Pedagogy and Scholarship in the Early 21st Century: Rethinking the Role of Technology in the University

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Microsoft Research

• Rick Rashid
• Sr. VP. Microsoft Research
• http//www.research.microsoft.com

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Microsoft Research

• Founded in 1991
• Staff of over 680 in over 55 areas
• Internationally recognized research teams
• Research lab locations
• Redmond, WA
• San Francisco, CA
• Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Beijing, Peoples Republic of China
• Mountain View, CA

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MSR 2001A year of continued growth

• Opened MSR Cambridge building on Cambridge
  University campus next to Computer Laboratory
• MSR China renamed to MSR Asia with continued
  rapid growth
• Over 200 international publications
• 4 papers in SIGGRAPH 2002
• Growing post-doctoral degree program
• Established new research lab in Mountain View,
  California focused on distributed systems and
  their theory
• Overall, MSR grew more than 10

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MSR 2002Full steam ahead

• Plan to again grow by more then 10
• Significant growth in all regions with MSR SVC
  set to nearly double
• MSR technologies are a critical component of
  Microsofts security and code quality initiatives
• Huge opportunities to work with MS product groups
  to get new technologies into Longhorn Windows
  release

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Tooltips
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MS University Engagement

• Dramatic increase in funding and people devoted
  to working with Universities worldwide
• Over 35 overall growth
• Greatest increases will come in Europe and Asia
• Focus on moving the state of the art forward in a
  number of areas, accelerating scholarship and
  improving pedagogy

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Rethinking the role of technology in the
University

• New hardware and software technologies are making
  it possible to rethink the role of computing in
  our lives.
• For the University, these technologies open the
  door to new approaches to education and
  scholarship.

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Today

• Scientists and scholars
• gather data by direct observation
• analyze data
• publish results
• We share publications online
• We share data files
• through FTP and HTTP download
• Data formats are usually implicit
• Each researchers has his/her own data
• Applications often run on individual computers

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Today Tomorrow

• Share publications online
• Share data files (through FTP and HTTP download)
• Implicit data formats
• Each researchers has his/her own data
• Applications run on individual computers

• Share and annotate publications online
• Share scholarly and experimental results stored
  in self-describing data structures and accessible
  remotely by distributed applications
• Common schema for well-understood data
• Large data sets federated around the world
• Applications shared over network via
  self-describing interfaces

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Using technology to accelerate scholarship

• Massive storage means
• All the data I gather, experimental results, etc.
  could be kept in database
• Web services mean
• My applications and databases could be made
  available to others online for data mining or use
  by other applications
• Data and code can be self-describing
• Digital rights management can be used to control
  access to colleagues and students during
  development and later provide for general sharing
  with others

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Global XML Web Services Architecture
Inter Application Protocols
Reliable Messaging
Eventing
Transactions
Building Block Modules
Directory
Referral
Security

Inspection

Routing
License
Description
SOAP
The Internet
HTTP/SMTP
XML
TCP/IP
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Using Web Services to build Data Federations

• Massive datasets live near their owners
• Near the instruments software pipeline
• Near the applications
• Near data knowledge and curation
• Super Computer centers become Super Data Centers
• Each Archive publishes a web service
• Schema documents the data
• Methods on objects (queries)
• Scientists get personalized extracts
• Uniform access to multiple Archives
• A common global schema

Federation
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Example TerraServer The Whole Earth
Database
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TerraServer/TerraService

• Example .NET Service
• Fall MIT .NET course built around TerraService
• Key Links
• http//terraserver.microsoft.com
• http//terraserver.microsoft.net

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Production Applications
USDA Soil Data Viewer
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Another Example National Virtual Observatory

• Premise Most data is (or could be online)
• So, the Internet is the worlds best telescope
• It has data on every part of the sky
• In every measured spectral band optical, x-ray,
  radio..
• As deep as the best instruments (2 years ago).
• It is up when you are up.
• The seeing is always great (no working at
  night, no clouds no moons no..).
• Its a smart telescope
• links objects and data to literature on them.
• http//www.astro.caltech.edu/nvoconf/http//www.v
  oforum.org/

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Steps to Virtual Observatory

• Get SDSS and Palomar data online
• Alex Szalay, Jan Vandenberg, Ani Thacker.
• Roy Williams, Robert Brunner, Julian Bunn,
• Do local queries and crossID matches to expose
• Schema, Units,
• Dataset problems
• Typical use scenarios.
• Define a set of Astronomy Objects and methods.
• Based on UDDI, WSDL, SOAP.
• Started this with TerraService http//TerraService
  .net/ ideas.
• Working with Caltech (Brunner, Williams,
  Djorgovski, Bunn) and JHU (Szalay et al) on this
• Each archive is a web service
• Move crossID app to web-service base

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Sky ServerFind 1 rare star-like objects.

