Annual Meeting Posters

We've finished most of the development work on the SMILE (Science and Math Informal Learning Educators) Pathway, <www.howtosmile.org>, and we launched it on Halloween! Come learn about our schema's features, including how we've incorporated accessibility, diversity, and geographical information. See the community tools we've included, including commenting and rating on individual activities, and the ability to create annotated lists of activities. Get a feel for the overall approach we've taken to make our site as useful as possible for informal educators.

One of the purposes of the NSDL is to help educators implement standards-based reforms by providing high-quality materials for students and teachers at all levels (Wattenberg, 1998; Zia, 2001). NSDL Pathways are considered an important vehicle for making the digital library more useful because they connect professional society members and other existing users to the broader resources of the library (Howe, 2007). However, available resources have not necessarily been assigned to K-12 content standards and, for Pathways that do assign their resources to standards, there is considerable variability in the methods used to make decisions about alignment to standards. Furthermore, the mere presence of specific content in a resource--even if it is aligned to a content standard--does not ensure that the resource provides support for student learning of that content. Instructional quality judgments that are made by applying research-based criteria are currently not part of the cataloguing process in NSDL Pathways. Such criteria include whether the resources provide a variety of phenomena and representations to make abstract ideas plausible and intelligible (Kesidou & Roseman, 2002). They are important because they have been shown to positively predict student learning (Roth et al., 2009).

The lack of information about instructional quality in addition to content alignment makes it difficult for users to efficiently locate NSDL resources that are likely to promote student learning of standards. Supporting Pathways and collections developers in systematically analyzing resources for their alignment to learning goals and their instructional quality can help. We are on the first year of our NSDL project to work with the Pathways, the Resource Center, and Technical Network Services to build capacity for determining the content alignment and instructional quality of K-12 resources.

The Curriculum Customization Service (CCS) is a Web-based system built using NSDL’s EduPak tools. CCS delivers digitized, publisher-provided curricular materials - student textbook chapters, assessments, instructional support materials - along with interactive digital library resources and instructor-developed resources in the context of learning goals. Materials are cataloged and managed using the NSDL Collection System, and instructor-contributed content is saved to and retrieved from the Digital Discovery System (DDS). Web service APIs are used to generate rich user interfaces in the CCS. In addition, DDS services are being used to integrate digital resources from DLESE, linked to district learning goals.

The current field trial involves all 120 middle and high school Earth science educators in a large urban school district using the system for planning and delivery of differentiated instruction, a concept at the heart of the CCS system's design. Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching and learning that seeks to customize curriculum to the needs of different populations of students, versus the traditional 'one size fits all' approach. We report on data collected thus far and plans for ongoing evaluation of teacher practice, beliefs, and attitudes about differentiated instruction and teaching with technology.

MAISON is implemented as a middleware service to help minimize the extraneous load on users who are blind, while they search and access to materials from the large and diverse collection of resources available on NSDL. MAISON establishes as precisely as possible, the information needed, based on the current search context and user preferences. The MAISON middleware provides a new CSIP-A protocol that enables development of user interfaces that can deliver contextually informed strand map navigation. The adaptation strategies currently implemented include strand map reduction, upcoming key concepts preview, and summary preview. The ongoing extensions to the MAISON middleware include document, web page, and web site preview APIs for improved access to external digital resources linked to the underlying information space.

This poster will describe the software architecture and program development aspects of the Chemical Education Digital Library Wikihyperglossary. This program automates the markup of digital text documents and web pages in a way which connects them to the multimedia resources of ChemEd DL. The initial work was done in PHP/MySQL, but moved to Perl using the Catalyst framework and MySQL database due to text processing requirements for which Perl is better suited. The main components of the system are divided into three main controllers.

1. Hyperglossary controller parses text documents and returns them marked up. In order to instantly return the document this process is done incrementally so the submitting browser never appears to wait for the document to be returned.
2. Content controller provides wiki-like functionality.
3. Administrative controller creates glossaries and defines user permissions.

Web scripts have been developed that can be accessed using a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) API (Application Program Interface) that returns content located at the ChemEd DL. The overall system is designed to be the epitome of a Web 2.0 application which is user-centric, has interoperability, and facilitates collaboration over the Web.

