Jim Brazell (DaVinci Minds, Inc.), Brock Dubbels (DaVinci Minds, Inc.), Chris Clark (DaVinci Minds, Inc.), Jason Robar (Aristo Digital, Inc.), Dr. Francis X. Kane (Schriever Institute) and Dr. Roy Jenevein (University of Texas at Austin, Digital Media Collaboratory)

Submitted to NASA February 15, 2008

on behalf of the University of Texas at Austin

 in consideration of the NASA MMO RFI

1. How a NASA-based educational MMO should be designed.

The ultimate realization of NASA’s investment in this MMO is the unification of formal and informal actors with NASA practitioners by creating a single platform that: (1) Links career simulation, NASA mission scenarios and STEM learning and innovation; (2) Encourages global harmonious relations in the pursuit of space missions and challenges which face humanity and the world today, (3) Accelerates human, civil and social development to open the doors of access to knowledge, education and democracy to everyone with the desire and motivation; and (4) Enables actors to learn about and solve real world problems which deliver the benefits of NASA’s activities to the world as real world NASA missions are designed, in progress and completed—rather than waiting until after missions are completed to realize the spin-off value of such pursuits within economic, education, social, political, and civil systems.

The development of the NASA MMO targets formal and informal learning contexts with a broad set of stakeholders. The NASA MMO will serve formal learning constituents (“actors”) including NASA education staff and volunteers and middle school, high school and college students and faculty. The NASA MMO will serve informal learning constituents (actors) including space hobbyists, space historians, video game players and professional Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Science (T.E.A.M.S.) communities of practice and associations. Please note, “Arts” is used in this context to mean liberal arts disciplines and knowledge. Finally, the NASA MMO will provide a nexus between formal and informal learning communities and NASA professional engineering, scientific, technical and other staff as wells as NASA partners and sponsors. Together these communities define the “actors” in the NASA MMO.

The NASA MMO design framework and underlying systems link mission scenarios, career simulation and scholastic learning into a coherent whole. The conceptual glue which binds these elements in terms of “play” and “gaming” from a player’s (“actor’s”) perspective are “reputation” and “achievements” (job title, rank, badges, and/or degrees of knowledge). Actor reputation is a function of peer review and/or accreditation including “mission reputation” (peer and mentor awarded), “academic merit” (formal and/or informal academic credit) and “sponsor recognition” (NASA and partner and sponsor awarded).  Actors will have profiles which include a career resume with these elements.

NASA MMO Challenges (Mission Challenges) – The NASA Mission Challenges will link NASA mission jobs, roles, tasks, processes, skills and traits with the United States Department of Labor sixteen (16) federal career clusters (collectively, NASA Mission Jobs) and STEM knowledge (Scholastic Achievement). Mission Challenges will be delivered in the context of solitary and collaborative mission teams working within mission control, astronaut, technical operations, engineering design, human performance and health, scientific experimentation, security roles and similar roles and associated “ranks” and/or “job titles”.  The NASA MMO will provide actors with tools, media assets and simulation scenarios in the context of mission conceptualization, planning, design, testing and operational execution.

The NASA MMO and its respective Challenges provide engagement through interactive learning, offering manageable “chunks” of STEM knowledge that are challenging but offer early and instant success. These chunks can be connected and layered to solve more and more complex problems. NASA Challenges will add complexity little-by-little while challenging actors to change strategies due to external systems, forces and timing when actor strategies become routine.

Mission design activities will feature two levels of engagement for two tasks related to the creation of systems and systems-of-systems: (1) “Construct A Mission Asset” (Snap together pre-existing mission assets or design a novel mission asset using a real world science and/or engineering tool or simulation) and (2) “Construct a Mission Asset Control System” (Design a process control system using ladder logic or a similar graphical user interface and/or write computer code using a real world science and/or engineering tool or simulation).

