Dear Win,
Once thank you for asking me to participate in the steering committe of ICEE. I am also looking forward to working with you in iNEER. Please find below my feedback. Please feel free to contact me at any time.
Greetings from New Mexico
Items for which your input is requested:
(1) Your impressions on ICEE-2000, its positive attributes and areas for improvement for future conferences. Please also address: How frequently should ICEE conferences be held and why? Since the annual ICEEs are being proposed up to Year 2008, should we alleviate the long wait by scheduling regional workshops, perhaps identifying them as iNEER Workshops?
I strongly believe that ICEE should become THE forum where Engineering Education issues can be presented, discussed, analyzed, proposals presented, and creativity and innovation encouraged. In addition, where strategic alliances among academia, industry, gov. agencies and international organizations facilitated. It should provide a neutral forum where all these sectors can exchange ideas for the improvement of education and R&D in engineerng. The conferences need to bemore dynamic/interactive, learner-centered vs teacher(presenter)-centered. In addition, where are the students? We should invite student organizations to present their views. How about minority, social, multi-lingual and cultural issues? How about interactive sessions dealing with infrastructure, servcices, and applications? Furthermore, repositories for the sharing of information should be created and funding identified to maintain and administer these sites.
I only attended the ICEE-98 and ICEE-2000 conferences. The participation in Brazil was larger and more international collaboration was felt. The problem with all conferences, not only ICEE, is that after the conference comes to an end there are no action items (recommendations, tasks, joint efforts, etc) to be carried out and for results to be presented at the next conference. We need to provide the feeling of ownership to all attendees and thus recruit their active participation in the action items as a result of each conference.
ICEE should be held once a year and its steering committee, iNEER, should meet twice a year. We are in a fast changing political, social and economical world. In order to exchange ideas and influence change an annual meeting has to be planned. Regional workshops are an excellent idea. Once again, strategic alliances with other worl/regional organizations should be sougth. Bringing the ISTEC experience (10 years) regional workshops help maintain the motivation and an annual meeting consolidates all efforts and produce positive results. All activites should be backed/supported via a real-time forum, that is a Portal, where feedback is beion received, report generated and a tracking system is in place.
(2) Your feedback on how the international engineering education community can cooperate more broadly in education (as opposed to research), with special reference to the language barriers, other than the usual exchange of students and faculty. Should funding agencies in selected countries get together and support a limited number of test cases involving bilateral or trilateral experiments dealing with joint development of courseware and/or modules using advanced language translation software as test cases? What are some of the appropriate topics?
To deal with social, cultural and multi-lingual issues, the best approach is to sponsor regional workshops and for them to present their collaborative work at the annual world conference. More important than these regional workshops, awareness workshops should be organized (perhaps jointly) where govenment agencies, industry (local and multinational), academia and international organizations participate adressing the topics of education, infrastructure, economic and political development, funding possibilities, etc. These type of events have benefited greatly the ISTEC community, we need to educate the decision makers first. Then we need to work with them in funding local, regional and international projects. Every participant has to feel that they are part of change.
I believe NSF can become a leader by sponsoring the type of workshops mentioned above. Furthermore, it should encourage bilateral agreements with other equivalent agencies. And lastly, fund specific projects that will help not only a few intitutions but focus on projects with a large social impact, that is, brings research into the classroom and contributes to society. Industry is key to the succes of these types of efforts as well as international development agencies.
Once again, from the ISTEC experience we can identify four initiatives that overlap but has had a tremendous impact in Ibero-America:
1) Library Linkages Initiative: This program seeks to modernize document delivery as component of education, and research, as well as policy design. This initiative also seeks to broaden electronic availability of research materials, to upgrade the information system skills of library staff, and to sharpen the savvy and independence of the electronic library user. The ISTEC Cooperative Interlibrary Loan project has facilitated installation of Internet based document transmission software, trained users to electronically research science and engineering databases, and coordinated electronic request and transmission of documents among libraries of ISTEC. This is the largest collaborative effort in Digital Libraries via Internet in the entire region. Based on this experience, the model is being utilized in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain.
2) Advanced Continuing Education Initiative: This initiative seeks to upgrade the available skills and increase the number of qualified individuals in applicable areas. Projects conducted within the auspices of this initiative involve curriculum adaptation, design and enhancement, professional development, on-site training, web based distance learning, as well as non-traditional faculty, staff, and student exchanges, including "sandwich" graduate programs. ISTEC has identified and created new R&D capabilities in image processing, and enhanced existing human resources in the area. ISTEC is developing a web-based network for training throughout the region that will make state-of-the-art technology available to a variety of personnel, foster horizontal collaboration, and produce material for the improvement of education, research, and development in the region. Of particular interest is the development of materials that incorporate the latest technology in the education process, both in the way of state-of -th
3) Research and Development Laboratories: This initiative has been created to provide a vehicle for performing research and development in a variety of informatics and telecommunications related areas. The laboratory facilities are also designed to be utilized in teaching situations, and are being used to enhance interaction between industries and universities. Thus, this initiative improves the ability of technology to be applied to the resolution of problems in a variety of areas.
4) Los Libertadores: This initiative seeks to create a flexible network
of telecommunication services (a hemispheric backbone for academic and R&D purposes), computing facilities, and teaching stations, known as "Centers of Excellence". Each Center of Excellence brings together people from the private sector, the public sector, and the educational system to work together to find solutions to the problems of interest. Thus, the Center may not be a central building, but rather a network of capabilities distributed throughout an area. To date, legislation has been passed in two countries to establish the legal framework for creation of Centers, and ISTEC is actively working with several governments, international funding agencies, and professional organizations to highlight the importance and critical nature of this effort in the development of the nations in Ibero-America. In addition, we have developed cooperation strategies with the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank(3) Your feedback on how we can make distance education a more effective tool in the international community. Again, should there be some test cases funded?
The only deliverables from academia are its course contents, R&D results, theses and dissertations. Thus, we are talking a strong effort on digital libraries and an infrastructure for content development, administration and maintenance. Projects that encourage efforts along these lines are necessary, that is, a forum where demostrations can be presented and evaluated, quality of materials can be discussed, as well as the multilingual, social and cultural values.
In ISTEC we have concentrated in these two efforts and we will be more than happy top share our results and experiences.
(4) Your feedback on the iNEER test website, currently at http://ineer.engr.siu.edu/welcome.htm but soon to be migrated to http://www.ineer.org. Please focus on the aesthetics but but more importantly on its functionality. Will you be able to volunteer some help to further develop it?
I did not have a chance to fully surf the site. Currently we are concentrated in developing our Portal. As I mentioned to several attendees at the ICEE steering committee, we are open to collaboration in oreder to avoid duplication of efforts.
(5) Your input on other cross-cutting issues that need follow up by iNEER/ICEE as a result of ICEE-2000.
We need urgently another steering committee meeting with enough time to deal with all relevant issues without being limited by the time factor.