The DMC Connect project is integrating the NSDL Developmental Mathematics Collection with complementary initiatives in California at the departmental, regional and state levels. This is promoting use of - and contribution to - the Developmental Math Collection within these initiatives. It is also extending the Developmental Math Collection with ongoing addition of resources, and providing a sustainability model for continued evolution.
At the departmental level, the project is working with community colleges in the three large urban regions of the state to identify exemplary resources from departmental collections that merit inclusion in the NSDL Developmental Math Collection, and to support faculty in providing the pedagogical content knowledge required for re-use and adaptation beyond the college.
The DMC Connect project is also expanding regional collaborations with explicit two-way links to the Developmental Math Collection: promoting resources on exemplary teaching practices to the NSDL, and linking NSDL Developmental Math Collection resources to relevant regional cooperative activities to adapt, extend and evaluate the NSDL resources.
At the state level, the DMC Connect project is providing two professional development workshops for Developmental Math faculty in collaboration with the Basic Skills Initiative for the California community colleges, on Mobilizing Resources and Knowledge for Exemplary Teaching in Developmental Math and on Evaluation and Improvement and Knowledge Exchange.
Through a national Advisory Panel, the project is building links between the Developmental Mathematics Collection and other major state and national initiatives, with a particular focus on preparing faculty for more transformational change in learning and teaching for developmental mathematics.
The National STEM Digital Learning initiative created a number of high quality Collections of open educational resources for use by teachers and learners, including the Developmental Mathematics Collection of exemplary practices and resources for college students bringing their mathematical knowledge and skills up to college level. In this project, we sought to construct new methods for Connections to integrate this collection into ongoing professional and organizational activities in higher education. Such connections are critical for the adaptation, expansion and mobilization of the resources to sustain and enhance the value for individual learners and teachers and for public policy objectives: if a static collection does not evolve over time, particularly after the conclusion of initial startup funding, the return on the original investment can erode quickly. We experimented with several approaches to integrate use of – and contribution to – the collection at the departmental, regional and state levels. At the heart of our plan was a bottom-up migration of exemplary practices and resources, from use within one department through wider applicability across a regional network and finally promotion of selected resources to national prominence. The curation process for the collection after startup could thus be "crowd-sourced" rather than centralized, with appropriate social and technical infrastructures to ensure that quality is maintained and that faculty use and adaptation are supported. We were able to demonstrate integration and connection through a number of practices for sharing of knowledge and resources by college math faculty. A number of "results that surprised" emerged from these experiments, such as the following: A key professional role evolved that enabled colleges to engage their faculty in scaling up use of exemplary practices and resources: a local faculty member trained and supported in knowledge exchange could facilitate "import" of exemplary practices and resources from other colleges and "export" of local innovations to scale up use and adaptation. The most promising professional development activities were those that integrated local face-to-face contact, regional "webinar" interactions and follow up online resources and discussion. The opportunity for faculty to share their exemplary practices and resources in such events helped to motivate contribution to the regional collections. For teachers in higher education, the ability to adapt open educational resources to their own contexts and the needs of their students is proving to be an important factor in scale-up. Existing technical infrastructures are weak on tools to support adaptations and to encourage their re-use, a gap which we are now trying to address with further research. Our results are being sustained by integration into the ongoing activities for math faculty in large college districts and a state-wide initiative in California, and by growing partnerships with institutions and organizations in other states. The outcomes can also be applied in other STEM disciplines to enhance the value and sustainability of open educational resources for scaling up exemplary innovations in STEM teaching and learning.
