NRC Report Introduces Fluency with Information Technology

By Larry Snyder

In response to a request from the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council's Committee on Information Technology Literacy undertook a study addressing "What Everyone Should Know About Information Technology." The committee's final report, Being Fluent with Information Technology, asserts that the knowledge and understanding of information technology (IT) needed by citizens in the Information Age must go well beyond the content of traditional computer literacy instruction.

Fluency, A Higher Standard

Standard computer literacy course content tends to be largely "skills based," though there are exceptions. The focus in such courses is on instruction in the use of a basic set of contemporary computer applications, such as e-mail, web browsing, word processing, and so forth. Though such knowledge is valuable -- enabling students to use IT immediately -- the skills learned do not have the "staying power" necessary to accommodate the rapid change characteristic of the field. For example, web browsing was not a skill included in computer literacy courses as recently as five years ago, though it is a basic requirement today for effective computer use.

In the presence of rapid change, the best educational strategy is to prepare students to be life-long learners. For that goal, students will require a more fundamental understanding of information technology in addition to the ability to use contemporary IT tools.

The report identifies three kinds of knowledge -- skills, concepts, and capabilities -- as appropriate for preparing students to be life-long learners:

Contemporary skills refer to proficiency with standard IT applications. Imparting knowledge of skills approximates traditional literacy instruction. The appropriate "working set" will change over time.

Foundational concepts are basic ideas underpinning the technology, such as digital representation of information, which might be found in a typical computer science curriculum. Concepts enable people to understand the "how," "why," and limitations of current IT. They are also the basis of future self-education about IT.

Intellectual capabilities are higher-level thinking abilities, such as logical reasoning or managing complexity, that are essential to effective use of IT. Capabilities are frequently learned through "life experience" and are applicable to other aspects of life. But, the capabilities are so essential to the effective use of IT that they must be explicitly included in the content required for IT proficiency.

These three coequal forms of knowledge serve different roles in IT preparation. Skills support job-readiness and provide the basis for understanding the other content. Concepts explain phenomena. Capabilities support the thoughtful and confident application of IT in personally relevant settings.

This tripartite approach to literacy instruction benefited from a suggestion by Yasmin Kafai, Assistant Professor of Education and Information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She observed that literacy connotes a rudimentary understanding of a topic. Fluency, however, connotes a higher level of understanding, implying the ability to transform one's knowledge, to express oneself effectively, and to control the medium. Embracing this point of view, the committee adopted the phrase "Fluency with Information Technology" as the goal for its tripartite proposal. FIT is the acronym for "fluent with information technology," and FITness is the state of being FIT.

The Top Ten

In formulating the specific skills, concepts, and capabilities that make a person FIT, it is tempting to include 'everything,' resulting in a recommended body of knowledge, which few if any could possibly know. This is especially easy in a committee situation. To avoid this possibility the committee limited itself to the ten items in each of the three categories having the highest priority. There can be reasonable differences of opinion as to whether the committee's choices are the best, but it is the committee's intent that each suggested addition to the list be accompanied by a suggestion for a removal. In this way FITness will continue to be an accessible body of knowledge.

The recommendations for the three classes of knowledge are given below in keywords. The report provides a fuller explanation.

Skills:

Concepts:

Capabilities:

Notice that the entries are not all of "equal size" in terms of the effort to acquire the knowledge.

A key aspect of FITness is that it is not an end state, but rather a continual process of learning and expanding one's knowledge of information technology. Accordingly, the goal of FITness instruction is to provide the foundation that enables students to continue to learn more and apply IT more effectively throughout life.

Project-based Learning

Teaching skills is well understood. Teaching the concepts is standard in computer science curricula. But FITness includes the higher-level thinking abilities of intellectual capabilities, and it requires that the three forms of knowledge be taught in a coherent, integrated way. This presents a serious pedagogical challenge.

The report recommends that FITness instruction be project-based, where a project is defined to be a multiweek, hands-on exercise in applying IT to solve a substantial problem. The projects use the skills, provide the context for learning the capabilities, and motivate the concepts. By being a sustained effort, a project provides ample opportunities for applying sustained logical reasoning, debugging and trouble shooting, dealing with unintended consequences, and other complex capabilities. To the extent possible, the report also recommends that FITness be acquired in a discipline-specific setting. This allows projects to be discipline specific. And, the skills list can be revised to better serve a given specialty. For example, CAD tools might be added to the skill set for architects.

An example of a FITness-grade project mentioned in the report is an HIV tracking system for a hospital or clinic. The task requires a GUI for entering and viewing data, a database to retain the records, a mechanism (spreadsheet) for presenting summary results, a facility to report to clients and physicians, a focus on security and privacy issues, and a presentation of the system to the users.

It is evident that FITness instruction is desirable, if not essential for all current college students. The elements of FITness are valuable throughout college, as well as being critical to most jobs that college students are seeking. In a steady state, it is likely that K-12 education will include FITness instruction, allowing it to become an entrance requirement for college. In the meantime, college courses must be designed to provide this knowledge to the present college population.

Committee Process

The Committee on Information Technology Literacy was convened by the NRC's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB). The committee members were:

]Lawrence Snyder, University of Washington, Chair
Alfred V. Aho, Lucent Technologies
Arnold Packer, Johns Hopkins University
Marcia Linn, University of California, Berkeley
Andries van Dam, Brown University
Allen Tucker, Bowdoin College
Jeffrey Ullman, Stanford University

The period of the study was approximately a year and a half.

The committee received testimony from educational standards organizations, professional societies, the library and information community, computer science educators, and the community at large. Electronic input was solicited broadly on issues of importance to the committee's mission. An invitation-only workshop was held in Irvine, California, in January 1998 at which approximately forty participants spent a day and a half discussing the relevant issues. Input was sought from the computer science department chairs at the 1998 CRA Conference at Snowbird. The committee winnowed the testimony, formulated the recommendations in their tripartite form, and enumerated the "top ten" in each of the three categories. A draft report was submitted for peer review across a broad spectrum of interested parties, and all reviewer comments were addressed. Printed copies of the final version of report should be available by mid-May. A preprint version is available online at the CSTB webpage at http://www2.nas.edu/cstbweb.

Next Steps

The committee established the content for Fluency with Information Technology, but it did not reduce that content to curricula. The FITness proposal is aggressive, so Fluency classes must be offered to gather experience with integrating the three kinds of knowledge and to gauge student success with acquisition. (The author is currently prototyping a FIT class at the University of Washington (CSE100.))

The target audiences for curriculum divide into three groups: college students need FITness instruction immediately; the K-12 curriculum is the desirable place for FITness instruction, but there are many challenges; and much of the population wants and needs fluency instruction, but they are now beyond their educational years -- instructing this latter group also carries significant challenges.

Larry Snyder is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, a member of the CRA Board of Directors, and author of "A Programmer's Guide To ZPL," published last month by MIT Press. (See also, www.cs.washington.edu/homes/snyder.)