Living In the KnowlEdge Society Community Building Project

1. What do you believe is necessary for the LIKES initiative to succeed?

You wish to do community building with, as one goal: "Formation of new communities for enhancing ... integration (of computing concepts into non-computing disciplines)." In my experience, this requires data about the constituents from which such community will be drawn. These data should be of the type that enable you to understand these constituents - their perspectives, intellectual culture, values, and needs. Suitably designed and administered constituent surveys might provide you with such data.

2. Do you have specific teaching/learning experiences in your background that relate to what LIKES is trying to accomplish? Or experiences from a business setting?

Yes indeed. The most recent experience and probably most relevant to LIKES is the effort of a grass-roots movement of physics educators to move the undergraduate physics curriculum toward a state where computation is an integral part of every physics course. I will be glad to detail these when appropriate in the course of the workshop according to participants' interests. On the other hand, this historical effort is summarized and the latest results described in a manuscript that we have submitted, and has been accepted pending revisions, for publication in the American Journal of Physics - special issue on the theme of computational physics - slated for April 2008 publication. I can make the first draft of a white paper upon which this manuscript is based available as a "pre-print" to those wishing to see it at this time.

3. How do you feel that you can best contribute to moving the LIKES initiative forward?

The projects that our partnership/coalition - Partnership for the Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) - are now in the process of designing and for which we will seek funding have some natural confluences with LIKES in terms of its goals. To the extent that these will supply part of what LIKES seeks, they might help move your initiative forward.