Cyberinfrastructure for Learning and Instruction

Cyberinfrastructure refers to research and collaboration networked environments that provide (a) services including grid computation processing, data acquisition, storage and integration, and information integration and visualization; (b) digital resources including literature, domain-specific software, and well-curated collections of scientific data; and (c) access to specialized tools including remote instrumentation, sensors and actuators, modeling and simulations, and interactive visualization tools. Cyberinfrastructure has been created with the main goal of supporting groups of scientists and engineers to coproduce, communicate, and share scientific knowledge.

In educational contexts, cyberinfrastructure provides the means to bring expert tools and disciplinary practices into formal and informal educational settings. Specifically, cyberinfrastructure has been integrated into higher education classrooms by providing professors and students with access to disciplinary research tools and scientific data. This integration occurs through the implementation of training programs or by repurposing research tools and scientific data as learning resources. For example, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), through its education and public engagement team, brings real-time marine science into undergraduate classrooms. The education, outreach, and training team of the iPlant Collaborative project offers workshops for graduate students and faculty to introduce them to specific computational tools and data in plant biology. EarthScope, through its IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) education and public outreach team, has developed Web-based tools that provide 3D user-friendly visualizations of earthquake data of diverse regions around the world, which can be easily integrated for learning purposes.

[Page 167]Cyberinfrastructure has also been integrated into K–12 education through outreach and teacher professional development programs. For instance, the education group at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or European Council for Nuclear Research) provides teacher training in science inquiry to analyze real Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data. The Research Experience Teacher’s Institute (RETI) through the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) runs a one-year internship program where teachers partner with climate scientists and other educators to create new curricular materials for immediate use in the classroom and develop an advanced level of understanding of global climate change research. These are only a few examples of the many ways in which cyberinfrastructure is gaining its place into K–12 and higher education. This entry first discusses the ways cyberinfrastructure is being used in learning and instruction, with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It then discusses some of the opportunities and challenges involved in using cyberinfrastructure for teaching and learning.