PER-CENTRAL: A Digital Library Supporting Physics Education Research

该项目与北卡罗来纳州立大学和美国物理教师协会合作创建了一个数字图书馆，为物理教育研究(PER)社区以及希望使用创新的研究型教学方法的教师提供服务。这个收集项目的目标是提供一个虚拟的信息交换所，研究人员和教师可以在其中轻松地找到物理教育的最新工作以及从以前的研究中学到的最好的东西。该项目的努力包括：a)建立一个网站，将大部分现有的PER文献存档；b)建立一个免费电子期刊，以便利分享PER的新发现；c)从各种现有来源收集有注释的PER文章书目/数据库；d)提供关于PER课程的详细说明，以及与开发人员网站的链接；以及e)收集更多供教育界和教学界使用的材料，包括会议记录、相关课程的教学大纲、统计分析的电子表格和网上工具、定性分析设备和软件的审查、与现有研究人员和教师讨论名单(物理实验室、物理-L和档案)的链接，以及与世界各地研究小组和个人集合的联系。这项工作的核心是创建一份电子期刊，以支持PER研究的同行评议电子出版物。一份成功的电子期刊将对社区产生巨大影响，为学术研究成果提供一个亟需的途径，任何人都可以免费获得这些成果。在国家科学基金会的资助结束后，已经制定了一项商业计划来维持这一努力，该项目已经得到了《美国物理学杂志》(目前该领域研究人员的主要出版物)编辑的认可。国家科学基金会数学和物理科学局(MPS)的多学科活动办公室正在为这一项目提供大量共同资金，以确认物理教育研究对MPS使命的重要性。

This project teams up North Carolina State University and the American Association of Physics Teachers in the creation of a digital library serving the physics education research (PER) community as well as teachers wanting to use innovative, research-based instructional methods. The goal of this Collections project is to provide a virtual clearinghouse where researchers and teachers can easily find the very latest work in physics education along with the best of what has been learned from previous research. The efforts of this project include a) creation of a website archiving much of the existing PER literature; b) establishing a free electronic journal to facilitate the sharing of new findings in PER; c) collecting an annotated bibliography/database of PER articles from a variety of existing sources; d) providing detailed descriptions of PER-based curricula, along with links to the developers' sites; and e) assembling additional materials of use to the PER and teaching communities, including conference proceedings, syllabi from relevant courses, spreadsheets and web-based tools for statistical analysis, reviews of qualitative analysis equipment and software, links to existing discussion lists of researchers and teachers (PhysLrnr, Phys-L, plus archives), along with connections to a world-wide collection of research groups and individuals. The centerpiece of this effort is the creation of an electronic journal to support peer-reviewed electronic publication of PER research. A successful electronic journal will have enormous impact on the community, providing a much-needed avenue for scholarly research output that will be available freely to anyone with Internet access. A business plan is in place to sustain the effort after the conclusion of NSF support and the project has been endorsed by the editors of the American Journal of Physics (currently the main publication for researchers in the field). The Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) is providing significant co-funding of this project in recognition of the importance of physics education research to the mission of MPS.