This is TLRI

Total Learning Research Institute, Inc. (TLRI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit scientific and education organization dedicated to solving the problem of American and world literacy and competitiveness through the intelligent application of technology. TLRI takes a broad definition of literacy. Survival and progress in the 21st century will require more than simply the ability to read. The workforce is required to use both fundamental and applied mathematics, to be conversant with basic methodology and content of science and engineering (problem solving), and to be able to understand and continually adapt to evolving technology. Workers need an understanding of and appreciation for working in a TEAMING environment and for quality and competitiveness.

The four literacies - reading, mathematics, science and technology - must be achieved in tandem and must be taught at all levels of education from elementary to adult. This requires new and creative curriculum and instructional approaches. The magnitude of the problem is exacerbated by the requirement to teach more people more things in more depth. The only way to meet this need is to harness technology and curriculum in the service of literacy and quality. A fifth literacy, Interpersonal Literacy, is the glue that binds the others together. TLRI uses the concept of TEAMING to include all the workplace skills needed by today’s students and workers.

TLRI performs research, designs instructional delivery systems, creates educational programs and educational materials, and creates test-beds for new technology and curriculum. Electronically delivered curriculum, simulation-based experiential learning, basic skills needs assessment research, future workforce issues, science, mathematics and engineering education, continuous improvement strategy application, multi-national/multi-cultural literacy, and education marketing are prime focus areas.

A sampling of TLRI Projects A sampling of TLRI research areas and projects includes:

Basic skills - an inventory of basics skills needed by the future workforce and an analysis of skill deficiencies among the existing workforce

* Contract to produce a total quality manual for high schools for the Junior Engineering and Technology Society (JETS) funded by AT&T. Research and programs on “TEAMING”

Educational Technology– Instructional design and delivery system development.


* Studies on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite delivered education - U.S. and international (particularly developing countries) use of a new class of low-cost satellites for education. Two research grants have been received from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in cooperation with Texas A&M University Center for Space Power.
* Mars City virtual learning environment provides a challenge-based, team-based setting for multiple projects with practical STEM skills and career guidance. Seeded by two cooperative agreements with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, two challenges - the Balloon Physics Challenge, and the Facilities OPS Challenge - model how the site can be built to be a comprehensive environment suspending disbelief and solving problems that have practical Earth analogs and academic and workforce preparation skill-building outcomes.
* SPACE EXPLORERS uses physical simulators to provide participants from the Fourth Grade through adults with a realistic TEAMING experience based on actual flight hardware and technology. Through subscription and support from a camp, several schools and NASA, space shuttle simulators and a Mars Lander simulator have been built, tested, and become operational in eight states from New York and Florida to California.
* Video, web-based, and multimedia design and production support.

Motivational and instructional programs for science and technology - research design and evaluation of novel programs to increase science and technology literacy and upgrade the quality of instruction in these areas.

Proejcts Include:

* Curriculum developed for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.
* Satellite based student Mars Mission simulations developed for the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium.
* A multi-media CD-ROM computer program for the Clementine lunar exploration mission created for the U.S. Air Force.
* Curriculum for distribution via satellite distance learning for the Appalachian Research Commission.
* A pilot video SPACEQUEST education report for an educational cable program producer.
* Studies for a live-in TEAMING environment with a future space theme.

* Basic Research Program - for basic research in the five literacies and how to impart them individually and collectively.

* A study for the State of West Virginia on literacy resources.

Technology Transfer -research on the effectiveness and implementation of new educational technologies.

Marketing and Program Awareness Support – consulting and advice to corporations, educational institutions, and educational developers on product definition, media selection, marketing, costing, design criteria, and promotion.

TLRI staff and research associates are among the most innovative and knowledgeable in the nation. They form the hub of a large network of expertise intent on solving the problems of multi-faceted, diverse workforce, and student workplace illiteracy. TLRI brings together private and public funding sources to produce a synergy capable of making a considerable contribution to the quality and future success of the American education enterprise.

TEAMING is not an academic subject. It is a set of skills that permit learning or work to be done as a group. Things that reinforce these group skills are everywhere in the school experience, and mastery of these can be identified, codified, and evaluated by understanding and institutionalizing the meta-curriculum of skills needed for TEAMING. Teachers will need to know what these TEAMING skills are, how to impart and reinforce them at appropriate developmental levels, how to assess proficiency in use of them, and how to value them.

The benefits of TEAMING in the classroom are already well known. Cooperative learning, team teaching, and group projects have been used successfully in schools for years. But their implementation has been spotty, and often flawed. Working in teams is hard. And, when teachers or students (or adult workers for that matter) run up against some of those difficulties, the easier route is to retreat into the world of the individual. Given the potential difficulty of working effectively in teams, some teachers may not choose to, or be able to successfully impart those skills. But over the entire educational experience, enough contact with effective mentors and practitioners of team skills should be available to produce a student with a formal awareness of TEAMING, and some proficiency in team skills.

