The ComPADRE digital library is an NSDL Pathway to support Physics and Astronomy Education. ComPADRE supports a network of resource collections targeted at specific audiences and provides specialized tools and services for communications, sharing, and content development. The ComPADRE support for different resource collections, each focused on a particular physics or astronomy community of educators and learners, puts resources in the context of their use for learning. ComPADRE Editors and collaborators created 14 resource collections for communities including high school teachers, undergraduate science majors, and university faculty teaching advanced courses. The Physics and Astronomy education community has recognized ComPADRE as an important partner in the support of educators and learners and in the dissemination of best practices in science education. ComPADRE collaborates with curriculum development projects and education researchers to distribute proven learning resources. ComPADRE continues to strengthen existing collaborations and establish new collaboration using web enabled interest groups and by featuring curriculum sequences to highlight the best uses of the materials available. ComPADRE also is reaching new users through expanded workshops and tutorials, both live and online, in collaboration with professional societies and other partners. ComPADRE is using the technical and outreach capabilities of the NSDL to extend its web services and connect resources to education standards. The ComPADRE technical staff and editors are in the process of streamlining the project infrastructure and operations to become more sustainable. Intellectual Merit: The ComPADRE team selects teaching and learning resources of the highest quality with particular consideration given to proven effectiveness. Collaborations with physics education researchers, curriculum developers, and the professional societies place ComPADRE in the midst of the latest in research and development to improve learning and teaching best practices. For these materials, researchers have shown positive learning impact but need more information about usage outside of the research setting. ComPADRE provides a platform for both disseminating these resources and gathering information on how they are being used by teachers and students. Surveys, requests for comment, and virtual focus groups are being used to study content usage, as well as improve the design and dissemination efforts of ComPADRE. Broader Impact: Many of ComPADRE's projects and collaborations directly support broader communities and meet national STEM needs. ComPADRE provides technical support for virtual mentoring of high school students by physicists, increasing their exposure to real science. ComPADRE hosts a coalition for improving the training of physical science teachers, a great need in this country. ComPADRE provides resources to help undergraduate physics and astronomy majors become integrated into the physics community, an outcome that can strengthen the nation's science workforce. ComPADRE resource collections and outreach efforts are aimed at supporting new physics teachers to help keep them in the classroom.
ComPADRE (www.compadre.org) is a web-based hub of resources, information, and services supporting physics and astronomy education. ComPADRE helps teachers and learners of Physics and Astronomy by collecting and cataloging online educational resources and hosting the websites for conferences, workshops, content developers, and other activities that promote quality physics and astronomy teaching and learning. ComPADRE consists of a network of inter-linked collections each serving a specific community of teachers and/or learners. Examples include a collection for High School and Middle School physics and physical science teachers, a general-interest physics web site covering a broad range of topics, and collections for advanced physics classes. The collections are free and open to all to browse. Any registered user (again registration is free) may recommend materials; these resources are approved and cataloged by editors before appearing in the collections. Tools are available that allow users to communicate, share resources, and learn from each. Users may create personalized, annotated resource collections for their own use and share their personal collections with others. ComPADRE provides web and data support in collaboration with other research and development projects and various physics education communities. ComPADRE works with the Physics Education Research community to host and share best practices in physics education. ComPADRE also works with the Open Source Physics project (www.compadre.org/osp), the Physics Advanced Laboratories community (www.compadre.org/advlabs), the PhysTEC project (www.phystec.org), and the Society of Physics Students semi-annual online High School mentoring project, Adopt-a-Physicist (www.adoptaphysicist.org). The American Association of Physics Teachers, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and the Society of Physics Students collaborate on ComPADRE. ComPADRE is a Pathway Partner of the NSF’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL: http://nsdl.org).
