We have determined from planning that three years is the minimal time period for such a comprehensive, novel study because of the organic and democratic nature of understanding human communication, and the complexities involved in developing human infrastructure and quality control measures at the community scale. By year 3, the testbed will emerge as a widely-distributed hypermedia application and serve educational organizations and the general public as NII for education. Although funding from the NASA will end, the community investigation will continue because the investigation and development process at the community scale will have been built into the curriculum. Additionally, responsibilities for maintaining the curriculum will have been distributed across the community, supported through automation, or commercialized. Thus, the curriculum will continue to experience optimization beyond the testbed program. After the pro posed three year grant period, thanks to NASA funding, thirteen high schools, six universities, and hundreds of students will have partic ipated. This current three-year proposal is seen, however, as part of a larger project, which would benefit from follow-on funding from NASA or other interested entities to regional faculty-led research consortia in their adaptation of this model.
The Earth System Science Community Curriculum Testbed
keeler@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov