A Community to Develop Materials for an Engineering Learning Environment

试图在数字图书馆中为工程教育内容的集合创建材料的教师面临着几个挑战。缺乏良好的教学实践方面的培训，缺乏有效使用教育技术方面的培训，缺乏制作完成和经过测试的作品所需的资源和时间，以及大学教师奖励制度缺乏对改进教学的重视，这些都是材料开发的主要障碍。为了弥补这种情况，本项目致力于创建一个活跃的、参与的、持续的工程教育者虚拟社区，他们积极地贡献和分享来自一个共同的课件集合的材料。虚拟社区正在形成一个孵化器，教师在其中接受良好的教学实践培训，例如，制定学习目标和评估技术。接下来，参与者将在许多不同的教学/学习情况下有效使用技术，包括：课堂演示，自学，远程和分布式学习，体验式学习等。提供了指导方针，以便模块可以从技术组合的角度以及正在使用的教学方法相互整合。贡献者的虚拟社区成员随后成为课件模块的测试者，每个贡献者使用模块的子集在他们的家庭校园进行课程。一旦在某一专题领域建立了基线馆藏，项目人员将举办关于如何采用和改编馆藏材料的国家讲习班，将使用NEEDS对馆藏进行编目和提供。

Faculty members attempting to create materials for collections of engineering educationcontent in a digital library face several challenges. Lack of training in sound pedagogicalpractices, a shortage of training in the effective use of educational technology, shortsupply of required resources and time to produce completed and tested works, and a lackof emphasis on improved teaching in the university faculty rewards systems are the majorobstacles to materials development. To remedy this situation, this project endeavors tocreate an active, engaged, and sustained virtual community of engineering educators whoenergetically contribute to and share materials from a common collection of courseware.The virtual community is taking form as an incubator in which faculty are trained insound pedagogical practices e.g., developing learning goals and assessment techniques.Next, participants are schooled in the effective use of technology in many differentteaching/learning situations including: classroom presentation, self-study, distance anddistributed learning, experiential learning, etc. Once trained, faculty then develop aportion of a collection of courseware modules in their area of expertise. Guidelines are provided so that modules can be integrated with each other from both the standpointof technology mix as well as the pedagogical approach being used. Members of the virtualcommunity of contributors subsequently become the testers of the courseware modules,with each of the contributors using a subset of modules to conduct courses at theirhome campuses. As soon as a baseline collection in a topic area is established the project personnel will present national workshops on how to adopt and adapt the materials in the collection.NEEDS will be used to catalog and make the collections available.Keywords: Virtual community, NEEDS, digital library