OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
3.3.1 E-science and Cyberinfrastructure
There are now major e-science, cyberscience, or cyberinfrastructure-enhanced science initiatives under way in most every developed region of the world. Cyberinfrastructure (CI), or e-infrastructure, refers to computer and communication technology–based resources (tools, services, information) together with the people and institutions supporting them. Specific collections of these resources, accessed over networks, are configured to support distributed communities through web portals and workflow interfaces to provide the computation, knowledge management, observation, and collaboration tools needed by a specific team, project, discipline, or community of practice. Such distributed organizations go by many names (as listed in Figure 6). Science often needs the highest capacity computer, the highest bandwidth networks, and the largest data storage capabilities available, so they are often harbingers for what will be in general use in the future.
The U. S. National Science Foundation in particular has taken the lead for the United States in creating and executing “NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery.”[1] This document begins with a bold call for action as follows: NSF will play a leadership role in the development and support of a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure essential to 21st-century advances in science and engineering research and education. It goes on to describe a vision of comprehensive CI-enhanced science and engineering education based on high-performance computing, knowledge management, observatories, virtual organizations, and supporting programs of education and workforce development. The impact of cyberinfrastructure is also prevalent in many parts of the new NSF strategic plan: Investing in America’s Future.[2] NSF has established a new high-level Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) to coordinate strategic programs of investment and is committing about $700 million per year toward this goal. There are similar large and growing activities in the United Kingdom, the European Union,[3] Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea, and growing international cooperation.
Although “open” is not in the name of this movement, most all of the software and much of the content and data emerging from the e-science/CI movement is open in the sense of OER openness. Furthermore, it extends the notion of “open resource” to not only course content, but also to a huge web of scientific data and online instrumentation (sensor networks, observatories, fabrication
- ↑ http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/ci-v7.pdf
- ↑ http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf0648/nsf0648.jsp
- ↑ Distributed knowledge communities enabled by virtual organizations are a key part of the strategy for linking education, research, and education in the new European Union Framework 7 for their Information Society.
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