New modes of learning, research, communication, commerce, and human services are proliferating so rapidly that we as a society have hardly paused to contemplate the changes wrought by IT or analyze their effects on people and institutions. SEW was established as a PCA in FY 2000 to support R&D dedicated to examining the ways IT is transforming our culture and to inspiring innovative models for education and training in IT environments. SEW is the successor to the Education, Training, and Human Resources (ETHR) PCA, reflecting the broader portfolio of issues this research now addresses. SEW R&D will focus on the nature and dynamics of IT impacts on technical and social systems; the workforce development needs arising from the spiraling demand for workers who are highly skilled in technology; and the growing "digital divide" between Americans with access to information technology and those without. Participating agencies include NSF, NASA, DOE, and NIH.
 
In its February 1999 report on IT research needs, the PITAC proposed such an expanded agenda for Federal R&D, arguing that the Nation "must invest in research to identify, understand, anticipate, and address" the problems posed by the increasing pace of technological transformation and "must ensure that all Americans are well-equipped to live and work in the changing world." The PITAC's February 2000 report, "Resolving the Digital Divide: Information, Access, and Opportunity," called for an intensive, coordinated national initiative supported by increased Federal funding to extend IT access and skills to groups bypassed by the opportunities of the Information Age.

SEW R&D activities encompass development and evaluation of advanced technologies for high-quality software learning tools; information-based models of educational systems and learning productivity; research on IT applications in cognitive processes; and demonstrations of innovative networking technologies. In addition, SEW R&D supports development of model curricula and course materials to promote IT literacy and graduate and postdoctoral programs to increase the number of IT professionals. The goal of SEW research is to maximize the societal benefits of IT by assuring that emerging information infrastructures productively serve the needs of all Americans and are sustainable over the long term.

NSF's multidisciplinary SEW research builds on the agency's continuing work devoted to examining the scope, trajectory, and underlying processes of IT's transforming influence on public life, homes, and schools. NSF research is generating theories, models, and concepts to describe the dynamics of social changes being brought about by IT in many different arenas, such as in e-commerce, workplace organization and productivity, and scholarly research; new knowledge about the interactions among people, computers, and communication networks over distance and time; and scientifically grounded mapping of social, economic, and technological transformations across groups, organizations, institutions, and societies. Funded projects range from research studies to workshops and seminars.

FY 2000 activities and accomplishments include:

• Publication of "The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age." This NSF-funded in-depth study-conducted by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council-examines issues surrounding ownership of the electronic forms of creative "products" such as writings, music, and software.
• A pilot "Social and Economic Implications of Information Technologies Data Base," containing 4,000 listings and Web pointers for data sets, research papers, books, and Web sites. The citations are sorted into searchable "Road Maps" that cover IT implications for the community, commerce, education, employment and work, globalization, government, the home, institutional structure, productivity, science, and selected policy issues. Please see http://srsweb.nsf.gov/it_site/index.htm.
• A Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) study examining how changing patterns in home use of telephones, television, and the Internet are affecting psychological and social well-being in families. The research will test the preliminary finding of an "Internet paradox"-that home Internet use decreases well-being.
• A Michigan State University study of computer and Internet use by African Americans. By examining the interactions of individuals newly introduced to home Internet connectivity, researchers aim to gain a deeper understanding of the factors contributing to the racial digital divide so that effective strategies to reduce it can be devised
• A CMU workshop on social and organizational aspects of geographically and functionally distributed work will bring together researchers in anthropology, computer science, history, industrial engineering, information science, psychology, and sociology to discuss the new ways in which IT devices and capabilities are changing work arrangements and modes. One of the first such discussions to be held, the workshop will generate a research agenda, a Web site, and a book detailing research activities to date.
• A University of Maryland study of a trauma patient resuscitation team that examines how distributed teams of experts working in a highly dynamic, multitasking, and stressful environment coordinate their activities and use technology. The multidisciplinary medical research will develop a model framework for coordination, identifying computation and communication technologies that could improve medical teamwork.
• An international workshop, co-sponsored by the European Science Foundation and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, to identify critical challenges in deploying IT technologies to conduct global collaborative science research.
• Studies of informational and computational systems in formal organizations and electronic markets.
• Publication of "Science and Engineering Indicators 2000," the 14th edition of NSF's biennial publication documenting key trends in science and engineering research and education. Its chapter on information technologies provides a statistical and thematic overview of the emergence of IT as major factor in education, research, commerce, and cultural life.

