Chemical Education Today
Report
Science and Engineering Indicators 1998 by Donald J. Wink
I have mentioned before that the NSF Web site has a wealth of primary information on science and engineering, including education issues. In late June they put online one of the best features yet: an “enhanced” version of the “Science and Engineering Indicators 1998”, published by the National Science Board. The Indicators have been around for many years, and the current online version continues with the effort to provide a comprehensive view of the state of science and engineering today. A listing of the major sections is given in the Table 1. Only the first two are about education as such, but many of the others contain information that is important to educators. The Indicators are available at the URL, http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind98/start.htm. There, one has a choice of three versions. The first is in “enhanced” HTML, which means that the links use frames and are connected to an online search engine. The second version is in “accessible” HTML format, in accordance with standard accessibility guidelines.1 The third version is in Adobe PDF format. This is the best to use in getting materials printed out and shared. Each section has three parts. The first is a summary that shows the “major” points illuminated in detail later. The second is an analysis of the data step-by-step. It includes graphical presentations of the main data. Finally, most of the sections and figures are linked to the section’s “raw data,” the tables that have long been the most important feature of the Indicators. With the advent of online publishing, NSF has moved forward to offer the actual tables in the form of Excel spreadsheets so that a user can easily investigate particular points in more detail. Here are two examples of the kinds of questions that the Indicators address. What is the distribution and its trend, over time, for the number of men and women getting degrees in science and engineering? In the second section, this question is addressed with one paragraph of text that indicates an overall trend: “the proportion of S&E degrees earned by females has increased considerably, particularly in the natural sciences and engineering.” But within that, what are the trends in different areas? The accompanying figure shows charts for degrees in the natural sciences, mathematics and computer science, social and behavioral science, and engineering. There, we see both overall trends and the narrow-
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ing of gaps in some (but not all) areas. Finally, if we want more specific information, we can download the table and examine the trends in areas within those four larger areas, though not as specific as chemistry itself. A second example uses the new section on “Significance of Information Technologies”. This connects with all of science and engineering, but there is some very good material on education. This includes very important reports about meta-analyses on learning using information technology, perhaps the only material of its kind today. The National Science Board and the individuals responsible for the Indicators have continued to do a comprehensive job of assembling data and providing interpretations. The reader may not agree with all of the interpretations. But the online versions of the raw tables permit independent analysis. Also, one of the purposes of the Indicators is to provide information for other Federal agencies and other branches of the Government. So it is incumbent on the active educational researcher to use this basic data set as a point of reference for the “big picture” of science and engineering today. Note 1. If you are designing Web pages, this is an excellent model for a page that avoids many problems certain individuals may have with using the Web.
Donald J. Wink is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 9 September 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