Game-Instructional Design Balance – In order to balance game and instructional design, each NASA Mission challenge is designed as a storyline which links NASA Mission Jobs, Scholastic Achievement and “goal states” in order to facililitate actors’ emotional determination to complete a challenge. Mission Challenges will be designed with an instructional narrative created by linking the simulation storyline to the instructional objectives so that the user cannot complete the story without successfully demonstrating the learned Knowledge, Skill, Ability or Other Traits (KSAOs). The NASA MMO will incorporate feedback and rewards for successful solitary- and team-based play. NASA MMO Challenges will be designed so that actors will pursue public recognition and credibility which in turn will fuel desire to learn and to “level-up” in the context of NASA Mission Jobs and related Scholastic Achievements. The incentive to learn is therefore a relational design problem in which the solution is a matter of linking playable scenarios and job roles/tasks and scholastic achievement.

Assessment, Performance-Based Interventions and Decision Support – Underlying the system are clearly defined criteria referenced assessment and tracking to emperically validate learning systems. Each NASA Mission Challenge will be pureposfully designed and linked to an educational infrastrcuture to teach, test, assess, and remediate scholastic achivement and progress. The system will provide dynamic performance-based interventions in the form of “decision support” to accelerate actor progress and acquisition of NASA Mission, NASA Job and STEM knowedge and skill when appropriate. Actors will also be able to call decision support in order to request tutorials. The NASA MMO will capture all learner interactions and decisions and provide proof of competence in criteria reference assessment, enabling evaluation of the learner and the learning system. The NASA T.E.A.M.S. Assessment Engine will assess Scholastic Achievement and assist with remediation when it is requested or provided dynamically as an intervention (decision support).

Accredited educational partners may reward actors with appropriate “academic merit.” Academic merit may be formal (actual college credit) or informal (recognition). Formal credit awards are dependent on demonstrable knowledge and skill from actors who authenticate identity and perform tests within policies supported by accredited academic institutions. In this way, the NASA MMO is effectively a virtual schoolhouse in addition to an aid to schools in the physical world and an environment of exploration, networking, fun, and play.  

2. How a NASA-based educational MMO should support both formal and informal

education efforts.

By exemplifying the best practices in the educational sciences and recruiting the best design elements from commercial games, the formal and informal learning experiences of the NASA MMO will deliver what commercial games do—engagement, desire to master tasks, and motivation to engage to completion. The NASA MMO will provide a learning laboratory which enables discovery, exploration, reflection, and innovation within a context constructed by subject matter experts utilizing real world models of NASA missions, processes, data and tools.

Formal Learning – In order for the NASA MMO to be useful and applicable to classroom-based, credit courses (formal learning) in primary, secondary, and post secondary education, some activities will link to curriculum-based initiatives with measurable outcomes that correlate to state and national educational standards. The NASA MMO will support teachers and faculty in the form of tutorials, support tools, and experiences that readily enable formal learner constituents to incorporate the NASA MMO and its “Play to Learn” products into the classroom and learning laboratory. In order to facilitate connectivity between formal learning technology investments in schools today, the NASA MMO will provide open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and common log-in capability in order to facilitate deep and easy integration with pre-exisiting online tools and environments.

The NASA MMO should not seek to emulate formal teaching spaces or traditional instruction. In order for the NASA MMO to be useful for credit-courses (formal learning) in primary, secondary, and post secondary education, the MMO will support instruction in formal learning environments with online simulation, instruction, remediation, assessment and acceleration. In this regard, the MMO will offer embedded standards (stealth learning) in high interest Mission Challenge activities that embody state and national educational standards. Mission Challenges will be presented in the context of real world problem solving which engage the learner with rich media and realistic space scenarios.

This NASA MMO offers a new formal educational model for data driven instruction built from assessment systems that measure proof of concept performance. Traditional formal education often asks students to memorize and describe what they have learned, whereas, the NASA MMO Mission Challenge is structured to elicit proof of concept and demonstrable skill in specific contexts. In addition to this authentic, contextually bound assessment, the MMO will serve as an experimental research infrastructure to inform system adaptation to optimize educational effectiveness within Mission Challenges.

Informal Learning – In order to engage the informal learning community and the gamer community, NASA Challenges will have many of the elements of what people generally consider fun: free play, curiosity, creation, manipulatives, dramatic questions, engaging story lines with twists and surprises, dynamic characters, risk/reward and beautiful 3-D environments. Play is built upon imagination, visualization, roles and identity, branching decisions with meaningful repercussions, and the tension of uncertainty. By tapping into traditional play characteristics, the NASA MMO will bridge the divide between play and education.

