Network of Communities: Synergy Through Common Formats, Reuse, and Models for Contribution

Network of Communities: Synergy Through Common Formats, Reuse, and Models for Contribution Cathy Manduca, Sean Fox, Bruce Mason representing SERC, comPADRE, MERLOTand many other partners... SERC and its partners are grateful for the funding they have received from NSF to support this work: through NSDL (DUE-0226243 & DUE-0532768) as well as through DUE-0127310, DUE-0127141, DUE-0127257, DUE-0127018, GEO-0614926, GEO-0614570, and GEO-0614393.

NSDL goal: high quality materials supporting effective teaching in the hands of the appropriate audiences • Challenges: • obtaining high quality materials especially “how to” materials reflecting experience • putting materials where they will be found

Approaches • Technical tools that make “how to” materials easy to create and share • Strategies for engaging educators in creating materials • Strategies for sharing that take materials to the audience instead of asking the audience to come to them • Session • Tools for authoring and sharing • Panel describing use • Discussion of NSDL applications

Common Formats Provide a Structure for Sharing Community Expertise ActivitySheetsHow do you teach your students? DataSheetsHow does this dataset apply to my teaching? CourseSheetsWhat do you do in your course? Recipes for providing concise answers to core questions

ActivitySheets Title Authors/Institutions Summary Description Learning Goals Context for Use Description and Teaching Materials Teaching Notes Assessment Resources and References Example ActivitySheet

DataSheets • Use in Teaching • Topics • Skills • Exploring the Data • Data Type • Access • Visualization • Tools • About the Data • Collection • Limitations • References • Science • Education DataSheet Collection

CourseSheets Course Summary Context Goals Content/Syllabus Teaching Materials Assessment References and Notes Teacher Preparation Courses

What Makes ‘Sheets’ Effective? • Designed for web consumption-- Single page, skim-able, good google target, granularity that matches user expectations/needs. • Target adaptation rather than adoption. • Includes embedded resources/files but provides context that makes them meaningful. • Structure reflects/imposes/guides toward best practices (e.g. having explicit activity and course goals) • Provides a venue for implicit and unpublished expertise. • Common format across projects for easy mixing/matching, browsing.

Make Contribution Simple and Aligned with Social Context • First step is filling out a form which provides lots of guidance: http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/submit_activity.html • Submitter is the ‘owner’ of the information and can edit over the web at will • Tools evolved to support typical creation scenarios, especially peer review in workshop settings.

Sharing/Repurposing Across Projects and PartnersDC Records Capitalize on resource identification done by authors • Capture web/print references en passant (automated for web references). • At a minimum track citations and crawl the external websites to obtain title and raw text content to support searching. • References (both web and print) can point to more complete metadata records when they are available from external (harvested) collections or have been created for other (internal) projects.

Sharing/Repurposing Across Projects and PartnersResource Collections • Draw from the larger pool of sheets, catalog records. • Use project-specific controlled vocabularies to drive faceted search • Use vocabulary mapping to capitalize on previous vocabulary assignments

Starting Point: Teaching Introductory Geoscience Pedagogic modules connected to example activities in a disciplinary context http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo How do we reuse this approach/information in other contexts while retaining the contextuality that drives user interest?

Cloning Make the same pedagogic content available ‘in’ other sites with a customized set of activities for that community.

Library Partnerships Thousands of learning objects and many hundreds of reviewed materials in 15+ disciplines Physics & AstronomyPathway with learningresources & tools,organized by community

Pedagogy &Context Reviews and Multi-Discipline Professional Societies& Broad Content Pedagogy & Research

Biology – 14 Examples “Assignments”on Steroids Math – 10 Examples

Relations: • What • SERC: • How & Why

Sharing • MERLOT – ComPADRE – SERC • Math activities useful for physics courses • ComPADRE activities included in MERLOT Physics • Geoscience activities used in ComPADRE • Resources & Experiences • Workshops • Review Criteria

Creating Activities • MERLOT • Editors & Workshops. Discussions with Authors • ComPADRE • Workshop at Professional Society Meeting • Future • Online Workshops • Paid Writers • ???

Institutional Partners: Institutional ConversationsShowcasing Teaching on Campus Carleton Activity Collection13333 Stanford Pedagogic Partnership20825

Teacher Professional Development: Documenting Learning, Encouraging Improvement MNStep Activity Collection19722

Educational Projects:Project Websites and Beyond Washington Center Home 20801 Starting Point SSAC16738

Working with Scientists:Bringing Scientific Research into Teaching

Pedagogy in Action Provides a view into the sum of the collection from the partner projects: 25+ Teaching Methods 600+ Activities Research on Learning Bibliography http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/

Sharing Pedagogic Expertise Across the NSDL • Ways of capturing community expertise • Tools allowing cross-project collaboration and sharing • How are these tools and examples useful to the NSDL and its project?

Network of Communities: Synergy Through Common Formats, Reuse, and Models for Contribution