TEAMING also has the potential to revolutionize the “culture” of the school. It creates new peer groups, teaches appreciation and valuing of others, puts the onus of learning on the teams - not the teacher, increases peer pressure for positive deportment, makes learning more interactive and interesting, and provides useful skills for the future.

Since TEAMING involves a set of process skills, those skills must become part of the “meta-curriculum” of the school. Just as values education and other affective measures are documented in portfolios and report cards, team skills will need to be similarly identified and tracked.

The Case for TEAMING
The Total Learning Research Institute has been developing TEAMING as a mechanism for education reform and improvement. After extensive research in curriculum development, in educational technology, and in the reform movements of the past three decades, it is clear that we still have a school system operating on an eighteenth century agricultural schedule, operating as a nineteenth century factory and trying to develop twenty-first century knowledge workers. The fact remains that a fraction is still a fraction, a verb is still a verb; that sitting in rows and speaking only when spoken to does not emulate the dynamic high-technology workplaces of today. We need to create a learning environment capable of developing the productive workers of tomorrow.

Students today are very different from their predecessors in several important ways. Their visual literacy skills are vastly better developed. For a generation that grew up on Bonanza and Leave it to Beaver with three television channels, it is hard to conceive of what it is like to have only known 100 plus channels of fare. In the 50's and 60's, the average “shot” length in a scene on television was 6 to 15 seconds. On MTV and in cartoons today it is under a second. It is very hard for a teacher to keep children’s attention for six hours a day in school. Children today multi-task effortlessly. A child might be watching television, playing a video game, reading e-mails, instant messaging one or more friends, be talking on the phone and doing homework all at once.

Students today are also used to participating in informal learning networks using social media. The proficiency with computers, smart phones, etc. that is a hallmark of the younger generation comes from active peer information sharing. Whether it is techniques to beat a video game, or ways to fix a problem on a computer, a tremendous amount of learning takes place without any formal school structure in pairs and small teams.

It is important to note that individual development and guidance is still fundamental to helping students find their interests and future career pathways. TEAMING supports and improves classroom learning and discipline, but individual testing and evaluation is not in any way overlooked. A team environment can actually provide a forum for learning how others think. Team members can share information and expertise and provide more quality time on task in smaller groups than can a large group. It increases participation, accountability, and resource sharing.

The TLRI Learning Principles
Learning Principles:
National Standards in math, science, and technology have been developed to ensure that future graduates can think critically, solve non-routine problems, and make decisions based on analysis of data. These key learning elements are the foundations upon which TLRI STEM programs are built. The developers of TLRI programs such as SPACE EXPLORERS were instrumental in the creation of many of those national standards initiatives.

Students and Employees experience the thrill and understanding of technology through hands-on, team-based simulation.

What will participants actually learn by performing the tasks in a TLRI program?

They will Learn:

* The critical nature of teamwork
* The importance of clear and effective communication
* How to solve real problems in real time, enhancing their critical thinking skills
* About the nature and workings of high technology systems
* About the detail and complexity of operational systems

They will Achieve:

* A real goal! --Mastering a high stakes simulation challenge.

The U.S. Department of Labor has stated that the ability to work effectively in teams is the number one skill needed by members of the future, and current, work force. The Conference Board, a group of top corporate executives, indicated that the most critical and most lacking skills of graduates are communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. These Learning Principles are the components necessary for teamwork. These skills are more highly desired than knowledge of any academic subject. Positive teamwork instills reliability, dependability, honesty, and trust --all values needed in respected employees, particularly in a multi-cultural world.

Through effective TEAMING --the outcome of Learning Principles-- participants learn how to form a team and work effectively in a team environment. TEAMING is a life skill set that teachers and other educators can integrate as an exciting new approach to the classroom learning environment. Beyond “cooperative learning,” TEAMING involves process observation and evaluation --skills essential for today’s astronauts and for tomorrow’s leaders. In the “Space Explorers” program, for example, teachers in cooperation with their students experience a true TEAMING environment in an exciting developmental way and enjoy the effects of this powerful approach to learning.

Teachers and instructional leaders who embrace Learning Principles in their classroom find that discipline and organization are easy to maintain. Motivation increases, and the self-image of students and employees improves. Teaching to, and working with, teams, and having those teams enforce concepts with other team members are effective and enjoyable.

The Five Literacies:
Before there was STEM, there were the TLRI Five Literacies. Most of the efforts to improve education today deal with development of and testing of literacy and basic skills. Schools, public sector agencies, and private sector corporations are all struggling with the lack of skills found around the world. Pointing fingers will not solve the problem. Intelligent use of our educational resources and a clear strategy for remedying the situation will.

A broadly educated workforce is necessary to fuel industrial development, and schools should be focused on imparting the skills for life and work. Economics is the modern method of domination and control, and, as technology has progressed, the level of job skills necessary for the modern worker has increased. A more educated and capable worker is necessary for this new environment.