The NASA MMO will offer a new world of rules, relationships, social status, imagination, fantasy, escapism, challenge, power, role-play, and virtual tools and environments. In essence, the NASA Challenges will tap into what people already find fun, but also extend into the flexibility of open play and world building (actor created content and processes) through the design of missions, scientific experiments, and mission assets using real world science and engineering tools and simulations. Play and the choice to engage are about disclosing new worlds and the possibility of having a starring role. The NASA MMO can provide this by aligning the drama and excitement of space travel and exploration with stealth learning (and explicit education) and game design constructs and principles. Although it is easy to draw the line between formal and informal learning, the NASA MMO and its Challenges should blur this distinction and transform formal learning with the structure and qualities of successful games.

The NASA MMO will be created around a number of portals, which coincide with specific play styles, scenarios and media presentations. NASA MMO Challenge scenarios (in whole or in part) should be accessible across the following communication channels: TV, iTV, mobile phone, PC, game console and print materials. This creates multiple entry levels to meet the teaching and learning needs of formal education and informal learners.

The design team charged with developing the NASA MMO must seamlessly blur the distinctions between work, learning, and play in a way that creates an environment in which actors are motivated to participate by intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. The solution is to “nest” and scaffold associations among work, learning and play and to reinforce actor progress through the Reputation Engine (See Reputation Engine below).

A key factor in the design process is a clear understanding of what engagement is, and how it can be used to affect an actor’s internal context. Specifically, their “goal state” in order to create intrinsic motivation to complete the storyline and thereby demonstrate learned knowledge. Early and instant success with pleasantly frustrating challenges will reward public acknowledgement through “leveling-up”. Therefore, engagement leads to the adoption of the NASA MMO, as a “cool” connection between the world of play, learning and work. This will reinforce the creation of a culture and community built around NASA values and goals while deepening loyalty and positive perceptions of NASA.

By harnessing the power of an intrinsically motivating activity that is aligned with the purpose and identity of the learner—the problem becomes the learner’s problem; temporarily assimilated as part of their identity, a convergence of  play, learning and work where roles, rules, knowledge, values, language and behavior, are reinforced through stimulus, response, reward, and scenario. Finally, the MMO will be built around the concept that the performance is the assessment—after all, games by their very nature assess, measure, and evaluate (score); thus, by embedding learning in scenarios and delivering assessment as score, actors in many scenarios will not know that they are being taught. Rather, they will think that they are playing in order to level-up and meet challenges in order to gain status and have access to new tools, teams, missions, and information.

3. How a NASA-based educational MMO should connect to current and future

NASA missions.

The ultimate “win-state” of NASA Mission Challenges is to solve a real-world problem for which a known answer or workable solution is not known (similar to X-Prize and Grand Challenges). The outcome of this challenge activity is that an actor or team of actors may solve a problem in such a way as to contribute knowledge, processes and/or designs useful to a real NASA mission team or an external constituent in the real world. Therefore, the ultimate output of the NASA MMO is to produce innovation, the capacity for innovation and a breeding ground for innovators. This capability is described in academic and professional literature as a Problem Solving Environment (PSE).

NASA MMO Platform – Central to the design approach is creating a platform upon which multiple NASA Mission Challenges may be deployed in a single environment. As such, the NASA MMO is at once a learning system and a platform for experimental learning and innovation. The platform will support two types of challenges: (1) Mission preperation and execution challenges and (2) Mission design challenges. Mission preperation and execution challanges will enable actors to use prefabricated mission assets to define their experience and options to solve a NASA Mission Challenge. Mission design challenges will enable actors to create mission assets using real world science and engineering tools to deploy digital assets and simulations to the MMO world. Actor created assets will serve the function of enabling community, constructionist learning and the economy–contributing to the sustainability, vitality and uniqueness of the NASA MMO. Both mission types will support solving challenges for which there are known answers and for which there are no known answers.

