The goal of this project is to improve the quality of education by providing educators with instant access to pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as they prepare to teach a given topic or lesson using resources from a digital library. The project links digital library resources with annotations that represent one of three types of PCK: (a) resources that deal with teaching a specific skill or science process, (b) resources that deal with common misconceptions about a specific concept, and (c) resources that deal with an assessment technique. From the user's perspective, PCK annotations will mean that when a digital library search engine returns a resource description, it may include extra links for related pedagogical materials that can be useful when trying to teach with that science resource.
The testbed for this project is the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). Over the period of the grant the plan is to provide PCK annotations for at least one thousand of the resources in DLESE. The project is also refining the DLESE user interfaces so that annotations are effectively displayed as part of search results. The new user interface for the display of annotations is being subjected to usability testing, and once the pedagogical annotations are available in the public DLESE, their use in practice will be monitored. Although initial testing is being done with DLESE, the work has broader impact since the annotation metadata will be harvestable NSDL and other digital libraries. NSDL can also adapt the tools and methodology developed by this project to add pedagogical annotations to its own collections. The need for relevant, just-in-time pedagogical content knowledge, to support better-targeted teaching and more-effective learning, is common across the full sweep of disciplines covered by NSDL.
