1. 1 DLESE in Context: Educational Computing, Digital Libraries and Scientific Education William Y. Arms Cornell University

2. 2 The NSDL is a program of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education. The NSDL Core Integration is a collaboration between the University Center for Atmospheric Research (Dave Fulker), Columbia University (Kate Wittenberg) and Cornell University (Bill Arms). The Technical Director is Carl Lagoze (Cornell University). The ideas discussed in this talk do not represent the official views of the NSF or the Core Integration team. Acknowledgement and Disclaimer

3. 3 A Dilemma Studies repeated show that mathematical and scientific education in the USA is much inferior to other developed nations... but... In both research and industry, mathematicians and scientists educated in the USA lead the world. We must be doing something right!

4. 4 Technology in Education Observations on Undergraduate Science Education Based on personal experience of major universities: Oxford, London School of Economics, Sussex, Dartmouth, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell And one special case: Open University

5. 5 Technology: Printed Materials An Historical Trend Tutorial system based on reading journal articles Professional scientific books Text books written by scientists Text books written by professional authors

6. 6 Technology: Television The Rhetoric (1960s) A revolution in education. Television will bring the greatest teachers of the world to every student... University television studios The British Open University The Annenberg CPB project

7. 7 The Open University (since 1971) The Plan Television, national leaders, small central staff The Result Print, augmented by home experimental kits, videos, computer programs, etc. Observations Top-quality distance education Lower cost higher education

8. 8 Technology: Personal Computers The Rhetoric (1980s) A revolution in education. Every student will be able to learn from interactive computer materials created by the world's greatest teachers... Major programs from Apple and IBM Educational computing groups in almost every university EDUCOM awards Andrew (Carnegie Mellon), Athena (M.I.T.)

9. 9 Andrew at Carnegie Mellon The Plan (1982) Ubiquitous computing, high speed network, powerful computers for all. Support for educational computing in all disciplines. Major support from IBM and many others. Achievements (1990) Ubiquitous computing, high speed network, powerful computers for all. Research computing in almost every discipline. Computing in the libraries and administration.

10. 10 Andrew at Carnegie Mellon Survey of Educational Uses (1990) 44% of faculty explicitly expected students to use computers in their classes. Word processing, email, library materials widely used. Very wide use of professional and research tools (statistics, graphics, symbolic mathematics, CAD/CAM, programming languages, spread sheets). Very little use of educational materials.

11. 11 Technology: the Web The Rhetoric (1990s) The Internet has the potential to transform undergraduate education... Distance education (e.g., eCornell) Digital libraries (e.g., DLESE, NSDL)

12. 12 Digital Libraries for Education Potential Benefits 1.Provide faculty and students with access to original scientific materials. 2.Provide faculty with materials used in preparing courses. 3.Provide communication among faculty and students. 4.Deliver specific educational materials. (Arms, 1997)

13. 13 Access to Original Scientific Materials The combination of research and education is not just rhetoric! Example Technical specifications (e.g., W3C)

14. 14 The Open Access Web Before the web Few people had access to scientific, medical, legal information. With the web Much high quality information is available with open access. Examples Distance education (e.g., Open University) Democratization (e.g., Physics)

15. 15 Materials used in Preparing Courses Capital Intensive Education Major cost is in course development Marginal cost of course delivery in small Examples Course libraries (Dartmouth, 1970) Course web sites (M.I.T. Open Courseware Initiative, 2001)

16. 16 Communication among Faculty and Students Examples Course preparation (information retrieval) Small rural colleges Technology can be very simple (e.g., mailing lists, web sites, automobiles)

17. 17 Specific Educational Materials Examples Curricula, problem sets, etc. Computer aided instruction (e.g., simulations, visualizations, trial datasets, online laboratories) Digital libraries can assemble materials in specific subject domains (e.g., DLESE)

18. 18 The NSDL Program NSF's Objective Build a comprehensive digital library for all aspects of science education...... whatever that means! NSF's Approach Solicitation encouraged wide diversity of proposals divided into general categories Best 60+ proposals funded -- more to follow Grants allow projects flexibility

19. 19 NSF-funded Programs NSF Solicitation Proposals Research New ideas

20. 20 Big is Good It is possible to build a very large digital library with a small staff. But... Every aspect of the library must be planned with scalability in mind. Some compromises will be made. Core Integration Philosophy

21. 21 A comprehensive digital library for all aspects of science education Five year targets 1,000,000 different users 10,000,000 digital objects 10,000 to 100,000 independent sites How Big might the NSDL be?