• Found 14,681 buckets, first 140 buckets have
  99 time 62 seconds
• CPU bound 226 k records/second (2 cpu)
  250 KB/s.

Select cast((u-g) as int) as ug, cast((g-r) as
int) as gr, cast((r-i) as int) as ri,
cast((i-z) as int) as iz, count()
as Population from stars group by cast((u-g) as
int), cast((g-r) as int), cast((r-i) as int),
cast((i-z) as int) order by count()
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Sky ServerFind asteroids

• Sounds hard but there are 5 pictures of the
  object at 5 different times (color filters) and
  so can see velocity.
• Image pipeline computes velocity.
• Computing it from the 5 color x,y would also be
  fast
• Finds 1,303 objects in 3 minutes,
  140MBps. (could go 2x faster with more disks)

select objId, dbo.fGetUrlEq(ra,dec) as url
--return object ID url sqrt(power(rowv,2)powe
r(colv,2)) as velocity from photoObj --
check each object. where (power(rowv,2)
power(colv, 2)) -- square of velocity
between 50 and 1000 -- huge values error
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Find Fast Moving Objects

• Find near earth asteroids

SELECT r.objID as rId, g.objId as gId,
dbo.fGetUrlEq(g.ra, g.dec) as url FROM PhotoObj
r, PhotoObj g WHERE r.run g.run and
r.camcolg.camcol and abs(g.field-r.field)lt2
-- nearby -- the red selection criteria and
((power(r.q_r,2) power(r.u_r,2)) gt 0.111111
) and r.fiberMag_r between 6 and 22 and
r.fiberMag_r lt r.fiberMag_g and r.fiberMag_r lt
r.fiberMag_i and r.parentID0 and r.fiberMag_r lt
r.fiberMag_u and r.fiberMag_r lt
r.fiberMag_z and r.isoA_r/r.isoB_r gt 1.5 and
r.isoA_rgt2.0 -- the green selection
criteria and ((power(g.q_g,2) power(g.u_g,2))
gt 0.111111 ) and g.fiberMag_g between 6 and 22
and g.fiberMag_g lt g.fiberMag_r and
g.fiberMag_g lt g.fiberMag_i and g.fiberMag_g lt
g.fiberMag_u and g.fiberMag_g lt g.fiberMag_z and
g.parentID0 and g.isoA_g/g.isoB_g gt 1.5 and
g.isoA_g gt 2.0 -- the matchup of the pair and
sqrt(power(r.cx -g.cx,2) power(r.cy-g.cy,2)power
(r.cz-g.cz,2))(10800/PI())lt 4.0 and
abs(r.fiberMag_r-g.fiberMag_g)lt 2.0
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Role of Technology in the Pedagogy

• New approaches to pedagogy link professors and
  students through interactive web of services
• Web service infrastructure provides the means for
  educators to share pedagogy, for students to
  share knowledge and experience and for
  Universities to share information and best
  practices

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MIT iLab Expanding the reach of laboratories
with Web Services

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Mechanical structures
• Wind tunnel
• Chemical Engineering
• Chemical reactor
• Heat exchanger
• Polymer recrystallization experiment
• Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Instrumented flagpole
• Centrifuge Shaker station
• Electrical Engineering Computer Science
• Microelectronics test station

Courtesy Hal Albelson, MIT
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Remote Microelectronics Characterization Lab

• Lab can be accessed from anywhere at anytime
• Single set-up leveraged among many users
• Minimum staffing requirements
• Minimum training
• No user safety concerns

Courtesy Hal Albelson, MIT
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Web Services for assessmentMIT Online
Assessment Tool

• Enable academic institutions throughout the world
  to collaborate in administering and evaluating
  online essay tests
• Web service built on .NET technology
• One student 6 months
• Provides local control of tests and
  administrative policies
• This summer 5 schools/3000 students tested

Courtesy Hal Albelson, MIT
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Using Web Services to bolster the Intellectual
Commons

• MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)
• Course materials for all MIT courses on the Web,
  open the world
• DSpace
• Digital archive for MIT research papers and other
  publications
• Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)
• Open software architecture for university
  learning management systems

Courtesy Hal Albelson, MIT
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The Role of MSR

• Expand the state of the art in each of the areas
  in which we do research
• Rapidly transfer innovative technologies into
  Microsoft products
• Work with Universities, professors and students
  to improve education, accelerate scholarship and
  create the technologies that will be the future
  of our field

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