Chief executives of leading corporations have identified the need to strengthen the technology workforce as the single greatest challenge to U.S. competitiveness over the next 10 years. There is a widening cultural gap between citizens who understand and use IT and those who do not. A July 1999 U.S. Department of Commerce report, using December 1998 Census Bureau data, showed that college graduates are at least eight times as likely to have a computer at home and nearly 16 times as likely to have home Internet access as those with an elementary school education. Households with incomes of $75,000 or higher are more than 20 times as likely to have access to the Internet as those at the lowest income levels and more than nine times as likely to have a computer at home. The persistent and growing digital divide also runs along racial and ethnic lines, with African-Americans and Hispanics substantially less likely to have access to the Internet in any location, and along geographic lines, with rural residents far less likely than urban dwellers to have access to network connectivity.
 
Several SEW activities focus on education and training needs, including public outreach programs designed to increase computer literacy, and scholarships, internships, and training initiatives at the undergraduate and graduate levels aimed at expanding the pool of Americans with advanced IT skills. The following sections highlight some of these activities.

NSF's PACI, comprising the National Computational Science Alliance and NPACI, sponsor joint education, outreach, and training (EOT-PACI) activities to bring PACI-developed high performance hardware capabilities and software learning tools to bear in classrooms at all levels of education and in government, and provide training for teachers and other professionals in uses of new technologies. A number of EOT-PACI efforts focus on outreach to women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities, through such means as Web resources, mentoring programs, and IT internships. EOT-PACI projects include:

• EnVision for Kids is an NPACI project to develop a Web site and distribute an interactive hybrid (Mac/PC) CD-ROM aimed at 6th to 9th graders. Educational content will be based on current research in NPACI's three thrust areas-technologies, applications, and education and outreach.
• The Computational Science Institute, an Ohio Supercomputer center-sponsored program, is bringing teachers from around the state to the center for a week's training in using IT tools to stimulate students' interest in science and mathematics.
• Learning Technologies is a PACI project to develop, disseminate, and evaluate tools to enhance learning. The project will increase education researchers' access to PACI technologies and content for K-12 education and develop prototype educational materials and testbeds using PACI's collaborative resources.
• An Oregon State University research effort will develop a four-year curriculum leading to a Bachelor of Science degree in computational physical science. Once developed, the courses will be made available over the Web so that present degree holders can obtain a second bachelor's degree in that field.
• A project at the University of Wisconsin's NSF-supported National Institute for Science Education uses NPACI-developed video teaching and authoring tools to explore the concept of reversing the paradigm of lecture and homework. The project will measure the impact of the changed paradigm on student performance in a computational science course and evaluate the effect of advanced technology on the classroom experience.
• In workshops for faculty in the California State University System and on other NPACI partner campuses, San Diego State University's Education center on Computational Science and Engineering (EC/CSE) is demonstrating how NPACI resources can be used in scientific investigation, discovery, and problem solving. Leveraging and customizing materials from NPACI partner sites, EC/CSE staff highlight technologies and tools that are applicable to undergraduate learning environments.
• A PACI project at the University of Houston-Downtown is developing a Web directory of minority institutions and their funded IT programs, to be housed at the university's center for Computational Sciences and Advanced Distributed Simulation. The directory will be available on the Web site of the Association of Departments of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at Minority Institutions.
• The PACI Research Experience for Undergraduates (PACI REU) program, which this year is providing funding for 35 undergraduates to work with 18 PACI principal investigators (PIs) on their research.
• The Distributed Object Computation Testbed (DOCT), a prototype document management system created by an SDSC researcher in collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enables officials to manage and update complex patent application documents from geographically distributed archives and computing platforms.
• Collaborative Ecosystem Modeling, being developed at the University of Maryland with the NSF/EPA Partnership for Environmental Research, is creating techniques and tools to enable students, educators, policymakers, and stakeholders to build ecosystem models and run spatial simulations focusing on watershed management.
  

As advanced networking applications spread to research, diagnostic, clinical, and training activities in medicine and biomedical science, the shortage of biomedical professionals equipped to use and maintain the complex computing and telecommunications systems supporting these activities has become increasingly acute. NLM, which pioneered the concepts of networked biomedical information archives and visualization tools, sponsors fellowship opportunities that prepare researchers and clinicians to integrate high performance computing technologies across the spectrum of healthcare environments.
 
