Quantitative Social Science Digital Library

Posted Tue, 11/10/2009 - 4:48pm by altergc
Grant Number: 
DUE - 0840642
Target Audiences: 
Instructors in undergraduate social science courses
Partners: 
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research; Social Science Data Analysis Network; Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College; Association of American Geographers; American Economic Association Committee on Economics Education; American Political Science Association; American Sociological Association

In October, we launched TeachingWithData.org, a website providing educational materials designed to improve quantitative literacy skills in social science courses.  The past year has been spent designing the website and the repository behind it, determining the proper metadata structure, and capturing content.  At this point the repository includes 380 objects, including teaching materials and links to sources of data.  We have also begun the process of matching learning resources with pedagogical offerings on Pedagogy in Action server at the Science Education Resource Center.

Also in October, we held meetings of an Assessment Team and an Advisory Committee.  The Assessment Team consists of faculty and librarians with strong ties to ICPSR, who have agreed to actively promote TeachingWithData.org on their campuses.  This group evaluated the new website and made a number of important suggestions, which we are currently implementing.  They will help us to develop ways of reaching faculty teaching in the social sciences.  We are also preparing a survey, which will be administered to faculty on these target campuses and other comparable institutions, to evaluate the progress of the project.   The Advisory Committee consists of representatives of professional associations and other NSDL pathways.  They helped us to prioritize a list of planned enhancements to the pathway and provided other valuable guidance.