Focus Group Methodology  Five focus groups science educators (n = 38)  K-5, 6-12 (inservice and preservice group), undergraduate faculty (two groups)  Instructed to provide advice to DLESE and NSDL on policies, priorities, and best practices for building useful digital collections for classroom use  Each focus group lasted between 60 and 90 minutes: 1. Briefed on DLESE and NSDL, and demo of DLESE collection 2. Briefed on relationships between the World Wide Web, the DLESE Broad Collection, and the DLESE Reviewed Collection 3. Explanation of the ‘3Ps,’ how to develop importance categories 4. Each person directed to an individual computer and given minutes to evaluate 4 educational web sites 5. Getting to resources from bookmarks, not DLESE 6. Group discussion - contribute the positive and negative criteria, then 3P’s

Evaluation Rubric

Results (1) - Policies, Priorities, Practices  Scientific accuracy (policy, all groups but k-5)  Complement, don’t replicate traditional materials (priority, all groups)  Libraries should label biased sites in the item-level metadata (all groups except K-5; either policy or priority)  ‘I know that you know’  Library policies or priorities should limit the accessioning of sites with advertising (all groups)  Discrete advertising, preferably related to scientific or educational products, that does not detract from learning (i.e. no pop-ups)  Frustrated with current state of web resource design (all groups)  All sites had usability problems, but particularly ambiguously rated (0-1) sites  Presence of Distractions - Student time on task a concern across all grade levels

Results (2) - Calibration, Added Value  Gestalt ratings - people agree more on ‘good’ resources (lower stdev) than ‘bad’ (higher stdev)  Consistency between rankings of teachers and DLESE collections expert  Remarkable consistency in recommendations across middle, high, and undergrad groups  K-5 have very different concerns  Participants expect library metadata to add value over the content of resources, not just to summarize  High expectations for NSF-funded projects  Noting bias and classroom uses (but how?)  Accurate and more precise designation of grade levels (and standards)  K-5: reading level often assumed to be too high  Many: grade ranges too broad

Recommendations - from JCDL 1. Shift from growing the collection quickly to growing it selectively  Higher standard of selection criteria for collections accessioning and funded cataloging efforts (distractions, advertising, interactivity) 2. Tightly couple collections development and library use  Co-development model provides context for design improvements, assessment, generating contextual information and reviewing  Library – school district – content provider partnerships 3. Reviewing  Identifying the ‘problematic’ is as important as the ‘good’

Designing for “Quality”  Relevance of search results  Metadata descriptions  Resources  Annotations and reviews Library systems, policies, work processes  Role of mediating tools such as digital libraries  Models: unaided human mind informational site  Predictive and Evaluative Judgments (Rieh 2002) Library Resource Classroom use