This large-scale national project is investigating how undergraduate students in STEM disciplines use digital learning materials. Much of the work already done by the National STEM Digital Library (NSDL) - especially by the NSDL large "Pathways" collections - assumes that students will be directly connected to the content in the collections, or that they will otherwise find and use the digital resources from collections in ways that assist the depth of their learning. However, little is known about how undergraduates use digital resources. This study will develop a better understanding of the extent and nature of undergraduate use and it will begin to determine the value of digital learning materials to undergraduates. The project is: 1. Examining how undergraduates use digital and distributed learning resources and collections 2. Documenting how and why they use these resources 3. Examining the impact of that use on their learning 4. Exploring student perceptions of barriers to the use of NSDL services and programs
Following these information collection tasks, the project will begin a second stage to: 5. Identify possible strategies for overcoming barriers to use of digital libraries and distributed learning resources by undergraduate STEM students 6. Disseminate the tools developed in this study for use by NSDL projects in developing individual benchmarks regarding their own usage, and 7. Establish baseline data for future studies of NSDL usage and impact