An immense number of resources is available online for teaching chemistry and many efforts have gone into incorporating them into textbooks as addendums or into courses as tutorials. As part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the ChemEd DL has begun to catalogue resources and create portals accessible by students and teachers alike. The goal of ChemPaths is to be an online student resource portal that brings text, video, interactive applets, and tutorials together into one cohesive presentation—an online equivalent of a textbook in a traditional course. Beyond putting text and graphics onto the web, ChemPaths intrinsically links textbook sections to other textbook sections and to other tutorial pages dealing with similar topics. The portal allows for easy access for instructors to edit existing material and create their own tutorials. The site is currently in use and its efficacy is being evaluated during the fall semester, 2009.

ChemPaths is being used in lieu of a traditional textbook in one of three sections of a one-semester general chemistry course. To evaluate the effectiveness of ChemPaths as a replacement for the traditional textbook, pre- and post-tests are being used involving both quantitative and qualitative questions on the topics Thermo-chemistry and Chemical Equilibrium. Evaluation will be based on student learning of fundamental quantitative skills as well as conceptual understanding of the topics covered. It is hoped that the research will answer fundamental questions about students’ abilities to learn from online material.

This poster will highlight recent efforts on the ComPADRE Pathway for Physics and Astronomy Education. Highlights include collaborations with the Open Source Physics project and the Physics Education Research community, the development of new collections for introductory college physics courses and relativity, and the creation of a web resource for Careers in Physics.

This poster reports on current work with the NSF-funded Achievement Standards Network (ASN) to support discovery of educational resources in digital libraries using conceptual graphs of officially promulgated achievement standards statements. Conceptual graphs or knowledge maps of achievement standards reveal the macrostructure of the learning domain modeled by those standards and support higher-level understanding by teachers and students. The work builds on the conceptual framework of the AAAS knowledge maps by providing the means to flexibly define and deploy new relationship schemas to fit the disparate modeling needs of the nearly 740 learning standards documents in the ASN repository. Using an RDF-based, node-link representation of learning goals and the relationships among them, the ASN Knowledge Map Service will provide the framework to correlate educational resources to nodes in conceptual models in order to augment more conventional mechanisms of discovery and retrieval in digital libraries.

Crossing Boundaries, funded through NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, is interested in collaborating with NSDL projects that are developing tools or resources relevant to ecological studies by middle and high school students. Crossing Boundaries enables science teachers to teach in new ways, using emerging technologies to engage their students in exploration of biodiversity conservation issues both locally and abroad. For example, Crossing Boundaries students pose questions about biodiversity and address these questions using Science Pipes. With this NSDL-funded workflow tool, students can readily select relevant components of massive biodiversity datasets and create visualizations for analysis and communication of the results. Crossing Boundaries also helps teachers to use GIS, GPS, Google Earth, wikis, podcasts, and blogs in their science teaching. If you are developing technological tools or digital resources of potential use in ecological investigations, we welcome discussion about potential collaboration.

A new project, DL2SL, examines a possible solution to issues of access, skill, policy, and motivation that frustrate school librarians' efforts to help to bring NSDL resources to K-12 learning environments. DL2SL includes a 3 phase approach: a survey of perceptions; the deployment of a MARC-based metadata distribution tool; and targeted professional development. This poster will illustrate the project plan and report the work to-date. The project is an outgrowth of culiminated results of 4 NSDL projects since 1999 (TeacherLIB, Viewing the Future, Infusing NSDL into Middle Schools, and DLConnect) that show that school library media specialists not only have a strong desire to promote NSDL resources, they also have the expertise to support the use of NSDL resources in schools.

This collaborative research project between the Exploratorium and Utah State's Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences investigates online evaluation approaches and the application of educational data mining to educational digital libraries and services. Much work over the past decades has focused on developing algorithms and methods for discovering patterns in large datasets, known as Knowledge Discovery from Data (KDD). Webmetrics, the application of KDD to web usage mining, is growing rapidly in areas such as e-commerce. Educational Data Mining (EDM) is just beginning to emerge as a tool to analyze the massive, longitudinal user data that are captured in online learning environments and educational digital libraries.

