February 2008
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National Science Digital Library: Shaping Educations Cyberinfrastructure
David McArthur
GoH Corp.
In summer 2007, the provided access to more than 2.5 million digital educational resources, covering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from pre-K to postgraduate levels. At that time, the main portal, http://www.nsdl.org/, had been online nearly five years, providing a single entry point to dozens of distributed collections and services, many of which were contributions of the more than 200 small projects that the NSDL program funded through its research tracks.
With this maturity, the is now rethinking NSDL's status as a research program. In one sense, it remains a typical NSF program, operating through the traditional NSF project-award cycle of publishing a solicitation, receiving proposals from R&D teams, and awarding the best among them. In other ways, it is an atypical program because the goal of its projects is not simply to broaden the knowledge base of science education research and practice; it is also to build an integrated enterprise that will persist and be valuable to learners and teachers of all ages.
But whether typical or not, NSDL has reached the point at which it must either change substantially or start winding down. Many NSF programs come and go in less than a decade, often after accomplishing their primary goals and laying a foundation for a new research agenda. As a library, NSDL is becoming mature enough to be an operational center. Because NSF is primarily a research agency, investing further in NSDL would seem to run counter to NSF's policy of not supporting routine science and education operations.
Nonetheless, there are compelling arguments for NSF's continued investment in NSDL—but the nature of that support must change to match NSDL's new purposes. Generally speaking, NSF's policy is to "let a thousand flowers bloom," and to that end, it spawns programs that award distinct projects and that rely on conferences and publications (both traditional and electronic) to foster researcher crosstalk. This is an admirable goal, but I believe that NSDL gives NSF an opportunity to tighten the link among R&D projects: The library is poised to provide a standardized technical infrastructure that encourages—perhaps even requires—a much higher degree of project interaction.
In that mission, I see NSDL growing both as a platform for improving the productivity of educational resource development and transforming education research and also as a tool for creating and managing scientific knowledge about education and learning. More broadly, NSDL could be a key component in building a new cyberinfrastructure for education and education research.
NSF's continued investment in NSDL would have strong implications for how it funds education R&D and how it manages projects to foster effective partnerships among highly diverse and distributed groups of education researchers, developers, and practitioners. Having recently completed a rotator position at NSF, I have been able to acquire an understanding of what NSDL as a library is accomplishing and how NSDL as a program is run. The ideas set forth in this article draw from that dual understanding, but admittedly much of the thinking is speculative and reflects my own views, not necessarily those of the NSF.
Send Link
Printer Friendly
Cover Feature
National Science Digital Library: Shaping Educations Cyberinfrastructure
David McArthur
GoH Corp.
In summer 2007, the provided access to more than 2.5 million digital educational resources, covering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from pre-K to postgraduate levels. At that time, the main portal, http://www.nsdl.org/, had been online nearly five years, providing a single entry point to dozens of distributed collections and services, many of which were contributions of the more than 200 small projects that the NSDL program funded through its research tracks.
With this maturity, the is now rethinking NSDL's status as a research program. In one sense, it remains a typical NSF program, operating through the traditional NSF project-award cycle of publishing a solicitation, receiving proposals from R&D teams, and awarding the best among them. In other ways, it is an atypical program because the goal of its projects is not simply to broaden the knowledge base of science education research and practice; it is also to build an integrated enterprise that will persist and be valuable to learners and teachers of all ages.
But whether typical or not, NSDL has reached the point at which it must either change substantially or start winding down. Many NSF programs come and go in less than a decade, often after accomplishing their primary goals and laying a foundation for a new research agenda. As a library, NSDL is becoming mature enough to be an operational center. Because NSF is primarily a research agency, investing further in NSDL would seem to run counter to NSF's policy of not supporting routine science and education operations.
Nonetheless, there are compelling arguments for NSF's continued investment in NSDL—but the nature of that support must change to match NSDL's new purposes. Generally speaking, NSF's policy is to "let a thousand flowers bloom," and to that end, it spawns programs that award distinct projects and that rely on conferences and publications (both traditional and electronic) to foster researcher crosstalk. This is an admirable goal, but I believe that NSDL gives NSF an opportunity to tighten the link among R&D projects: The library is poised to provide a standardized technical infrastructure that encourages—perhaps even requires—a much higher degree of project interaction.
In that mission, I see NSDL growing both as a platform for improving the productivity of educational resource development and transforming education research and also as a tool for creating and managing scientific knowledge about education and learning. More broadly, NSDL could be a key component in building a new cyberinfrastructure for education and education research.
NSF's continued investment in NSDL would have strong implications for how it funds education R&D and how it manages projects to foster effective partnerships among highly diverse and distributed groups of education researchers, developers, and practitioners. Having recently completed a rotator position at NSF, I have been able to acquire an understanding of what NSDL as a library is accomplishing and how NSDL as a program is run. The ideas set forth in this article draw from that dual understanding, but admittedly much of the thinking is speculative and reflects my own views, not necessarily those of the NSF.
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