Basic Definitions:

We are used to talking about “literacy” as a measure of education. Generally, this is narrowly defined as the ability to read and write, but the industrialized world requires so much more, that a new definition of literacy needs to be created. In fact, in addition to an expanded concept of language literacy (reading, writing, and foreign language studies), four other critical skill sets are necessary. These five new literacies are:


1. Language Literacy
2. Mathematical Literacy
3. Scientific Literacy
4. Technological Literacy
5. Interpersonal Literacy

Addressing reading/language literacy and Basic Skills Education are not the same thing, though the processes look similar. Learning to read, write, and figure are essential to both. But there is a disturbing tendency to think that if you can read at a certain level, you are literate. In today’s workplace that is just not true.

The spread of technology in the workplace and the institutionalized change that has become a part of modern corporate operation require a worker with skills for adaptation, problem solving, being conversant with technology. and an ability to communicate. Communication in the modern international workplace is complicated by the increasing complexity of the work environment.

Traditional definitions of literacy rely on measures like reading level, comprehension level, and vocabulary level. All are important, but there is a serious gap between the functionally literate worker of fifty years ago and the techno-worker of today. The ability to read and comprehend has to be augmented. In addition, foreign language study is now an essential part of language literacy. The international languages of science, technology, and commerce must be mastered to compete in the global economy.

Mathematics literacy has received a great deal of worldwide attention.

Mathematics now pervades the workplace. Desktop publishing, spread sheets, computer analysis, graphs, charts, statistics, and computation are the language of modern business and government and are stern task masters for the average student with only eighth or ninth grade mathematical ability.

Executives and Directors wanting to emulate the quality management practices found in worldwide businesses have discovered that their workers often lack the skills to analyze, quantify, and communicate problems and solutions. Fortunately, the hierarchy of mathematics competencies is well known. Achievement in this area is a function of motivation and training time (time on task). Much has been written about scientific literacy. We live in the age of science, yet it is the most poorly taught subject in most schools. True scientific literacy has two components - content and process. To be sure, there is a body of facts, or content, that comprise the body of scientific knowledge. The names of subatomic particles, the order of the planets, the major parts of a cell, the chemical compositions of minerals and organic material, even the order of the colors of the rainbow are facts typcailly taught in school.

But, perhaps more importantly, science is a process. Science is a way of formally solving problems, of analyzing and testing information, and drawing conclusions from that information. The process is a way of validating ideas and information. Problem solving skills are among those most requested by employers in the modern international workplace, and the lack of quality science teaching is as much a lack of effective teaching of problem solving. Scientific literacy, then, can be thought of as problem solving literacy and needs to be integrated with reading and mathematics to produce a worker capable of reasoning and interpreting.

The fourth literacy is technological literacy. The modern word “science” comes from the Latin word scientum, or knowledge. The Greeks were the first to use the word for knowledge in conjunction with philosophy. Their word was episteme. The word was juxtaposed with the word techne which referred to the application of knowledge. Techne is the root of the word “technology”. This idea of application versus knowledge also separates scientific literacy from technical literacy. Technological literacy deals with the ability to interact with and utilize technology - machines, equipment, tools, and devices. A familiarity with principles of design, operation, function, materials, and safety are all elements of technical literacy. Children growing up today are bathed in technology and have evolved their own social and technical learning community. This subculture needs to be harnessed to enhance formal learning skills through creative integration of online and mobile technology to serve learning process and content. Most people can use a cellphone, a basic computer, and a television, but safety procedures in a machine environment, logical operations in a computer environment, or complex interpretation of operational or big data in a work or control environment all require a different sort of understanding. Most employers think of this as on-the-job training, but without a basic technological literacy, the workplace can be frustrating and dangerous. As industry automates, the routine is replaced by the analytical, and the simple machine is replaced by the semi-intelligent system.

Computer education is the only major technological methodology for instruction that has had a literacy prerequisite. But, clearly, our students and workers need to be conversant with the new electronic and electro-mechanical workplace. TLRI projects like MARS CITY and SPACE EXPLORERS are premier technological experiences for their participants. Not only do they involve “living” technology, but they also provide a realistic and accurate experience for learning technology.

Finally, there is interpersonal literacy. The ability of workers to work together, to be good leaders and collaborators, and to increase efficiency and productivity through the use of TEAMING and successful interpersonal interaction is critical to the success of the modern business or government enterprise. The millennial workplace is one where the work is more important than the job, and knowledge is the principle product. This paradigm requires more interdependency and sharing than ever before. And it will require all workers to understand intra-group and inter-group processes in a new way. Schools actually teach a great many of the necessary proto-skills for TEAMING, but they introduce the skills like Swiss cheese - a little here and a little there, with a lot of holes in it. A comprehensive model (six-sigma), a comprehensive developmental approach, and a comprehensive implementation approach are required to assure students of mastery of TEAMING skills during their K-12 experience. Together, these five literacies can produce a generation that is wise in ways of the workplace, competent in the skills needed for the 21st century, and able to understand how to deal with times of great change. But radically new ways to teach them need to be employed.