This project uses EDM to examine data from the Exploratorium's Learning Resources Collection and the Instructional Architect at Utah State University. The results are combined with more traditional evaluation data (e.g., surveys, interviews) as part of a comprehensive strategy to understand science teachers' behaviors, motivations, and learning experiences with digital library resources. The project informs improvements in the design of the user experience, as well as tailored teacher professional development, contributing to a growing body of research on teacher learning by using cyber-enabled approaches. This poster shares the results from the first year's work.

Project 2061 developed the Atlas of Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 2001, 2007) as part of a coordinated set of tools to help educators understand and use specific goals for student learning. Based on Atlas, the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program has provided funding to develop the online Science Literacy Maps (http://strandmaps.nsdl.org) to serve as a browsing interface for educational resources, and the accompanying Strand Map Service (SMS) that allows developers to integrate the maps into other applications. Preliminary studies indicate that the digital maps may promote purposeful discovery of online resources by engaging educators with the learning goals presented by the interface (Butcher, Bhushan, & Sumner, 2006; Richardson, Matthews, & Thompson, 2008).

To enhance its educational impact, we plan to extend the functionality of SMS to serve as a platform for collaboration and communication among educators through a user-centered, iterative design process. We are soliciting input from classroom teachers, curriculum coordinators, and the NSDL community to inform the development roadmap for the SMS. We will present some possibilities that are being considered, including: (1) a zoom in/out function, (2) having map versions whose topology are identical to the print version, (3) a visual indication that resources are available for a given benchmark without any need for further user action, (4) an additional tab in the information bubble showing the content standard from the user’s state that corresponds with the currently selected benchmark, (5) an additional tab that lets users add benchmark-specific notes to the information bubble; (6) a threaded discussion that lets teachers give feedback and share experiences with use of resources associated with a given benchmark; and (7) brief tutorials for pathways leaders to use in training catalogers/editors.

Educational digital libraries are becoming mainstream tools for learning and research for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STE&M) education at all levels. Although in classroom settings, the Internet and WWW are being used more and more frequently for classroom learning, there are new opportunities for digital libraries in structured out-of-classroom inquiry-based and project-based learning activities as well as for informal learning activities in homes, museums, and after school clubs. There are also opportunities for learning while students are commuting, jogging, or in other noneducational settings.  Educators now have the opportunity to use mobile technologies for embedded use in the classroom and beyond. Documented new pedagogical applications include conversational learning, inquiry-based learning, assessment, authentic learning, computer scaffolding and lifelong learning.   We present ongoing research on mobile access to digital library resources, and mobile interfaces to contextually relevant digital library resources.

The NSDL Metrics Working Group has been developing a set of recommendations to the NSDL community, centered on best practices for metrics gathering and analysis over multiple aspects of a project's activities and lifecycle. The group was tasked in January 2009 with 1) helping individual projects improve their understanding, collection, and analysis of metrics data, first starting with web metrics data, and 2) finding common metrics that could be used across all NSDL projects so that interested parties can look at the whole of NSDL. The over-arching goal is to provide best practices and guidelines for measuring impact for individual projects and the entire NSDL. The working group has come up with a matrix that correlates activities, data that can be collected, and possible impacts that can measured directly or inferred from the data. As a tool, the matrix provides multiple ways to help project staff uncover data they are missing or overlooking and help demonstrate audience and project impact.

Launched in 2002, the Instructional Architect Instructional Architect (IA.usu.edu) is a web-based tool in which teachers can quickly find interactive online learning and NSDL resources, and design activities for their students. Since 2005, almost 5,000 registered users have designed learning activities using over 40,000 resources. In the last year, the IA recorded over 250,000 visits.

Recent work has focused on developing a technology-oriented teacher professional development (PD) model using the IA, aimed at helping teachers find high-quality online learning resources and use them in designing effective inquiry learning activities for their students. The model uses problem-based learning (PBL) as its cornerstone inquiry approach.