The NASA Challenges will provide actors with activities where they can manipulate and discover embodied STEM principles. The NASA MMO will cohesively link play and experiential learning within mission scenarios to motivate and contextualize actor learning, practice, collaboration, experimentation, invention and innovation. NASA Mission Challenges will also be linked to real world NASA programs and resources. For example, NASA assets such as live data streams, imagery, models, 3-D engineering designs and other artifacts, processes and tools may also be incorporated into the MMO experience thereby achieving an MMO which blends virtual, imaginary and physical reality. Furthermore, NASA Mission Challenges will be linked to NASA educational programs such as the NASA Robotics Alliance Project, Challenger Centers and Space Camps.

By requiring the integration of NASA professional engineering and scientific tools and simulations, for use by actors, to solve real world problems, the NASA MMO creates the potential for actors to change the world—to solve a problem—to innovate. For example, an actor using a real world 3-D engineering workstation tool (or simulation of a tool) can possibly design a robotic arm with greater torque strength than currently available technologies. This blending of real world problems for which there are known and unknown solutions creates the possibility of drawing professional engineers and scientists into cooperation and competition with actors who have time and a predisposition to work through problems but for whom access and a voice has been limited by circumstance, social position, economic status or other barriers to entry. The NASA MMO can, in effect, level the playing field and draw together communities of practice which may discover novel solutions to real world problems by uniting professional, educational and personal interest in space missions and exploration. Therefore, the NASA MMO has the potential to change the world by opening access to learn, to create and innovate to all who have the desire and the basic technology to access this online world.

4. How NASA career opportunities exploration and significant STEM learning

experiences would be incorporated into the design a NASA-based educational

MMO.

Fundamentally, the NASA MMO is a platform to incubate and accelerate the development of human capital. In this context, the NASA MMO will link: (1) Scholastic Achievement with the relevant sixteen (16) federal career clusters; (2) NASA MMO Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to related WWW assets; (3) The simulation platform and a web-based test, assessment and remediation environment for actor and NASA created curriculum; (4) Mission Challenges to a visual system to plan education pathways in relation to space and STEM-related careers; and (5) An online system for creating a presence in which NASA, its partners and sponsors may create dynamic media-based profiles of their organizations, featured job positions and careers linked with the actor reputation, merit and recognition engine; (6) Mission Challenges, students and mentors; and (7) NASA and its partner and sponsors to the MMO  economy to form a marketplace for scholarships, sponsorship, incentives, prizes, and actor created curriculum and mission assets (3-D engineering designs, software programs, science experiments, etc.).

Because NASA Missions and Jobs are explicitly linked to Scholastic Knowledge, STEM learning is a function of designing mission scenarios which require jobs and tasks which utilize desired STEM knowledge (such as math problems that stump high school students and set up a requirement for remedial education). If an actor is having difficulty acquiring the knowledge through open ended inquiry and embedded learning, the decision support system may intervene semi-autonomously or be invoked by the actor. The decision support system is structured to teach, assess, remediate and accelerate learners. Acceleration is the act of placing the actor back in the storyline for final practice and ultimately completion of the mission task and/or mission.

The connection of NASA roles, identities, values, job tasks, job titles, and ranks is the key to providing the context of play and learning to motivate actors to contribute and participate in the NASA MMO Challenge community. The design framework and underlying systems of the NASA MMO will support linking NASA Mission Challenge scenarios (past, present and future) to NASA mission jobs (and job tasks) and scholastic knowledge. The NASA MMO therefore links mission scenarios, career simulation and scholastic learning into an integrated whole. In this regard, the NASA MMO does not feature career exploration as much as it embodies the activity of career simulation. In the NASA MMO, the actors are first person astronauts, scientists, mission planners, engineers and technicians rather than learning about these occupations from third person.  

The creation of design challenges and engineering solutions to existing and hypothetical challenges allows for authentic, performance-based assessment and instruction that is grounded in practice. By engaging in hands-on, real-world projects, students will understand how the STEM knowledge and NASA job skills they are learning in the MMO can be applied in everyday life–this is experiential learning, and, learning from experience. Research shows that this kind of learning experience contributes to an increase in student motivation, increase in cooperative learning skills, higher-order thinking, and an improvement in student achievement.

Therefore the NASA MMO and its related Challenges can lead to STEM educational practitioners who are motivated to: go beyond the classroom for answers, take responsibility for their own learning, develop meta-cognitive skills such as self-evaluation and continuous improvement, experience leading and/or working as a contributing member of a team, increased skill in using written and/or visual mediums to communicate with a wide variety of audiences,  

understand the potential impact of technologies on society through the development and practice of critical thinking, problem solving, analytical reasoning, and ability to manage time, resources and projects.

