Innovation in Digital Libraries: An Experimental Examination of the Production, Diffusion, and Use of STEM Teaching Materials

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Sociology (86)While digital science libraries are increasingly common, systematic assessment of their impact is nearly absent. This study is a beginning in addressing that gap. It is investigating whether access to cyber-infrastructure-based materials for teaching and learning in STEM results in more widespread and effective diffusion of resources than a traditional paper-based production and distribution. Using both a quasi-experimental design and network analysis, the project is testing a series of hypotheses that were generated from diffusion and network theory that are applicable across STEM disciplines. Examples are whether user networks are homophilious, whether digitizing materials increases the scope density and rate of usage, and whether digitizing results in greater participation in the production of materials. This research has the potential to advance theoretical and practical insights into the means by which scientific resources for classroom use are diffused throughout networks of teachers and scholars in STEM fields. Research shows that introducing technological innovation does not ensure the diffusion of new ideas and that the diffusion of innovation occurs through social networks mediated by their density and the relative status of their members. The American Sociological Association (ASA) is creating the digital materials for this study. ASA is launching a digital teaching resource center by moving more than 16,500 pages of teaching modules from a print-based delivery system into a web-based interactive digital science library. A key step of this project is the creation of a database of all 14,000 members of the ASA and their demographic, departmental, and institutional characteristics, their use of the paper-based science teaching materials, and the networks in which they participate (measured by the links such as graduate school cohorts, dissertation committees, and co-authors) among users, and the links among non-users. An updated database will be created in the second year in order to compare the characteristics of users and non-users, and their networks, of the paper resource materials and the digital library. In addition, the rate of adoption of individuals in denser or less dense networks will be assessed. As a membership organization ASA is able to establish a yearly database of both users and non-users of STEM teaching materials. This membership database is a bounded network of association members that makes network analysis easier to conduct. The availability of these data provides a set of unobtrusive measures that will avoid many of the costs and problems of other data collection methods. It is possible that the findings from this project will provide key insights about how to facilitate the movement of cutting-edge scientific findings into the classroom.