily via the Internet. Subject-oriented chat rooms also help teachers share suggestions and successful technology-based course curriculums. DiGangi says this format was deliberate.

“Effective modeling is an important component of good teaching,” he says. “By teaching our teachers using the very methodology we want them to use, we’re providing concrete examples of ways in which they can integrate that technology into their classrooms.”

The 430 teachers in this project alone represent 1 percent of all Arizona public school teachers. Each has committed to teaching at least 10 more teachers and one administrator from their school during the next two years. Ultimately, this project should touch 10 percent of Arizona’s public teachers.

Technology Focus
Ron Zambo, Ray Buss, and Keith Wetzel of ASU West have taken a more concentrated approach to teacher training. They have spent three years and nearly $1 million establishing technological competency in a single school district. In fact, most of their subject teachers come from just four schools in the Glendale Elementary District.

“Our goal was to establish a critical mass, to systemically change the culture of entire schools so that the teachers could learn from and keep motivating each other long after the funded part of this grant was complete,” says Zambo, a mathematics education professor.

The team used its grant money to purchase 50 sets of computers, printers, and software, and 25 TV/VCR and laser disc units to use with them. Zambo’s group also used grant money to pay the salaries of two teachers who were assigned full-time technology integration roles. Leonard Shanks, a recent Presidential Award winner for excellence in teaching mathematics, was one of those teachers.

“From the beginning, we focused on teaching teachers how to best integrate math, science, and technology into content teaching. We were not just helping them learn to use computers,” Shanks explains.

Software programs are set up and used just as they would be in real classrooms. Teachers then move through each exercise. A computer simulated car rolls down a ramp while teachers take measurements then enter them into a database, which graphs results. The teachers then duplicate the experiment with a real car and ramp, enter those data, and compare results. Next, they may make predictions based upon the angle of the ramp or height from which the car is dropped—then they test their hypotheses.

“It’s just like anything else,” Shanks says. “People don’t know what they don’t know until they know it. Once teachers saw how computers could be used, and how much they motivated the students and helped them think more critically, most wanted to learn more.”

While these and other programs involve some initial on-site training, Gary Bitter’s Educational Media and Computers team skipped right to teaching via a “virtual classroom.”

“Multimedia is the only way to reform education,” Bitter maintains. “It allows us to reach previously unreachable audiences. It lets teachers learn by example by seeing other teachers teach. It provides firsthand experience at learning through multimedia. And, it allows people to learn wherever they are, whenever they choose, and to progress at their own pace.”

Bitter is a nationally known expert in education media. The ASU professor has produced many award-winning corporate- and education-oriented compact disc programs.

“Understanding Teaching” is targeted at teachers who are upgrading their technology-based teaching skills. Instead of using traditional pull-down menus, it features a non-intimidating school hallway. Teachers choose what they want to study by “entering” that room.

“Books” located in each room show everything from how to write lesson plans, to establishing evaluation criteria. Bitter’s team also designed a much more technically advanced “Instructional Media Design” program for Intel.

Many of Bitter’s education programs help teach the new math standards. His “Hispanic Math Project” is designed to help sixth graders develop measurement concepts. Targeted at students, it allows users to interact in Spanish or English—and to switch languages at any time.

The ASU educator’s latest project, called “Math·ed·ology,” was funded by a $2.3 million grant from NSF. It features 30 unrehearsed math lessons, given by real teachers in real classrooms.

Users can learn about new tools and techniques, and see how each was really used and received by different students. Commentary on each lesson is available from its classroom teacher as well as from experts in three related fields. Math·ed·ology should take between 15 and 40 hours to complete.

Fixing Physics
Educators are not the only ones involved in such programs. Researchers, administrators, and corporations are all working in partnership.

For example, ASU physics Professor David Hestenes is dedicated to reforming high school physics. National statistics show that fewer than 5 percent of this nation’s high school physics teachers have been retrained to meet the National Science Education Standards.

Hestenes used funds from a $4 million NSF grant to establish a nationwide program of intensive 10-week summer workshops for physics teachers. His program helps teachers evaluate the degree to which their students make the transition from a “common sense” view of physics to the “Newtonian” view that has been adopted by physicists. Teachers learn how to use technology to help students transition effectively.

“In science, we build imaginary worlds that help us understand the real world. We construct patterns in those worlds to represent patterns in nature,” Hestenes says. “Technology helps us represent those patterns concretely and to analyze them fully.”

Without the ability to use such patterns to make sense of real-life experience, science becomes little more than rote memorization of science fragments, Hestenes maintains.

“If all a student has is fragments, he really doesn’t know science because science is about recognizing patterns and using critical thinking skills to problem solve,” he says.

Interactive Classrooms
Technology also lets ASU engineering professors teach Mexican engineering students directly from Tempe, Don Evans says. Those teachers can also bring some of the world’s best engineers directly to their students via videoconferencing.

But, technology innovation efforts do not end there. Evans is an ASU engineering professor. He challenged his students to design an “interactive classroom.” Their design had to make technological integration tools easily accessible to all students, as well as suitable for teaching numerous subjects.

The Interactive Classroom features four-table student clusters with two networked computer stations per cluster. Students now receive English, physics, mathematics, and chemistry instruction in the room.

“The students stay put while the teachers rotate in,” Evans says. “All four subjects are highly interconnected, yet they’ve traditionally been taught separately. We bring them all together to show students the big picture—how mathematics is used in physics and English is used in all.”

Seeing Patterns
Nearby, at ASU’s Center for Solid State Science Research, Mike McKelvy is developing a software program that will allow students from around the world to fully operate a state-of-the-art microscope—located in his laboratory—directly from their classroom.

McKelvy’s colleague and mentor, Jim Mayer, has developed a formal “Patterns in Nature” program for current educators. A “Patterns in Nature Van” outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment takes learning directly to Arizona schools.

Scientists and graduate students at the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program use a different approach. They took science teachers to a Mars-like geological site in eastern Washington where scientists tested rovers and other equipment like those now on the surface of Mars. The group also publishes Red Planet Connection, a quarterly newsletter for K-8 classrooms, and brings teachers, students, and parents to campus for special workshops.

If you are beginning to believe that the business of education is not what it used to be, you would be correct. —Lindsey Michaels