5. How a NASA-based educational MMO game play would be engaging for all

participants.

The development of the NASA MMO targets formal and informal learning contexts with a broad set of stakeholders. The NASA MMO will serve formal learning constituents (system actors or “actors”) including NASA education staff and volunteers and middle school, high school and college students and faculty. The NASA MMO will serve informal learning constituents (actors) including space hobbyists, space historians, video game players and professional Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Science (T.E.A.M.S.) communities of practice and associations. Please note, “Arts” is used in this context to mean liberal arts disciplines and knowledge. Finally, the NASA MMO will provide a nexus between formal and informal learning communities and NASA professional engineering, scientific, technical and other staff as wells as NASA partners and sponsors. Together these communities define the “actors” in the NASA MMO.

The unifying element that engages every participant in the NASA MMO is a robust NASA Reputation System based on a proven peer-ratings algorithm engine.  All actors and actor created content is tagged with a reputation rating awarded by peers and mentors (reputation), academic partners and affiliates (merit) and NASA, partners and sponsors (recognition). The Reputation System will be used to rate actor behavior, actor knowledge, actor skill, and actor abilities in one or more of the following dimensions: problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building, team collaboration, team communication, and adaptation to external stimuli (system rules changing, environmental system of forces, events, etc). The Reputation System will track social and behavioral qualities specified by NASA such as leadership, teamwork, organization and adaptability; whereas, the NASA T.E.A.M.S. Assessment Engine will assess Scholastic Achievement and assist with remediation when it is requested or provided dynamically as an intervention (decision support).

For educators, the Reputation System can track the adoption rate of their curriculum and/or their ratings as mentors and/or instructors from formal and informal learning audiences as well as NASA, its sponsors and its partners—remember, games by their nature assess, measure, and evaluate. NASA, its partners, and sponsors such as human resources staff can post job requirements with requirements for experience and relevant demonstrable knowledge, skills, abilities and other traits using the Reputation System and STEM assessment criteria from the T.E.A.M.S. Assessment Engine. Mission candidates interested in specific NASA jobs, such as “Astronaut,” or “Flight Systems Engineer,” or “Aerospace Technician,” will then link Scholastic Achievement with NASA Jobs (21^st Century Skills and Abilities). Finally, actor created digital artifacts (mechanical designs, computer code, process maps, plans, scientific experiments, etc.) can be ranked by appropriate actors using contextually relevant criteria.

Motivation of Actors: Linking Learning, Motivation and Sustainability – As actors complete a Mission Challenge, they will earn achievements and recognition. Actors will have profiles which include a career resume, peer reviewed reputation and academic merit awards. This framework links actor motivation to outcomes which have real world implications (scholastic, career and otherwise) for actors while providing a sustainability and business model for the NASA MMO.

Sustainability Business Model – The NASA MMO will be designed with an economy and fungiable assets including scholarships, sponsorship, incentives, prizes, and actor created curricula and mission assets (3-D egineering designs, software programs, science experiments, etc.). NASA may develop a partner and sponsorship model which provides a foundation from which to grow, evolve and sustain the cost of operations of the NASA MMO. In addition to brand affiliation through named sponsorship, NASA partners and sponsors may also form a market to bid for scholarship candidates and internship candidates while providing accompanying incentives and resources for schools and indisviduals to participate in NASA MMO Challenges. Accredited educaional institutions and associated NASA partners and sponsors may also form a market place for actor recruiting and curriculum sponsorship providing a financial engine to the expansion of learning content, outcomes and objectives within the NASA MMO.

