Communities of Learning for an Established Learning Object Library

自1999年10月启动以来，植物和土壤科学电子图书馆项目--一个“学习对象”的集合--已发展到包括120课(11个西班牙语)和116个动画(21个西班牙语)。这些数字持续上升，包括土壤科学、杂草科学、植物生理学、植物遗传学、园艺科学和草坪科学等主题领域。一个由来自9个美国和国际学术机构和其他合作伙伴的28名内容作者组成的日益壮大的团队正在向电子图书馆贡献同行评议的内容。在过去的12个月里，它经历了来自美国和外国网站的427,269次独立访问，点击量接近1200万次。对于正在增长但也在老化的数字图书馆来说，一个关键的挑战是更新、删减和开发新的教育材料、课程和研讨会，通过促进最终用户的快速采用来保持教师、外展专家和学生的尖端地位。材料开发商继续创造新材料，这些材料有可能开始应对这一挑战，特别是在满足对继续教育感兴趣的高级专业人员和成人学习者以及对攻读正式学位感兴趣的学生的需求方面。这个项目正在重新开发(或重新激活)一个数字学习社区，在这个社区中，学习对象可以重新设计、重组和聚合，以促进反映最先进知识的积极探究性学习体验。该项目的目标是：1)开发一个在线社区，目的是开发一个更有效的学习环境(利用Web 2.0)，开发人员和选定的教师可以在其中分享他们使用电子图书馆的想法、成功经验和经验，并参与合作重新打包对象；2)创建一个数字学习社区框架，其中学习对象的重新打包可以由非指导性学习者驱动，例如行业领袖、政策制定者或需要专业发展以满足劳动力所需技能的应用科学从业者；3)评估这些学习社区的新影响，并继续评估学生和其他不同学习风格的学习者如何利用教育资源。

Since its inception in October 1999, the Plant and Soil Sciences e-Library project - a collection of "learning objects" - has grown to include 120 lessons (11 in Spanish) and 116 animations (21 in Spanish). These numbers have continued to rise and include topic areas in soil science, weed science, plant physiology, plant genetics, horticulture science, and turf science. A growing team of 28 content authors from 9 US and International academic institutions and other partners are contributing peer-reviewed content to the e-Library. It has experienced nearly 12 million hits from 427,269 unique visits from US and foreign sites in the past 12 months. A key challenge for digital libraries that are growing but also aging is to update, prune, and develop new educational materials, courses, and workshops that keep instructors, outreach experts, and students at the cutting edge by facilitating rapid adoption by end-users. Materials developers have continued to create new materials that have the potential to begin addressing this challenge, particularly in meeting the needs of advanced professionals and adult learners interested in continuing education, as well as students interested in pursuing formal academic degrees. This project is re-developing (or re-invigorating) a digital learning community where learning objects can be redesigned, reorganized and aggregated to facilitate active inquiry learning experiences that reflect state of the art knowledge. The project's objectives are: 1) Develop an online community for the purpose of developing a more effective learning environment (to take advantage of Web 2.0) where developers and selected teachers can share their ideas, successes, and experiences in using the e-Library and engage in collaboratively repackage the objects; 2) Create a digital learning community framework in which the repackaging of learning objects may be driven by the non-guided learner, such as industry leaders, policy makers, or applied science practitioners needing professional development to meet the skills required in the workforce; and 3) Assess the new impact of these learning communities and continue the evaluation of how students and other learners with varying learning styles utilize the educational resources.