The Leonard Lief Library and Department of Art at Lehman College will create an Animated Information Literacy Advocate to explore the feasibility of using animation to foster information literacy in college-age students. Information literacy skills, including assessing information, locating sources, thinking critically, and acting ethically, are especially vital for young people entering the workforce. Four videos featuring an animated advocate developed using Kabuki RealTime Animation software will introduce learners to critical thinking in dramatic scenarios. Focus groups will be conducted to measure student satisfaction and measure outcomes of learning. The advocate will be the first animated character to deliver information literacy instruction, providing the broader library field with a new area of research in online instruction as well as the ability to test three pedagogical strategies.
Purdue University will develop CrowdAsk - A Crowdsource Library Help System, a web-based help system for academic libraries. CrowdAsk will allow librarians, students, and faculty to ask and answer questions about library resources and tools. CrowdAsk will also support ranking of questions and answers by users as well as the use of scores and badges for user motivation. The project addresses issues of existing fragmented library and academic help channels, content reuse and preservation, and lack of user (particularly expert) participation. CrowdAsk will be open source and shared with the public. It will impact the way users interact with libraries, as well as promote better understanding and use of library resources. The project will give users power to support others in getting research help.
Westport Library, with its partners, Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and Connecticut State Library - Division of Library Development (CSL-DLD), and with SPARK! Consulting, will introduce a new model of maker space in libraries and a way to systematically integrate the culture of interactive "making" into the library profession. Westport will introduce a culture of innovation, while honoring the needs of more traditional libraries. There will be self-directed, hands-on maker experiences; maker workshops; and makers-in-residence who will support workshops and innovation labs on topics such as robotics, LED quilt creations, and tinkering with home electronics repairs. The library will also create Interactive Innovation Stations (iStations) to introduce people to the concepts and techniques of innovative thinking. It will be an environment where people can experiment, take calculated risks, and work collaboratively.
Stanford University Library, in partnership with the University of Santa Cruz, will develop a publishable metadata scheme for digital games, including ontology and terminology, as well as a system and tools for citation of in-game events and game states. While the work of collection and preservation is underway, digital games present unique and complex stewardship problems, including methods for description, discovery and citation. As acquisition of this type of collection increases, challenges with cataloguing, storage, and access are compounded. This framework will provide a complete solution to the closely linked problems of finding, accessing, and citing digital games, a growing and important part of modern culture.
The North Carolina State University Libraries and its partners will create a model framework for an interactive learning environment, applying the principles of gaming, artificial intelligence, systems automation, and experience design. Display screens, interactive applications, and computerized information systems have become almost ubiquitous within informal learning spaces in libraries and museums. The resulting convergence of physical and virtual environments, with the attendant urgency to fill screens with content that is meaningful and interactive, creates new challenges for keeping labor-intense digital content and applications fresh and relevant. The model will include an integrated assessment loop and tools for improving services to users.
The Metropolitan Reference and Research Library Agency's National Digital Stewardship Residency in New York (NDSR-NY) addresses the library profession's lack of staff who are trained to successfully acquire, manage, and preserve digital materials. The three-year project builds on the pilot program (NSDR) developed by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It will support 10 students in gaining skills and experience to begin successful careers in digital stewardship; increase the number of skilled professionals; and help replicate the model residency program across the country. The NDSR-NY project will transform the landscape of certificate programs by using a blended approach that combines education with practical, hands-on work and by bringing together best practices to build a tested curriculum that teaches core competencies.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Margo Padilla
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Harvard Library's Testing the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR-MA) Model in Massachusetts will test the pilot program (NSDR-DC) developed by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. to help 10 students gain the skills, experience, and network to begin successful careers in digital stewardship; to increase the number of skilled digital stewardship professionals; and to aid replication of the model residency program across the country. Students will gain both theoretical understanding and real world experience while host institutions will gain experience, training materials, new tools, professional relationships, and staff. The digital stewardship community at large will have more well-trained and networked professionals and future leaders along with curriculum and training materials to help tackle today's nationwide preservation and curation challenges.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Andrea Goethals
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The University of Maryland's project, Curate Cloud: Building Digital Curation Excellence through Professional Education, Cloud Computing and Community Outreach, will provide cultural heritage institutions with tools and resources to help them evaluate, select, and implement digital curation solutions. The project focuses on underrepresented institutions, developing and deploying an innovative research and learning environment that will lower financial, technical, and infrastructure barriers. Twenty mid-career professionals will enroll in a new certificate program to gain theoretical and practical knowledge about digital curation and cloud computing and will design and implement their own cloud-based curated collections. Curate Cloud will help transform the field by developing an open-source research and educational platform and by removing barriers to access for curation tools and resources.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jimmy Lin
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Curating Research Assets and Data using Lifecycle Education (CRADLE): Data Management Education Tools for Librarians, Archivists, & Content Creators is a collaboration among the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill's School of Information & Library Science, the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, and the University Libraries. It is focused on helping data librarians, archivists, and information and library science students learn about data management and on providing instruction to data creators in their institutions. The project will result in free online courses on data management for researchers and information professionals to be offered through a "free university" platform as well as face-to-face workshops involving UNC staff, faculty, and students. Support is provided for two CRADLE fellows who will learn about and contribute to the development of this work on effective and efficient data lifecycle management.
