Pedagogic Services for Digital Libraries

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Intellectual Merit: The National STEM Digital Library (NSDL) is providing a growing array of services to improve the effectiveness of its STEM teaching materials to users. This project connects pedagogic materials to teaching materials in digital library collections. It is helping teachers and faculty understand how to use STEM materials in ways that are engaging, interesting, and effective, embodying key principles of teaching and learning. The project is building on a successful example, the Starting Point Digital Library, a design that ensures that seekers of teaching materials also find pedagogic information, and vice versa. A new set of tools is being created to enable other digital libraries to link the pedagogic materials developed by this project to teaching materials in their library while establishing mechanisms for creating a much broader collection of pedagogic materials and examples. Service users will also be able to develop customized pedagogic portals with pedagogic materials of high interest to their community linked to examples relevant to their users drawn from both their collections and the shared example collection. The service is designed to be customizable by NSDL projects so that it can be adapted to meet the interests and needs of their communities and be integrated seamlessly into their library. The shared collection of pedagogic materials and teaching examples will foster sharing and reuse of content across the NSDL and promote movement of library users between NSDL collections and portals. This service is being developed as a built-in partnership with five NSDL projects and two campus centers for teaching and learning; these are implementing the service and contributing to the shared collection. This work is the basis for a generalized service that will be rolled out for use across the NSDL in the third year of the project. Broader Impact: This project fills a recognized gap between instructors finding excellent materials and knowing how to use them effectively. Partnerships with campus centers for teaching and learning are extending the reach of this project. As a focus for faculty professional development on individual campuses, such centers both provide pedagogic information for their faculty and share the advances taking place on their campuses. By integrating this key NSDL service into the websites of campus centers for teaching and learning, the NSDL is being brought onto campus and widely disseminated. Exploring its use in course management systems, a primary tool used by faculty when designing and delivering their courses, is also extending the reach of this service. NSF Support: The Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and the Division of Earth Sciences in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) are providing co-funding for this project in recognition of its potential value in integrating research and education in the mathematical, physical, and earth sciences.