The ultimate realization of NASA’s investment in this MMO is the unification of formal and informal actors with NASA practitioners by creating a single platform that: (1) Links career simulation, NASA mission scenarios and STEM learning and innovation; (2) Encourages global harmonious relations in the pursuit of space missions and challenges which face humanity and the world today, (3) Accelerates human, civil and social development to open the doors of access to knowledge, education and democracy to everyone with the desire and motivation; and (4) Enables actors to learn about and solve real world problems which deliver the benefits of NASA’s activities to the world as real world NASA missions are designed, in progress and completed—rather than waiting until after missions are completed to realize the spin-off value of such pursuits within economic, education, social, political, and civil systems.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jim Brazell, jim.brazell@ventureramp.com

Boston, Chicago, San Antonio and Rio Grande Valley, TX: US education and innovation leaders call for emphasis on vocational education as an answer to Obama’s “21st Century Sputnik” to enhance American innovation and financial recovery.

 For immediate release, Thursday, October 22, 2009—When President Barack Obama and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) meet in Washington, D.C. this week on issues related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education (STEM) and global innovation, two of San Antonio’s best minds will weigh in with a radical suggestion-focus on vocational education plus traditional academics and the arts. Jim Brazell, a consultant to the, Innovation, Creativity and Capital Institute, University of Texas Austin and Dr. Francis X. Kane, President, Schriever Institute (USAF, Col., ret.) are confirmed to be heard by the committee during the public comments. Both will provide written comments related to the importance of the arts, traditional academics and career and technical education (CTE) in responding to the 21^st century Sputnik—the economic crisis and global trends in demography and technology.

On Feb. 19, 1957 General Bernard A. Schriever set the stage when he provided a similar warning in his famous space speech just before the launch of Sputnik. Brazell and Kane made a stir with a similar announcement prior to the October 2009 financial crash titled the “Bellwether Sounds” which was published by the National School Boards Association Electronic School publication in August 2008 (http://www.nsba.org/SecondaryMenu/TLN/UsefulInformation/STEMInformationandResources/JimBrazell.aspx).

In April, 2009, President Obama framed his speech to the National Academies of Science using Sputnik as a symbol and call to American action and collaboration to face global opportunities and challenges. In that same speech, he committed three percent of gross domestic product to fuel science and technology research, development, commercialization and education. According to Dr. Kane, “Similar to President Obama, President Eisenhower, after the launch of Sputnik, faced rising global tensions, a critical time window and very low tolerance for failure.” PCAST letter contributor, Dr. David Thornburg of the Chicago-based Thornburg Center for Professional Development adds, “Eisenhower discovered the M.I.T. Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC) who had created and proven new curricula for science and physics on a small scale. The PSSC curricula allowed the U.S. to disseminate and scale up education reform-answering the call for innovation while managing risk of failure.”

Brazell points out, “the modern equivalent of the curricula chosen by Eisenhower is Tech Prep, Career Pathways and Career and Technical Education  (CTE)—modern vocational education.” Debra Amidon, Innovation, Creativity and Capital, Research Fellow, and another contributor adds, “Today, we live in a knowledge-innovation society and America’s youth need to be prepared for the complexity of the modern world by integrating knowledge and action. In other words, preparing students with rote learning and memorization has an inverse relationship to our need to put knowledge into action—to create, innovate, lead and enhance public discourse.”

Patricia Bubb, from the Rio Grande Valley Tech Prep Consortium also contributed to the PCAST letter and explains, “Modern vocational education is a calling to one’s passions and an alignment to the problems and opportunities of the world. Tech Prep students in the Rio Grande Valley graduate high school and attend colleges and universities at higher rates than general academic students in the State of Texas. Tech Prep works and it does not sacrifice the importance of American ideals of preserving and perpetuating freedom, public discourse, creativity and learning beyond work preparation. Tech Prep integrates all of this into modern vocational practice.”

According to the PCAST letter from Brazell and his collaborators, “The irony of our time in history is that Tech Prep, Career Pathways, and modern vocational education, provide the innovation PCAST is seeking—increasing student attendance, graduation, and matriculation to colleges and universities. Tech Prep defined as a full academic load of classes, plus career and technical education courses, plus college courses provides the modern definition of a well rounded student.” Brazell concludes, “This is a cornerstone solution to the American and global financial crisis—we need to put knowledge into action in order to create new jobs and ultimately new opportunities for history which transcend the politics and institutions of the industrial era—to create what is next!”

The letter to be read to PCAST and detailed comments can be found online at http://www.ventureramp.com/downloads/PCAST/PCAST_Brazell_Comments.doc.

