Digital Libraries for Education

1
Digital Libraries for Education

• Dave McArthur and Lee L. Zia
• National Science Foundation
• July 20, 2005
• Open Resources for Education Videoconference

2
Advances in communication

• Greater numbers of access points
• Increased bandwidth of networks (old and new)
• New transmission technologies
• Growth of wireless untethering the learner

3
Advances in computation

• Commodification of computation lower financial
  barriers to connectivity
• Increased multimedia capability and more
  interactivity at the edge richer, immersive
  learning environments are possible

4
Advances in the Web itself

• Increasing the interaction among users and
  changing the nature of that interaction
• Increasing the individual users capability for
  self-expression
• IM and other P2P technologies
• Blogging and other self-publishing models
• Mixing of content, commentary, community

5
A Role for Digital Libraries

• Sense making from a flood of data
• Connecting learners with resources appropriate to
  their needs
• Customization but at what price?

6
NSDL Vision

• A Learning Environments and Resources Network
• for STEM Education
• Designed to meet the needs of learners, in both
  individual and collaborative settings
• Constructed to enable dynamic use of a broad
  array of materials for learning, primarily in
  digital format
• Managed actively to promote reliable anytime -
  anywhere access to quality collections and
  services, available both within and without the
  network

7
NSDL Connects

• Users students, educators, life-long learners
• Content structured learning materials large
  real-time or archived datasets audio, images,
  animationsprimary sources digital learning
  objects (e.g. applets)interactive (virtual,
  remote) laboratories ...
• Tools search, refer, validate, integrate,
  create, customize, publish, share, annotate,
  notify, collaborate, ...

8
Project Characteristics

• Current content domains include various
  engineering disciplines, life sciences, physics,
  mathematical sciences, subareas of geosciences,
  chemistry, materials science, anthropology,
  economics, demography, computer science,
  statistics, bioinformatics, linguistics, plus
  cross-disciplinary collections
• Thematic projects growing e.g. video
  collections, services for targeted audiences,
  etc.
• Increased involvement of professional societies
• Nascent private sector and publisher involvement
• Numerous formal collaborative projects
• 43 with explicit pre-K to 12 links, 28 with
  strong potential for application to the pre-K to
  12 sector

9
Key Issues

• Archiving and preservation
• User identification, authentication, and
  maintenance of privacy
• Coping with variable granularity
• Media-rich learning resources
• web-enabled laboratories

10
Key Issues (cont.)

• Access and equity
• Conditions for effective use
• Developmental appropriateness
• Relationship to traditional laboratory
  experiences - hybrid models

11
Additional Information

• http//www.nsdl.org - About NSDL
• http//comm.nsdl.org - Communications Portal -
  user and developer exchange and community
  building
• D-Lib Magazine articles
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/zia/03zia.html -
  a look at the big picture
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/zia/03zia.html
  (FY04 awards)
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/march04/zia/03zia.html
  (FY03 awards)
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/zia/11zia.html
  (FY02 awards)
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/zia/11zia.html
  (FY01 awards)
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/zia/10zia.html
  (FY00 awards)

12
An Emerging Taxonomy

• Image collections
• Animations
• Interactive simulations
• Remote manipulation of instrumentation

13
Advantages

• Enhanced access (overcoming distance, time,
  numbers)
• Expensive experiments (e.g. chip testing)
• Dangerous experiments

14
Implications

• What is the (new) role of the teacher within the
  learner centered environment?
• How is the professional role of the teacher
  changing? What are the corresponding societal
  impacts?
• How are informal learning settings being changed?
• Where is the locus (loci) of learning? What is
  learning?
• Boundaries between educational levels are being
  blurred students-teachers-researchers. How can
  we take advantage of this situation?

15
Implications (cont.)

• How does the educational system respond to
  changing behavioral patterns and technical skills
  of students who are increasingly more comfortable
  with new tools than teachers?
• What is the impact on the actual development of
  new materials, resources product and process?
• Continuing professional development of teachers
  and faculty
• Education questions are stimulating research!

16
Implications (cont.)

• Changing roles of faculty and academic librarians
• Similarly for teachers and media specialists
• How should this change professional and graduate
  programs?

17
Research Questions

• Exploring hybrid models is there a proper mix
  of the analog and digital? If so, what are its
  features?
• How is this mix developmentally dependent?
  Interesting cognitive issues dealing with the
  role of the various senses in the process of
  sense-making.
• Error how is it faithfully reproduced? What
  about artificial error which results from an
  incorrect choice of an approximation algorithm?

18
Research Questions (cont.)

• Are there common design principles that reflect
  understanding of human perception of (mainly) 2-D
  representations of 3-D worlds? Are these
  discipline dependent? How so?
• Is there an optimal use of haptic feedback?
• Learner behavior in the laboratory can be
  observed with much greater detail. What does this
  enable?
• Economic implications Can we help institutions
  grapple with the rising cost of analog
  laboratories? How are these balanced with the
  costs of the networking infrastructure that must
  be in place?