This project is creating an open knowledge collection of promising practices and lessons learned from the work to date on the development of NSDL. This rich, dynamic resource consists of: i) reflections, stories and recollections (formal and informal) about what participants learned; and ii) an annotated bibliography of articles, papers, presentations associated with various NSDL projects. The project is using an open mechanism (wiki technology and the KEEP Toolkit) for collecting, creating and sharing the knowledge it is accruing; and by its very nature it is disseminating this knowledge to NSDL's communities, as well as the larger digital library and technology enhanced learning communities. Through an ethnographic approach the project seeks to identify and highlight the full range of experiences of the NSDL community. Two particular elements of the project speak to its intellectual merit. First is the team of investigators who have extensive experience with the NSDL and bring their individual backgrounds in technology and evaluation, along with their relationships with past and current funded NSDL projects. Second is that the project exploits social networking tools and mechanisms to collect and organize the stories and experiences of those involved with building the NSDL. The broader impacts of the project lie in sharing the NSDL "story" beyond the initial NSDL community of projects, to wield an influence on the future direction of other large-scale technology enhanced learning initiatives involving multiple institutions and collaborative projects. Examples of such efforts include those being undertaken by the Open Educational Resources movement supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and other nascent cyberinfrastructure projects underway at NSF.
, resulted in a set of reflections written by community members of National Science Digital Library (NSDL) available online for review and comment. Seven essays found at the website: http://nsdlreflections.wordpress.com/ range from reflections on NSLD service or research projects as well as those associated with the overarching framework for the project. NSDL community leaders and long-standing project observers authored these reflections. The project also produced a written report regarding the impact of the NSDL based on the vision as outlined in the vision document Pathways to Progress. This retrospective report is titled: Retrospective Essays on a Decade of Building a National Science Digital Library to Transform STEM Education. Authored by NSDL community representatives during an intensive writing workshop, the report focuses on questions such as: How was the vision of the NSDL realized? How did the NSDL develop over time and what knowledge was generated? It concludes that, NSDL's promise or potential was (and still is) in its ability to assume the following roles: Engage learners with authentic scientific practices and assessment. Identify quality educational resources. Empower content consumers to become content creators. Support collaboration among diverse communities. Integrate technology into teaching, learning, and professional development. Support personalizing learning through context and metadata. Help shape federal policy. Lessons learned in the building of NSDL included: The context of where, how, and why learning takes place is important. First provide quality resources, and then design complementary services to help users discover them. Fostering user communities is essential to sustainability and growth. Taken together, the reflective essays and more report highlight a number of the significant lessons learned and contributions made by the hundreds of individuals who worked to advance digital library research and STEM education. New or nascent projects that are similar in scope or purpose will benefit from examining the reflections by these NSDL community members. Projects seeking to build both digital libraries and/or online communities of scholars can learn much from collective experience of NSDL builders both in terms of the technical approaches and social approaches employed in this large, collaborative project. The reflections and report can be found at: http://nsdlreflections.wordpress.com/ or http://serc.carleton.edu/p2p_redux/index.html.