About PCAST

PCAST and the October 22-23, 2009 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Meeting

 On April 27, 2009, President Obama announced the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who directly advise the President and the Executive Office of the President. PCAST makes policy recommendations in the many areas where understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key to strengthening our economy and forming policy that works for the American people. PCAST is administered by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). PCAST Web Site http://www.ostp.gov/cs/pcast (Video Broadcast of Meeting is available free online), PCAST STEM Meeting Agenda Oct 22-23, 2009 http://www.ostp.gov/galleries/PCAST/Public%20Agenda%20as%20of%20October20%202009.pdf, PCAST Federal Registrar Announcement of STEM Meeting http://www.ostp.gov/galleries/PCAST/Federal%20Register%20Printed%20Notice.pdf

 About The Author and Contributors

Jim Brazell, Consultant, Innovation Creativity and Capital Institute (IC2), University of Texas and the Schriever Institute, San Antonio, Texas. Brazell is a consultant, speaker and American innovator. His work includes consulting to the Schriever Institute on proposals related to human performance and learning systems to support the Mars Mission. He has also consulted with the Innovation, Creativity and Capital Institute, University of Texas Austin for the past five years including designing video games for training as part of University XXI, performing international technology commercialization and strategy for the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN) in service to the government of Portugal, authoring emerging technology studies for the Texas State Technical College System and studying global technopoleis who merge technology, engineering, arts, mathematics and science (TEAMS) to define a new generation of high technology regions (Transdisciplinary Places) throughout the world.

Contributirs 

Dr. Francis X. Kane (USAF, Col. ret.), President, The Schriever Institute. Dr. Francis X. Kane is the military father of the global positioning system (GPS) and a member of the U.S. Air Force Project Forecast—the long range technology forecast that informed decisions related to the Strategic Technological War as the U.S. faced the Soviets in the race for space superiority and ultimately the technologies that redefined the economic landscape of the world after World War II.

 Patricia G. (Pat) Bubb, Executive Director, Tech Prep of the Rio Grande Valley, Inc. Patricia Bubb is the director of the Rio Grande TECH PREP Consortium. Patricia is a TECH PREP leader who has forged a model relationship among workforce, education, economic development and industry partners in the Texas Rio Grande Valley bordering Mexico. Her TECH PREP students outperform the State’s general academic and Career and Technical Education students proving that the unification of Liberal Arts, Fine Arts and Career and Technical Education is greater than the sum of its parts.

Debra M. Amidon, founder and CEO of Entovation International Ltd., is considered an architect of the Knowledge Economy. As a Senior Research Fellow, IC² Institute, she first published  concepts such as “Intellectual Capital” and “Knowledge-Innovation” in the 1980’s. Author of The Innovation SuperHighway, Debra is a global actor who is redefining the measures of innovation in global economic practice from metrics based on competition to metrics based on collaboration – en route to the impending Millennium Bretton Woods. Her Entovation Network of 188 across 67 countries represents some of the world’s global knowledge innovators. These leaders are part of the world’s research parks, technology incubators, government agencies, and practicing innovation agents working to connect knowledge and action to create positive social and economic change for the world.

 Dr. David Thornburg, Founder, Thornburg Center for Professional Development and the Thornburg Center for Space Exploration. David is the founder and director of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development and the co–founder of the Thornburg Center for Space Exploration. He is an award-winning futurist, author and consultant whose clients range from school boards to the US Office of Science and Technology Policy. David is a 27 year leader in the art and practice of teaching through project- and inquiry-based learning. His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they construct knowledge through action and engagement with peers and the world. These techniques are now recognized by emerging research into how humans learn—by doing and by playing. Prior to his involvement with education, David was a Principal Scientist and one of the first employees of the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

 Dr. Murat Tanik, Stan and Bonnie Gatchel and the Systems Design and Process Science (SDPS) community. Murat, Bonnie and Stan are members of the Transdisciplinary academic community who have worked for over two decades to align research and practice to worldly challenges and opportunities through higher education and civil engagement. SDPS is concerned with complex adaptive systems and emergent mathematics in the fields of chaos theory, artificial intelligence and related techniques. It is the vision of this Society to be a catalyst for change, enabling the discovery of new approaches that lead to alternative solutions for the increasingly complex problems that face civilization.