2016 Issue

INTRODUCTION T he role of education in maintaining a free society has been recognized since antiquity, most notably in Plato’s Republic. In this timeless work, Plato argues the need for training in three subject areas: philosophy, sports and the arts. He says, … there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the other the philosophical, some God…has givenman- kind two arts answering to them ... like the strings of an instrument may be relaxed or drawn together until they are duly harmo- nized [1]. In over two millennia since Plato, the validity of his instructions for education remains undiminished. That said, both the mission of higher education and education budgets are under political pressure [23]. At an event sponsored by Chancellor Phyllis Wise at the University of Illinois celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, the law that created the land grant university system, a former President of the American Association of Universities (AAU), an asso- ciation of the sixty-three North American research universities, the former AAU Presi- dent made a grim prediction. He predicted that many research universities will be shut- ting their doors due to budget cuts [25]. The following pages outline broad issues in education using information technol- ogy. This discussion takes an engineer’s perspective, a perspective favoring techni- cal innovation. That said, others are more knowledgeable on these topics. Brian Dear is writing a book on the computer system known as PLATO, and interested readers should refer to his book. Cyber1.org oper- ates the PLATO emulator, and those inter- ested in logging-on should contact Cyber1. THE NOTION OF TRENDS Social trends are created by adoption of fashion by individuals and organizations [3]. The following Google Trends plot (Figure 1) shows the relative frequency of web searches of the science topic that was dominant through the last decade, nano- technology [24] and search results for an education topic central to this conference, MOOC (Massively Online Open Course). Since much of the funding for nanotech- nology came from the National Science Foundation, NSF is included. A good cor- relation of searches for NSF to searches for nanotechnology is apparent. The counter correlation of these science related (NSF & nanotechnology) search topics to MOOC is also apparent. Of course, Google Trends captures trends fromthebroadpublic. For example, thehigh- est search item for 2014 was the name Robin Williams [42]. Buried in thisweb searchdata, it is reasonable inferences can be drawn. Our ever-fashionable search for the next big thing, embraces the notion of fast riches, currently seen as best attainable Technology History and the Future of Online Learning By Daniel N. Donahoe, Friends of the Marriott Library 32