The BiosciEdNet (BEN) Collaborative is expanding its stewardship role for professional societies and coalitions in the biological sciences through an NSDL Pathway project that provides resources, tools, and professional development for educators at the high school and undergraduate levels, including community colleges. BEN serves as a catalyst for professional societies or coalitions that seek to build their own education-focused digital libraries or contribute resources to the BEN portal, and that want to collaborate on effective pedagogy, authentic assessment, and development of multidisciplinary biological sciences resources. In prior NSDL projects, the BEN Collaborative built a portal that aggregates biological sciences resources from 13 collaborators and 6 separate digital libraries; this proposal is expanding the set of collaborators to 22, and the total number of biological sciences digital libraries to 13. In addition, to increase submissions to the digital libraries of BEN, the project is developing a Faculty Campus Representative Program, which is preparing more than forty university faculty members across the county to conduct campus and community-based workshops and to offer technical assistance for an estimated 2,700 prospective contributors. These new contributors are providing an estimated 25,000 peer-reviewed, biological sciences education resources to BEN and NSDL during the life of the project.
