Title of your presentation here

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Information Technology in Education Lessons
from Computing in a Large Research University
Steven R. Lerman Class of 22 Professor and
Director, MIT Center for Educational Computing
Initiatives
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Some background about me and my research center

• Educated entirely at MIT
• Joined MIT faculty in 1975 in Civil Engineering
• Shifted to Educational Technology as Director of
  Project Athena in 1983
• Founded Center for Educational Computing
  Initiatives in 1991
• Incoming Dean for Graduate Students

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Revising Our Thinking About Teaching Learning

• Teaching Learning
• Teacher Mentor or Coach
• Student Learner
• Synchronous Asynchronous
• Passive Active
• Linear Nonlinear
• Scheduled On-demand
• Teaching material Accomplishing a Goal

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Research Areas at CECI
Educational Applications
Enabling Technologies
Evaluation
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Approach in this Course

• Universities are large, complex organizations
  facing strategic and tactical issues in IT use
• MIT has been one of the leading universities in
  the world in using IT as part of its overall
  leadership strategy
• Can we learn about IT strategy and technology
  more generally from MITs processes and
  decisions?
• Well use some MIT based case studies and try to
  generalize key lessons learned

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Outline of Course

• Background Technology Shifts and Organizational
  Responses
• Case 1 A historical look at Project Athena
• Case 2 Organizational Structure for Provision of
  IS
• Case 3 Processes for Strategy Formation
• Case 4 MIT OpenCourseWare
• Case 5 Lab Experiments over the Internet
• Case 6 Singapore-MIT Alliance
• Case 7 Revising Freshman Physics with Technology
  Enabled Active Learning
• Some other examples (as time allows)

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Background How has IT and the world changed?
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Moores Law and Metcalfes Law

• Moores Law In 1965, Moore noted processing
  power doubles every 18 months
• Metcalfes Law The value of a network grows as
  the square of the number of connected users

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The World is Flat

• Tom Friedmans book argues that technology
  enables global competition
• He list 10 flatteners
• Collapse of Berlin Wall - symbolic shift to
  global economy rather than economic blocs
• Netscape the World Wide Web
• Workflow software computer to computer comm
• Open sourcing

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The World is Flat

• Outsourcing using most efficient providers for
  aspects of service provision and manufacturing
• Supply chaining e.g. Wall-Mart streamlining
  steps
• Insourcing company A providing services beyond
  usual mission to Company B, e.g. UPS reparing
  Toshiba computers
• In-forming data gathering, as in Google
• "The Steroids" Personal digital equipment like
  mobile phones, iPods, personal digital
  assistants, instant messaging, and voice over IP
  or VOIP

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IT becoming ubiquitous

• Extension of Internet globally
• Leapfrogging of technology cell phone adoption
  in LDCs rather than building of wired
  telecommunications
• Barriers still exist example of university
  access to Internet in East Africa

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Case 1The Athena Experience (1983-1991)

• Athena was in its time the single largest
  educational technology initiative in the world
• 100 million USD (1983 dollars) over 8 years in
  equipment, personnel and cash
• Single largest MIT-wide educational program we
  have ever undertakes

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Educational Computing at MIT circa 1982

• Era of mainframe and minicomputer
• Almost all computing available was for research
  or administration
• Student access for coursework virtually
  non-existent except for 2 departments
• Faculty could not innovate using computing
  because there was no way to deliver course

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Ad hoc committee

• Dean of Engineering began series of meetings with
  interested faculty
• Original vision was for School of Engineering,
  not all of MIT
• Key leaders saw major issues at MIT
• Access to computing
• Incompatible computing environments
• Lack of funding and incentives for faculty led
  innovation in education

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Seeking industry partners

• Large scale project envisioned requiring
  technical and financial partners
• Industry leaders on verge of releasing personal
  computers and workstations
• Period of high profitability for computer
  industry
• Willingness to work collaboratively with MIT to
  create environment of the future

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Formalization of Project Athena

• Proposal to 2 largest computer vendors of time
  IBM and Digital
• Expansion of project to all of MIT
• Benefits and complexity of multi-corporation
  partnership at MIT
• Staff, equipment and money

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Organizational options

• Integrate project into current IT organization
• Create totally new organization to subsume all IT
  at MIT
• Incubate Athena as separate organization to serve
  as change agent for central IT

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Athenas goals

• Technological goal coherence
• Infrastructure goal build first campus network
  and deploy O(1000) networked workstations
• Educational goal develop, use and evaluate new
  educational software, e.g. simulations, new tools

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Athenas goals - accomplishments

• Technological goal Kerberos authentication, X
  Window System, Zephyr instant messaging
• Infrastructure goal connected all major
  educational buildings, Athena clusters in
  educational and residential areas, printers
  MIT-wide, server rooms
• Educational goal internal grant program, high
  cost of implementation, difficulty with
  sustainability

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Lessons from Athena (I)

• Balancing three potentially competing goals is
  difficult
• High cost of innovation with educational
  technologies at early stages of technology
• Experimentation vs. service delivery
• Management of expectations of faculty, staff and
  students
• Price of the bleeding edge

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Lessons from Athena (II)

• Concentration of resources needed in educational
  innovation too many projects (about 80) each
  with too little funding
• Sustainability of innovation-education,
  technology and infrastructure innovation easier
  than sustainability rapid technology change
  makes educational use expensive
• Relationships with competing industrial partners
  can work, with university as neutral broker

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Where should we be headed (I)?

• MIT leadership in educational technology no
  longer unquestionable.
• Educational improvements should be our first
  priority.
• Market changes and technology changes require us
  to re-examine computing model.
• Innovation should involve a small number of large
  initiatives.

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Where should we be headed (II)?

• We may need to run parallel systems that
  separates service delivery from experiment.
• We should examine sustainability of innovation
  early in process.
• We should partner with industry again.
• Organizational structure for innovation (and
  relationship to other units at MIT) needs to be
  carefully planned.

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For more information

• MIT Project AthenaA Model for Distributed Campus
  Computing, by George Champine, Digital Press,
  1991.
• Project Athena The First Five Years, Seven
  volume report.
• Report of the MIT Technology Council, W. Mitchell
  and M. Derouzos (eds), October, 1991.

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For More Information

• Professor Steven R. Lerman, Director
• Center for Educational Computing Initiatives
• 9-317
• MIT
• Cambridge, MA 02139
• USA
• web http//ceci.mit.edu/research
• email lerman_at_mit.edu