RADICAL NOVELTY IN THE BORDERLESS WORLD; TOWARDS TEA-s AND CAMPUS-LESS LEARNING PROGRAMMES

R. Sadananda

Computer Science Progtam. School of Advanced Technologies. Asian Institute of Technology P.O. Box 2754, Bangkok 10501. Thailand

The phrase "Radical Novelty" is bomwed from Dijkstra [l]. His arguments about the existence of radical novelty are in the context of computers and information techno!ogies at large. The concept of radical novelties is of contempomy significance because, while we are ill-prepared to cope with them, science and technology have now shown themselves expert at infliciting them upon us. The radical novelty referred here comes in many ways. The raw power of computers: from a bit to a few hundrcd megabytes, hwn a microsecond to half an hour of computing - it confronts with possibilities of the ratio of 1@! This is important to note as most of us are believers of small and incremental change. 'zhere are other radical novelties characteristic of digital systems. With networks of world wide interconnection the difference in effort in communication with the next door person and with some one placed in another part of the world is disappearing. The electronic mail is both pervasive and persuasive. Teams can be put together for a specific task by tapping the best people for the task without concern for their location. time zones etc. then disband them soon after the accomplishment.

In the sphere of education we are moving for a clear emphasis of learning as opposed to teaching understood in the traditional sense of the term. It is important to form learning teams which share libraries. laboratories and information resoun;es. and share experiences. Now curriculum may be viewed in a broader sense than simply as courses and contents of c o u m . It includes the decision making processes involving teaching and more importanlly learning. setting up the goals of the programme. the contents and methodology for evaluation of what is achieved.

The schools and universities are beginning to use computers. Computer based teaching is increasingly common. However most of these efforts are, as in the words of hpert [2] is "for the sake of computer literacy" as if learning about computer itself was the important thing.

There are a number of reasons to believe that the networking of Information Systems will bring in radical changes in our educational systems.DEC, Hewlett-Packerd and others [3] have demonstrated design successes, with designers located far from one another both in time and space. The rate of increase of the network of nodes and the haffic is exponential. This is happening also in the developing countries [41.

With the advances in telecommunications and availability of multimedia, there will be increased integration of communication and computing systems. This increases access, storage and manipulation of infomation in many dimensions possible. The electronic network connections have a potentially higher payoff for developing countries because of the lack reliable altemative delivery mechanisms in the developing countries. On the other hand the developed countries have a preexisting and reliable communication systems already institutionalized, together with good transport systm. is also higher payoff due to the speeding up of transaction time between developed and developing countries. The implications to education

system are enormous, as active links are established between informtion poor developing countries with relatively information rich

Clearly, a number of research questions arise here. but they overlap the technical and social issues involved. We are aware that there are a number of problems. Among them, some may especially concem the developing countries. What is the value of an on line i~ccess to say 200 remote library access when the books are often neither attainable nor affordable? How to conserve expensive bandwidth f" users who may transmit and receive informal and often uninformed opinions on a variety of subjects far removed from local concerns? Besides the problems of privacy and olher associated social prohlems which are mainly the concern of the developed countries will have a wider significance. Information Security and Safety are important but we do not intend to take them up here.

A related set of research question may be how does the nature of research in a specific domain change with access to network? The meaning of access itself needs to be defined precisely. From the point of a researcher the access may be to databases. servicespr colleagues. The access can vary in degree - whcthcr it is direct. readily available and free. The access can be free or there is a cost involved. Even if the access is free, ther are problems of search which grow exponentially with the number of reachable nodes, and thus brings in direct costs. Whatever kind of access one has, thc problem of search through the network is inescapable.

A typical research problem, whose solutions/panial solutions a number of researchers are attempting is the question of information filtering. Adding cmail to the existing channels of communications (i.e. telephones. radio, TV conventional mail systems, visitors, etc.) over burdens the recipients. One can spend the whole day reading email messages and still leave backlogs uncleared. Scores of people everyday are requesting that their names be deleted from mailing lists of one or the other kind. The size, speed and complexity of the information flow can be overwhelming. Several researchers [7] have come out with proposals to design filter based on simple key words, to sophistical semantic and cognitive maps. This IS an area of research oredapping Computer Science, Linguistic and Malhematics worthy of pursuit.

Here we intend to restrict and focus our attention on thc use of networks and interconnections to facilitate leaming. Ther are already networks such as K-12 (51 operational in the United States forming eductional communities? The network based learning should aim at something beyond the traditional isolated learning wih machines such as a package to learn algebra. While careful design of computational. visual and communication technologies for thorough and thoughtful learning is essential, researchers have shown that hardware and software alone are not sufficient [8].

A fundamental problem confronting users of such networks is how to discover the existence of resources of interest, including files, services and especially people. Imponant premise is the one on

developed countries.

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efficiency. The connectivity can decrease the time spent in searching the library, manuals, apparatus etc. There is the economy premise. Same resources can be used by a wider community. thus avoiding duplication Network access to different kinds of scientists yield different levels and kinds of benefits. The increase in advantage to the scientists from developing counuies is of a larger step as compared to those who are at the Core of Action of scientific literature. In any case we need to model a situation where colleagues attempting to undertake projects of common interest form networks of interest groups. As in [6] we define a clustering relationship called a specialization subgraph (SSG). While simply communicating with another person does not imply shared interests, being in SSG with that person does imply shared interests. The research question is then how to develop SSG for specific topics of interests from hundreds and thousands of mail messages that flow through the network.

The concept of collaboratory is futuristic and is a combination of technology, tools, and infrastructure that allows scientiest to work with remote facilities (To-laboratory") and with one another ("Collaboratory") as if they were collocated and effectively interfaced [9].

Communication is as important and as critical as computing to realize such a "collaboratory". It is a proccss that involves sending messages and receiving them through a network made of interested groups. The network itself is formed by abstracting a specialization subgraph (SSGs) representing the intercsted parties (learners), and sources of knowledge and skill (books, teachers, etc.). However, it is necessary to note that this is not a regid framework. The idea is one should be able form a configuration of SSGs for a purpose and dismantle it when done, only again to make when needed etc. Considering a few nodes and the interrelationships the problem of SSGs appears to combinatorially explosive. For instance a wide area network connects hundreds of thousands of individual around the world. Any attempt to look for a specific subgraph would end as into a situation which may be computationally impossible. However that need not be the case in reality. There is the small world concept. At m y time we can keep track of a few things. We have at any time a few friends. The links of introduction between individuals form a small number - often three a four. There is the well known magic number 722 psychologists mention in relation to distinct items one can remember. There is more to it in the concept of small world.

Our research is the formution of ihterest group is based on the concept of self-organization maps. The inputs the self- organization maps are the email manages. The research is ongoing.

REFERENCES

E.W. Dijkstra, On the cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science, Communications of the ACM, December 1989. S . Papert. The Children's Machine : Rethinking School in the age of the Computer, Basic Books, 1992. T.S. Perry and J.A. Adam. E-mail : Pervasive and Persuasive, IEEE Spectrum, October 1992. G. Sadowsky, Network Connectivity for Developing Countries Communication ACM, August 1993. J. Murray, K12 Network : Global Education through Telecommunications, Communicatiosn ACM, August 1993. M.F. Schwortz and D.C.M. Wood, Discovering Shared Intemets using Graph Analysis, Communication ACM, August 1993. C. Stevens, Automating the creation of Information Filters, Communications of the ACM, December 1992. J. Hawkins, Technology and the Organization of Schooling, Communications of ACM. May 1993.

191 B.W. Hesse, et al., Returns to Science; Computer Networks in Oceanography, Communication ACM, August 1993.

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