Ensemble Computing in the National Science Digital Library (NSDL)

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) was created by the National Science Foundation to provide organized access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. As a national network of learning environments, resources, and partnerships, NSDL seeks to serve a vital role as STEM educational cyberlearning for the nation, meeting the informational and technological needs of educators and learners at all levels. The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) was created by the National Science Foundation to provide organized access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. As a national network of learning environments, resources, and partnerships, NSDL seeks to serve a vital role as STEM educational cyberlearning for the nation, meeting the informational and technological needs of educators and learners at all levels. About NSDL: nsdl.org

NSDL Pathways Pathway projects represent some community Provide resources and services of particular interest to the target community. Some are disciplinary based: Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Materials Science, etc. Others by group: Teachers’ Domain, Middle School Portal Pathway projects represent some community Provide resources and services of particular interest to the target community. Some are disciplinary based: Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Materials Science, etc. Others by group: Teachers’ Domain, Middle School Portal

Ensemble Pathway Ensemble is a new NSF NSDL Pathways project working to establish a national, distributed digital library for computing education. Our project is building a distributed portal providing access to a broad range of existing educational resources for computing while preserving the collections and their associated curation processes. We want to encourage contribution, use, reuse, review and evaluation of educational materials at multiple levels of granularity and we seek to support the full range of computing education communities including computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information science, information systems and information technology as well as other areas often called “computing + X” or “X informatics.” Computingportal.org

Challenges CHALLENGE 1: MANY DISCIPLINES, EACH WITH A DISTINCT FOCUS CHALLENGE 2: MANY DISCIPLINES LEAD TO MANY COMMUNITIES CHALLENGE 1: MANY DISCIPLINES, EACH WITH A DISTINCT FOCUS CHALLENGE 2: MANY DISCIPLINES LEAD TO MANY COMMUNITIES

Purpose The mission of the Ensemble Pathway for Computing is to provide a comprehensive, distributed portal to support the computing education communities in all of their diversity while preserving and leveraging their efforts, activities, and collections.

Goal 1 Goal: Support the many distinct yet overlapping educational programs in computing and their associated communities Objective: Facilitate the articulation of overlapping materials–each with its own distinctions/ focus/point of view–across the broad spectrum of educational programs in computing in conjunction with relevant professional societies, as they develop and modify curriculum documents. Include articulation of appropriate computing materials with the resources of other STEM Pathways Objective: Preserve and promote the use of the huge variety of existing, independent, often curated and focused collections, from which all prospective users can derive value Objective: Promote and facilitate the use of Ensemble in our target audience communities Objective: Establish/host new repositories, as appropriate, to support new efforts that arise. Goal: Support the many distinct yet overlapping educational programs in computing and their associated communities Objective: Facilitate the articulation of overlapping materials–each with its own distinctions/ focus/point of view–across the broad spectrum of educational programs in computing in conjunction with relevant professional societies, as they develop and modify curriculum documents. Include articulation of appropriate computing materials with the resources of other STEM Pathways Objective: Preserve and promote the use of the huge variety of existing, independent, often curated and focused collections, from which all prospective users can derive value Objective: Promote and facilitate the use of Ensemble in our target audience communities Objective: Establish/host new repositories, as appropriate, to support new efforts that arise.

Goal 2 Goal: Support contribution, use, reuse, review, and evaluation of educational materials, at multiple levels of granularity (widely, using portal, harvesting, federated search, and Web 2.0 technologies) Objective: Support information use and reuse at fine-grain (in addition to use and reuse at the complete learning object, and the collection, levels) with provenance automatically created an maintained. Reuse of educational resources often occurs at fine-grain. Seeing (parts of) a learning object in (multiple) context(s) of use can provide insight into the learning object Objective: Instrument the Ensemble portal and digital library to track deposit, use, and reuse of learning objects, to support evaluation of this project as well as the educational materials, and to provide quantitative data to teachers and faculty, including for promotion and tenure Objective: Support annotation and peer review of educational materials in the digital library. Also, support the construction and use of innovative learning objects including concept maps, strand maps, Walden paths, and algorithm visualizations. Goal: Support contribution, use, reuse, review, and evaluation of educational materials, at multiple levels of granularity (widely, using portal, harvesting, federated search, and Web 2.0 technologies) Objective: Support information use and reuse at fine-grain (in addition to use and reuse at the complete learning object, and the collection, levels) with provenance automatically created an maintained. Reuse of educational resources often occurs at fine-grain. Seeing (parts of) a learning object in (multiple) context(s) of use can provide insight into the learning object Objective: Instrument the Ensemble portal and digital library to track deposit, use, and reuse of learning objects, to support evaluation of this project as well as the educational materials, and to provide quantitative data to teachers and faculty, including for promotion and tenure Objective: Support annotation and peer review of educational materials in the digital library. Also, support the construction and use of innovative learning objects including concept maps, strand maps, Walden paths, and algorithm visualizations.

Goal 3 3. Goal: Support inquiry-driven, active, and engaging use of the Ensemble portal and digital library through the entire life-span and life-cycle of learning objects Objective: Support social software capabilities in, and in concert with, Ensemble Objective: Index resources with topical designation (based on the Computing Ontology), curricular designation (based on the various curricula and the articulation of commonality described in Objective 1.1), and with user-supplied tagging Objective: Support traditional capabilities of browsing and searching as well as new capabilities for profiled or personalized use of the portal–in the presence of multiple curated collections, fine-grained learning objects, and annotation. 3. Goal: Support inquiry-driven, active, and engaging use of the Ensemble portal and digital library through the entire life-span and life-cycle of learning objects Objective: Support social software capabilities in, and in concert with, Ensemble Objective: Index resources with topical designation (based on the Computing Ontology), curricular designation (based on the various curricula and the articulation of commonality described in Objective 1.1), and with user-supplied tagging Objective: Support traditional capabilities of browsing and searching as well as new capabilities for profiled or personalized use of the portal–in the presence of multiple curated collections, fine-grained learning objects, and annotation.

Goal 4 Goal: Promote the development of, and interaction with, the NSDL 4.1. Objective: Use and extend open source software Objective: Apply results from a broad range of previously developed tools and technologies based on prior funding from NSF, including prior NSDL projects Objective: Facilitate the adoption of the fundamentally generic capabilities included in Ensemble (such as supporting fine-grained learning objects, annotation, review, instrumentation, and social software) to other Pathway projects, and other NSDL portals and digital libraries. Goal: Promote the development of, and interaction with, the NSDL 4.1. Objective: Use and extend open source software Objective: Apply results from a broad range of previously developed tools and technologies based on prior funding from NSF, including prior NSDL projects Objective: Facilitate the adoption of the fundamentally generic capabilities included in Ensemble (such as supporting fine-grained learning objects, annotation, review, instrumentation, and social software) to other Pathway projects, and other NSDL portals and digital libraries.

The Ensemble Structure Original

Project timeline We are at the end of Year 1 now

Building on CITIDEL The Computing Ontology Project Tech Tools (not officially released yet) Walden’s Paths Superimposed Information And others…. CITIDEL The Computing Ontology Project Tech Tools (not officially released yet) Walden’s Paths Superimposed Information And others….