A grand challenge: optimum curriculum design

Abstract

It is obvious that in ten years, more and more students, whether teachers want it or not, will bring some computing devices equipped with wireless communication capabilities into the classrooms. This remarkably changes the way of teaching and learning. This work discusses a framework for orchestrating global collaborative activities towards some common goal that represents a grand challenge and beneficial both on local and global levels. This framework consists of some common goals, a group of leading researchers, some international industries, a forum, Web sites for resource sharing, and a collaboration-model. A prominent common goal is optimum curriculum design. How people learn with technology is a scientific inquiry, and by its own has been the aim of such endeavors. But, from the application point of view, one can say that all these endeavors are for accumulating knowledge in the hope that one day such knowledge can lead to optimum curriculum design. This work presents some arguments of this challenge.