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Report on the NSF major educational funding initiative for a National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) with special emphasis on the
Computing Education component
Lillian N. Cassel Department of Computing Sciences
Villanova University [email protected]
John Impagliazzo
Department of Computer Science Hofstra University
Ann Lally Artificial Intelligence Lab
Dept of Management Info. Systems University of Arizona
Edward A. Fox Department of Computer Science
Virginia Tech [email protected]
Manuel Pérez-Quiňones Department of Computer Science
Virginia Tech [email protected]
Jane Prey Division of Undergraduate Education
National Science Foundation [email protected]
Abstract The NSDL consists of collections of materials accessible online, as well as many tools and services intended to enhance learning. Tools and services will support students and as well as faculty. This session will provide a status report on the state of the NSDL, its content, tools, and services. The session includes specific presentations of several services included in the NSDL. Session attendees discuss current and proposed initiatives, and offer suggestions about needs of highest priority.
Categories & Subject Descriptors H.3.7 [Digital Libraries] Digital Libraries: Collections, Dissemination, Standards, Systems Issues, User Issues.
K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education. Collaborative Learning, Computer-Assisted Instruction
K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education Accreditation, Computer Science Education, Information Systems Education.
General Terms Management, Design, Reliability, Experimentation, Security, Human Factors, Standardization
Keywords Syllabus creation, concept maps, collaboration.
1 Overall objectives of the session NSF funding for the NSDL began officially in 2000, after two rounds of prototype projects. The goal of the program is nothing less than fundamental impact on the quality of education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at all levels (pre K through life long learning). Projects funded under this initiative fall into four categories: Core Integration, Collections, Services, and Targeted Research. The objective of this session is to inform the SIGCSE community of the status of the NSDL as it relates to computing education and to solicit input for the continuing development of relevant collections and services.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). SIGCSE’03, February 19-23, 2003, Reno, Nevada, USA. ACM 1-58113-648-X/03/0002.
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2 Outline of the session This session includes high level overviews of the overall NSDL project from the NSF Program Officer and from the chair of the NSDL Policy Committee. CITIDEL (Computer and Information Technology Interactive Digital Educational Library) is the NSDL collections project for computing. CITIDEL includes several services as well as a large amount of content. Three members of the CITIDEL team will describe its status and address comments as well as receive direction for future development. GetSmart is an example of a project in the Services track of NSDL. A significant component of this project is the use of Concept Maps to support student learning. A representative of the GetSmart project will describe the tools available and early experiences with their use in teaching about computing. 3 Speakers and their topics Jane Prey, NSF DUE Program Officer: NSDL is a long term project with expected growth and development under NSF leadership for some years. The overall view of NSF with regard to this project and the expected results in terms of impact in education will be described.
Ed Fox, Chair of the NSDL Policy Committee and PI of CITIDEL: Overall organization and policies of the NSDL will be discussed so users are aware of approaches regarding privacy vs. personalization, quantity vs. quality, distributed development vs. centralized control, and other issues. Launched early in 2002, the Policy Committee (PC) has helped expand community involvement in governance, setting up five standing committees and several task forces. Representing the roughly 90 projects funded by NSF to develop the NSDL, the PC has focused on policies and guidelines regarding metadata, privacy, and collection construction. It is encouraging support by all who wish to help expand and improve NSDL, leading to widespread use by teachers and learners, and benefits from access to large numbers of educational resources. See http://comm.nsdlib.org/.
Boots Cassel, Co-PI of CITIDEL: Characteristics of NSDL collections and services are described and summarized. Special emphasis is placed on the CITIDEL collection and its potential impact on computing education, but other collections and services are included. These other collections and services include materials of significance in
the broader education of computing students. In addition, the breadth of the NSDL resources support interdisciplinary studies and emerging areas of concentration.
John Impagliazzo, Co-PI of CITIDEL: VIADUCT ( Virginia Instructional Architect for Digital Undergraduate Computing Teaching) is a service for syllabus creation and enhancement using CITIDEL. It is an adaptation and extension of the Instructional Architect (IA) developed at the Utah State University to provide a means for developing, editing and publishing of learning activities that utilize the results of a CITIDEL search. Learning activities can be in the form of lesson plans, laboratory schedules, discussion outlines, etc. containing instructions and guidelines for use both by teachers and students. Published activities can be easily adapted and enhanced for local use. VIADUCT can significantly assist in the sharing of learning activities and resources throughout the computing community. Ann Lally, Co-PI of Get Smart: Among the service projects in NSDL, Get Smart offers course related activities for students and faculty in support of enhanced learning opportunities. Get Smart includes specialized searches for class materials and online facilities for making concept maps and sharing them among teams and class groups. Experiences in the use of concept maps in support of learning will be described. Manuel Perez, Co-PI of CITIDEL: CITIDEL will provide multi-language interfaces with translations done by trusted volunteers. A language-specific translation center will assist translators in their tasks. The center will include tools such as a dictionary of computer terms, a rating system for quality control, and discussion forums. This self-sustaining community of translators will work together to translate the interface to CITIDEL. Initially we are targeting the Hispanic community to find translators and users. However, nothing in our implementation prevents us from having multiple languages. The goal is to increase the amount of use of CITIDEL, the number of users, and hopefully the number of original resources in languages other than English. References [1] NSDL: http://www.nsdl.org [2] CITIDEL: http://www.citidel.org
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