NLM supports graduate, professional, and postdoctoral fellowships for one to three years of clinical or research training in biomedical informatics at Columbia University; the University of Missouri; the Oregon Health Sciences University; the University of Pittsburgh; the Regenstrief Institute; the Stanford University School of Medicine, the University of Utah; the Yale University center for Medical Informatics; joint research training programs at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, and the New England Medical center; Duke University and the University of North Carolina; and the W. M. Keck center for Computational Biology at Rice University and the Baylor College of Medicine. In FY 2000, a total of 150 NLM fellowship positions were available at these universities, and NLM separately funded another 10 fellowships.

Nearly 42 years of Earth and space exploration at NASA have generated perhaps the world's richest archive of images and information about Earth, the universe, and the scientific and technological components of the discovery process. The agency's Learning Technologies Project (LTP) applies these vast resources to increasing public access to scientific databases; developing new applications and curriculum materials for K-14 students and teachers; and sponsoring educational programs that promote IT literacy and raise student interest in careers in the sciences. The LTP conducts these principal activities:

• K-12 Education Outreach centers that integrate technological capabilities in curricula and disseminate these learning tools and materials throughout the education community
• K-14 Aeronautics Projects that use the Internet to engage students in science, mathematics, engineering, and aeronautics learning activities
• The Remote Sensing Public Access center (RSPAC), which offers a user-friendly online hub of information, learning activities, and related science-learning sites, including RSPAC's popular Observatorium, a Web site that lets visitors make visual journeys around the Earth, across the solar system, and beyond
• Digital Libraries Technology (DLT) projects that support the development of new technologies-such as software tools, applications, and scalable software and hardware systems-that can accommodate more advanced user activities and substantial increases in public access to NASA via computer networks
• LTP's Special Projects, which foster broad public use, via the Internet, of Earth and space science databases generated by NASA and other agencies and encourage development of innovative software applications using the data
  
  

Social and economic
implications
of IT

In FY 2000, NSF began funding grants emphasizing broadly interdisciplinary and multi-institutional explorations of the social and economic implications of information technology. The research agenda calls for collaborations among specialists in IT design, integration, application, and socioeconomic implications (computer and information scientists, social informatics and information systems researchers, librarians, and industrial engineers); researchers in behavioral, cultural, economic, and social impacts of IT (historians, philosophers, and social and behavioral scientists); and researchers who study the ethical, legal, and social implications of IT in their disciplines (biologists, geologists, engineers, and sociologists). Key research areas include:

• Economic and technical systems that make up the digital economy, such as electronic markets and Internet commerce
• Causes and effects of unequal participation in IT by different social groups
• Interdependence of technologies, institutions, and communities
• Evolution and functioning of IT-based collaboratories and distributed work environments
• Impacts of IT on laws, ethics, and social norms
• Public access to government information
• IT involvement in public decision-making
• Development of new data and indicators for tracking IT
• Research methods for studying its socioeconomic impacts
  

• Studies that focus on the early life cycle of new information technologies, a period during which research can beneficially influence their future development and use
• Studies of extensively computerized or information-intense environments (such as wired communities, schools, universities, inter-organizational alliances) where research can "report back" on social and technical transformations
• Ecological studies that focus on the interdependence of IT, computerized groups, institutions, and communities, including social, political, and legal outcomes
  

The IT workforce (ITW)

Begun in FY 2000, NSF's ITW program addresses an aspect of the IT workforce shortage issue that is particularly worrisome to scientists and researchers-the under-representation of women and minorities in engineering and computer and information science occupations. ITW will support a broad set of scientific research studies focused on three basic themes:

• Environment and Culture-how the environment, culture, and other social contexts (such as households, neighborhoods, and communities) influence the attractiveness of IT, and how interest in and use of IT shapes the developmental environment, with particular emphasis on understanding the issues of different age groups
• IT Educational Continuum-how the educational environment influences students' progress from grade school to workforce entry, and why students with the potential to succeed in IT disciplines take educational paths that make it difficult for them to enter the IT workforce
• IT Workplace-why women and minorities with the potential to succeed in the IT workforce take alternative career paths, what barriers and obstacles they must overcome in an IT career path, and how the IT workplace can foster increased retention and advancement of these groups
  

ITW will emphasize multidisciplinary collaboration among researchers in IT, the social sciences, and education.