This project significantly extends previous work in developing Instructional Architect, with three objectives: 1. Integration of Instructional Architect within the NSDL Core Integration System including access management, discovery and search, and an open specification to support the use of Instructional Architect by NSDL portals and collections. 2. Extensions to Instructional Architect including support for sharing instructional products, for authoring different kinds of instructional resources, for personalized recommendations, for interoperability with commercial learning management systems, and for student use. 3. Extended dissemination, sustainability, and evaluation of Instructional Architect.
The project continues to develop partnerships with educational user groups and digital libraries to help support the dissemination and sustainability of this work. Also underway is a series of workshops for pre-service and in-service teachers, and school library media specialists, consisting of an intensive introduction to the NSDL and the Instructional Architect, followed by in-depth project and implementation work. Evaluation of participant activities resulting from these workshops is being performed to understand how teaching and learning both shape and are shaped by digital resource usage. In addition, the focus on cultivating and studying a strong community of users provides rich documentation of enablers and barriers of successful implementation of digital libraries and services in educational contexts, and supports effective replication elsewhere.
