The project continues collaboration of a very active community and provides a venue to distribute the results of NSDL research and development. The project includes planning, providing web conferencing sessions before the meeting, an orientation session for community newcomers, holding a three-day face-to-face meeting for approximately 175 attendees (based on 2009 attendance) in the fall of 2010, and performing post-meeting survey administration, analysis, and reporting.
grant was fortuitously well-titled. In sponsoring the accomplishment of its primary purpose—the November 1-3, 2010 NSDL Annual Meeting—the grant enabled NSDL to maximize and leverage this valuable support from the National Science Foundation for ongoing community engagement activities across the NSDL network through FY2013. As one of the longer-term programs supported by the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR), Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE), the NSDL has been described by NSF program officers over the years as an effective model for community engagement across a diverse, multi-disciplinary, multi-grade level professional community. The NSDL network of principal investigators (and their staffs) on projects funded by NSF's grant-making National STEM Digital Learning program, formed a vibrant collaborative and trusted partnership with the NSDL program, throughout the life and history of the National Science Digital Library. This network of trusted partners has been the social infrastructure and glue complementing the technological infrastructure and services provided by NSDL for the advancement of STEM education. Consistently characterized by participants as a high point in their academic and educational calendars, the 2010 Annual Meeting proved to be no exception, providing a Washington, DC-based event for the 10-year celebration of NSDL, the sharing of outcomes of NSDL-funded work, and collaborative interaction. The annual PI meeting has provided the opportunity to enjoy stimulating conversations, collaborative networking, and fostering of skills for educators at all levels, immersed in addressing the multi-granular issues surrounding STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. Community engagement activities, products, and discussions fostered by the 2010 Annual Meeting included: An annual meeting and community network website An online orientation webinar for participants Use of social media streams (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Group) Meeting-wide poster session Lightning talks (5 minute presentations on specific works/projects) Technological sessions, professional development and outreach sessions, and issues sessions on standards, personalization, and the introduction of new technologies, policies, and best practices for the creation, management, and curation of digital collections of Open Education Resources (OER) Ongoing post-meeting community engagement activities kept alive these conversations, especially for transfer-of-knowledge on issues of best practice for metadata characterization of OER resources, usage data (paradata), and curation. Additional activities and events supported beyond the 2010 meeting included: Two community workshops in 2012 for collaborative development of NSDL's Learning Application Readiness (LAR) metadata framework--a more rigorous schema for characterizing educational resources, fostering enhanced interoperability across multiple platforms (Ginger & Goger, 2011) The development of policies and best practices guidelines for collection builders (NSDL, 2012) Two NSDL collaborating partner meetings (related work: grant #1144560) supporting the development of collections aligned to Math Common Core standards and English Language Arts for Science & Technical Subjects (ELA) standards; the creation of LAR STEM collections, annotation collections, and paradata collections that add significant value to NSDL metadata by reflecting the types of usage and sharing that educational resources garner within communities of practice. The NSDL Annual Meeting and related activities outcomes have fostered these broader impacts across the networked NSDL collaborative: A high-value community connection for STEM colleagues - providing opportunities for targeted partnership building, and expansion of the knowledge base for digital resource development and use Technological infrastructure and interoperability services sharing - featuring exchangable data describing high quality digital resources (NSDL, 2013) Implementation piloting - the ability to leverage experience, policy development, best practices provision, workflow refinement, and the outcomes of collaborative work with a group of trusted partners providing expert feedback Identification of challenges - collaborative discussion of both major issues (institutional barriers; habits of mind, culture, and interaction) and solutions in the provision of OER resources to STEM education practitioners References: Ginger, K. M., & L. Goger (2011). Evaluating the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) for Learning Application Readiness; poster. Paper presented at the ASIS&T 2011, Proceedings, New Orleans, LA. NSDL (2012). NSDL Policies.National Science Digital Library. Retrieved 25 July, 2013, from https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/nsdldocs/Policies NSDL (2013). NSDL Documentation Wiki. National Science Digital Library; University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Retrieved 25 July, 2013, from https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/nsdldocs/Home