The cybersecurity workforce is one of the most critical employment sectors in the country. The Cybersecurity for Science Information (CSI): Developing Workforce Proficiency project brings together the University of Tennessee (UT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop plans for curriculum and research opportunities that will provide students with knowledge and hands-on experiences to confront today's ever-changing cybersecurity challenges. For this planning grant, UT and ORNL will collaborate with the University of New Mexico Library and the Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop a detailed recruitment strategy; blueprints of cybersecurity educational modules; a platform for sustainable curriculum design; and a strategy for ongoing assessment The project will also identify additional stakeholder groups.
The project will develop and study the impact of science simulations, referred to as sims, on middle school childrens' understanding of science and the scientific process. The project will investigate: 1) how characteristics of simulation design (e.g., interface design, visual representations, dynamic feedback, and the implicit scaffolding within the simulation) influence engagement and learning and how responses to these design features vary across grade-level and diverse populations; 2) how various models of instructional integration of a simulation affect how students interact with the simulation, what they learn, and their preparation for future learning; 3) how these interactions vary across grade-level and diverse populations; and 4) what critical instructional features, particularly in the type and level of scaffolding, are needed. Working with teachers, the team will select 25 existing sims for study. Teachers and students will be interviewed to test for usability, engagement, interpretation, and learning across content areas. The goal will be to identify successful design alternatives and to formulate generalized design guidelines. In parallel, pull-out and classroom-based studies will investigate a variety of use models and their impact on learning. Ten new simulations will then be developed to test these guidelines. Products will include the 35 sims with related support materials available for free from a website; new technologies to collect real-time data on student use of sims; and guidelines for the development of sims for this age population. The team will also publish research on how students learn from sims.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine PerkinsDaniel SchwartzMichael DubsonNoah Podolefsky
The PhET Interactive Simulations group at the University of Colorado is expanding their expertise of physics simulations to the development of eight-to-ten simulations designed to enhance students' content learning in general chemistry courses. The simulations are being created to provide highly engaging learning environments which connect real life phenomena to the underlying science, provide dynamic interactivity and feedback, and scaffold inquiry by what is displayed and controlled. In a second strand of the project, a group of experienced faculty participants are developing and testing lecture materials, classroom activities, and homework, all coordinated with well-established, research-based teaching methods like clicker questions, peer instruction, and/or tutorial-style activities, to leverage learning gains in conjunction with the simulations. The third strand of the project focuses on research on classroom implementation, including measures of student learning and engagement, and research on simulation design. This strand is establishing how specific characteristics of chemistry sim design influence engagement and learning, how various models of instructional integration of the sims affect classroom environments as well as learning and engagement, and how sim design and classroom context factors impact faculty use of sims. To ensure success the project is basing sim design on educational research, utilizing high-level software professionals (to ensure technically sophisticated software, graphics, and interfaces) working hand-in-hand with chemistry education researchers, and is using the established PhET team to cycle through coding, testing, and refinement towards a goal of an effective and user friendly sim. The collection of simulations, classroom materials, and faculty support resources form a suite of free, web-based resources that anyone can use to improve teaching and learning in chemistry. The simulations are promoting deep conceptual understanding and increasing positive attitudes about science and technology which in turn is leading to improved education for students in introductory chemistry courses both in the United States and around the world.