To investigate the model’s effectiveness, we report results from two enactments of the PD model. In the first enactment, teachers learned PBL design skills concurrently with the technology skills, while in the second, the needed technology skills were presented prior to learning about PBL. Results are reported in terms of impact on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and design activities, as well as on the extent teachers designed PBL learning activities for their students. 

As NSDL continues to develop, a key question is whether NSDL tools and services have demonstrable educational impact. Assessing the educational impact of NSDL requires careful consideration of how NSDL can promote better selection of digital learning resources and deeper learning with those selected digital resources. We summarize past research and a new project investigating NSDL impact, with specific focus on efficient selection of digital resources for educational purposes (e.g., do NSDL users find better resources?) and how NSDL tools and services may promote successful learning with these resources as measured by users’ cognitive processes and learning outcomes.

Research will use a combination of laboratory and classroom research with three major user groups: preservice science educators, in-service science teachers, and classroom students. In the laboratory, two well-established methods in cognitive science research – eye tracking and verbal-protocol analysis —are being combined to perform a detailed and rigorous analysis of users’ cognitive processes during the search for and use of digital resources. In the classroom, research will assess the impact of NSDL-supported lesson plans on student thinking and learning.

This poster presents our research efforts to model, store, and retrieve primary content (e.g. images, documents) in EduPak, NSDL’s recently released open source package combining a digital repository, collection management system and search system. NSDL deploys an instance of EduPak as the operational library at www.nsdl.org, but it can also be downloaded and installed as a local repository solution.

In collaboration with the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, we have developed an experimental Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) profile for packaging and transporting collections of metadata and primary (binary) content.  In addition to the experimental METS profile, we developed a process for ingesting the METS profile as an NDR collection that uses the NSDL data model of collection, metadata, aggregator, resource and metadata provider objects. The resource object is used to hold the primary content. This capability is now being used operationally by the NCAR Library to manage local collections of technical documents using EduPak.

Math Images is a website with pages devoted to interesting and striking images based on mathematics. Because the math behind each image is explained simply and for different levels of comprehension, the site appeals to different audiences: teachers, students, and the general public. Moreover, the pages are constructed by undergraduates who choose interesting online images related to mathematics and then write about the math behind these images. Most of the students were rising sophomores, and others were not particularly mathematically strong, but all were quite successful in constructing well made and informative pages.  The Math Images site is a wiki which uses the same software as Wikipedia, with related ideas: student work is open to improvement and expansion. We're just finishing a CCLI Phase I version of the project, run as a summer program, and believe that the site could be very successfully used for class writing projects, as well. The wiki is now available for you to examine and use, and for your students to add image pages, http://mathforum.org/mathimages/

The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) supports middle grades educators and youth with high-quality, standards-based resources and promotes collaboration and knowledge-sharing among its users. Teachers use MSP2 to increase content knowledge in science, mathematics, technology and appropriate pedagogy for youth ages 10 to 15 years. MSP2 also connects middle school youth to information on mathematics, science, and technology, as well as health, safety, and career exploration.  Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and social networking services, foster dynamic, collaborative experiences for teachers that promote creation, modification, and sharing of resources, facilitate professional development, and integrate technology into existing practice. As a result of interaction with MSP2 content, tools, and services, young people in the middle grades increase their ability to explore, discover ideas, problem solve, think critically, communicate, use technology in a productive and responsible manner, and become globally aware. They also become aware of educational pathways that lead to careers in science, mathematics, and technology.  MSP2 is a project of The Ohio State University, National Middle School Association, and Education Development Center, Inc.

This poster provides information on 1) tools and methods for accessioning
a collection, 2) producing quality metadata and 3) understanding the new
scope and focus of the NSDL collection.

The scope of and focus of the NSDL collection is evolving to emphasize
teaching and learning materials that lead to impacts in education and the
classroom. As a result, this focus tends to favor resources that are
active, use inquiry, authentic learning and real-time data, experiences
and situations. This also means the Quality Guidelines of the NSDL
Collection Development Policy are more important than ever. Come learn
about these guidelines and view a collections assessment that indicates
the distribution of NSDL holdings.

