OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
facilities). It empowers great emphasis on authentic, practice-based learning—on learning to be.
We emphasize an important fact: this is a grassroots, bottom-up, movement coming from the research communities. It is not a top-down, blue-sky initiative thought up in Washington. The community-driven nature of this movement is evidence of readiness for transformation toward a new culture of learning and discovery, at least in the sciences and engineering.
Figure 7—NSF CI vision and activities based on broad and diverse community engagement.
As illustrated in Figure 7, this movement was catalyzed by a landmark 2003 report from an NSF-appointed Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel, "Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure."[1] This report includes the following assertion:
"a new age has dawned in scientific and engineering research, pushed by continuing progress in computing, information, and communication technology, and pulled by the expanding complexity, scope, and scale of today's challenges. The capacity of this technology has crossed thresholds that now make possible a comprehensive "cyberinfrastructure" on which to build new types of scientific and engineering knowledge environments and organizations and to pursue research in new ways and with increased efficacy."
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