22. 22 Resources for Core Integration Core Integration Budget $4-6 million Staff 25 - 30 Management Diffuse How can a small team, without direct management control, create a very large-scale digital library?

23. 23 Where is the Center of the Universe? NSDL Alexandria Elsevier Informedia Library of Congress Joe's Pictures DLESE

24. 24 Where is the Center of the Universe? NSDL British Library Elsevier OCLC Library of Congress Internet Archive Harvard

25. 25 Where is the Center of the Universe? NSDL email Course web sites News and weather Bill Arms Office Technical documentation Google Directories

26. 26 Collections The NSDL program funds only a fraction of the relevant collections.

27. 27 Every Collection is Different

28. 28... to provide a coherent set of collections and services across great diversity. The Core Integration Task...

29. 29 Interoperability The Problem Conventional approaches to interoperability require partners to support agreements (technical, content, and business But NSDL needs thousands of very different partners... most of whom are not directly part of the NSDL program The Approach A spectrum of interoperability

30. 30 Levels of Interoperability LevelAgreementsExample FederationStrict use of standardsAACR, MARC (syntax, semantic, Z 39.50 and business) HarvestingDigital libraries exposeOpen Archives metadata; simplemetadata harvesting protocol and registry GatheringDigital libraries do not Web crawlers cooperate; services mustand search engines seek out information

31. 31 What to Index? When possible, full text indexing is excellent, but full text indexing is not possible for all materials (non-textual, no access for indexing). Comprehensive metadata is an alternative, but available for very few of the materials. What Architecture to Use? Few collections support an established search protocol (e.g., Z39.50) Searching

32. 32 Broadcast Searching does not Scale User interface server User Collections

33. 33 Users Collections Metadata repository The Metadata Repository Services The metadata repository is a resource for service providers. It holds information about every collection and item known to the NSDL.

34. 34 Search Architecture Portal Search and Discovery Services Collections SDLIP OAI http Metadata repository James Allan, Bruce Croft (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

35. 35 The Metadata Repository as a Resource Records are exposed through Open Archives Initiative harvesting protocol. Core Integration team will provide some services based on the metadata repository. The architecture encourages others to build services. Support for Service Providers

36. 36 Metadata is expensive The NSDL cannot afford to create it manually Support eight standard formats Collect all existing metadata in these formats Provide crosswalks to Dublin Core Expose records in the metadata repository for others to harvest Concentrate on collection-level metadata Use automatic generation to augment item-level metadata Metadata Strategy

37. 37 Material in the NSDL is selected and managed as collections: Alexandria Digital Library Cornell course web sites DLESE Joe's web page Human effort will be used to select and integrate major collections. Automated methods (e.g., web crawling) will be used to identify and integrate additional collections. Collection-level Operations

38. 38 The Problem Material in the NSDL should be relevant. But we cannot select each item individually. The Approach Most selection and quality control decisions are made at a collection level, not at an item level. Information about quality will be maintained in a collection-level metadata record, which is stored in a central metadata repository. This metadata is made available to NSDL service providers. User interfaces can display quality information. Quality Control

39. 39 The Mortal behind the Portal [This space left intentionally blank.]

40. 40 Extending the Architecture to Support Greater Riches  Federations with rich sets of agreements (e.g., MARC, Z39.50)  Rich object models (e.g., interactive, dynamic, continuous time)  Language tools (e.g, thesaurus, gazetteer)... and Lesser Riches  Web crawling  Automated quality control Research Challenges

41. 41 Concluding Thoughts Technology will not reform education... but it can enhance it. We don't know where we are going... but we are going in a promising direction. Our most cherished dreams may prove to be illusions... but some of our greatest successes will be serendipity.