In NSDL, a collection contains item-level metadata for individual
resources (URLs) in the collection.  For collections that are approved,
the NSDL Data Repository (NDR) accepts item-level metadata via
•       Direct communication with the NDR API
•       Through a hosted or locally installed NSDL Collection System (NCS)
•       Via OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)
•       Via RSS

While any metadata format can be used in the above methods, only
item-level metadata that is provided in the correct XML format of NSDL_DC
is discoverable at the main library site of NSDL.org. Learn strategies and
how-to information on when to use the above methods and how.

To support the discovery and re-use of NSDL materials, it is vital to
describe resource effectively and appropriately. Come and learn the top 5
actions you can take to improve your metadata to support the NSDL scope
and focus. This includes: the use of controlled vocabularies, educational
standards, writing a better description, keywords and the cataloging
experience (producing valid XML, training catalogers).

We are collecting the "reflections" on the collaborative development of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The blogsite, http://nsdlreflections.wordpress.com/, is a place for NSDL participants to tell the story of how they think NSDL was formed, grew and is continuing to grow. It is also a place for the community to discuss and learn from these reflections as well as respond to a series of ‘hot topics’ questions regarding the NSDL. The site is open to all members of the NSDL community; your comments will help round out the living history of the NSDL.

Curriki, an online community for creating and sharing open source curricula, and the Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) project, are collaborating to provide an integrated learning environment and resource repository that is centered on a culture of collective participation. The move is in response to today's restrictive budget environment, in which school districts must think creatively to budget for high quality curriculum -- including STEM curriculum. The proliferation of technology, the high cost of traditional textbooks, and the focus on engaging students in 21st century learning are compelling many stakeholders to address the growing demand for digital content to adapt to the new learning environment. These stakeholders include publishers, K–12 schools and universities, nonprofits and government organizations. This situation has, in this instance, fostered a partnership where educators create and distribute high-quality curricula.

Our project will investigate how undergraduate students in STEM disciplines use digital learning materials, what impact this use has on their learning, and what the implications might be for NSDL collections. We describe the mixed-methods approach we will be using to study the topic, combining a number of discipline-specific focus groups at a wide range of institutions with a large sample-size survey of undergraduate STEM students from numerous colleges and universities around the country.  The research results will not only help illustrate the value of NSDL collections but will provide insight as to how collections and services can be improved.

TeachingWithData.org (TwD) will promote quantitative literacy by helping instructors to use real data in social science classes. The goal is to infuse quantitative reasoning throughout the social science curriculum and to bridge the gap between substantive courses and classes in methodology and statistics. Two key components of the developing pathway are the Social Science Data Analysis Network and the Online Learning Center at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Both of these resources provide data extracts, online analysis tools, student exercises, and other materials that help instructors integrate data from the census, opinion polls, and advanced social science surveys into their courses. The TwD project will provide comprehensive links to these materials and other resources promoting quantitative literacy, such as teaching modules, data sets and sources, applications for statistics and mapping, and research on teaching and learning. Future TwD development aims to provide faculty with tools to easily create teaching modules for their students and share them with others. The primary audience for the project will be faculty in disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, geography, and social psychology. The poster describes these aims, presents illustrative teaching materials, and introduces the partners in the TwD project.

The Developmental Mathematics Collection, a new NSDL project, focuses on exemplary teaching practices and learning activities for college and university students in developmental mathematics courses (prerequisite to collegiate credit).

In addition to addressing a new area of emphasis within the MathDL pathway, the DMC project features a new approach to collection management and sustainability. Regional faculty teams are collecting exemplary practices, tools and resources used by their faculty; these compendiums combine open contributions of resources and experiences by faculty with editorial processes to categorize contributions in terms of the evidence base on their use. The regional collections are intended to promote community ownership and sustainability at the local level; the aggregation and integration are intended to ‘raise the bar’ for local teaching practices and provide a network infrastructure to sustain a national collection.

The initial team consists of faculty from six San Diego community colleges collaborating in a course transformation program funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in partnership with the state-wide Basic Skills Initiative in the California Community Colleges. Two additional regional networks for course redesign in developmental math started in Fall 2009, in the San Francisco region and the Los Angeles Community College District.