DLESE in Context: Educational Computing, Digital Libraries and Scientific Education

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DLESE in Context Educational Computing, Digital
Libraries and Scientific Education
William Y. Arms Cornell University
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Acknowledgement and Disclaimer
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.
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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)
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Access to Original Scientific Materials
The combination of research and education is not
just rhetoric!
Example Technical specifications (e.g., W3C)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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
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NSF-funded Programs
New ideas
New ideas
Research
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Core Integration Philosophy

• 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.

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How Big might the NSDL be?

• 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

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Resources for Core Integration
Core Integration

Budget 4-6 million Staff 25 -
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How can a small team, without direct management
control, create a very large-scale digital
library?
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Where is the Center of the Universe?
Alexandria
Library of Congress
Elsevier
NSDL
Joe's Pictures
Informedia
DLESE
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Where is the Center of the Universe?
British Library
Internet Archive
Library of Congress
Elsevier
OCLC
Harvard
NSDL
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Where is the Center of the Universe?
Google
email
Office
Course web sites
Bill Arms
Directories
News and weather
NSDL
Technical documentation
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Collections
The NSDL program funds only a fraction of the
relevant collections.
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Every Collection is Different
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The Core Integration Task ...
... to provide a coherent set of collections and
services across great diversity.
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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
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Levels of Interoperability
Level Agreements Example Federation Strict use
of standards AACR, MARC (syntax, semantic, Z
39.50 and business) Harvesting Digital
libraries expose Open Archives metadata
simple metadata harvesting protocol and
registry Gathering Digital libraries do not
Web crawlers cooperate services
must and search engines seek out information
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Searching
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)
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Broadcast Searching does not Scale
Collections
User interface server
User
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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.
Users
Metadata repository
Collections
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Search Architecture
Metadata repository
Portal
OAI
SDLIP
Search andDiscoveryServices
Portal
http
Portal
Collections
James Allan, Bruce Croft (University of
Massachusetts, Amherst)
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The Metadata Repository as a Resource
Support for Service Providers

• 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.

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Metadata Strategy

• 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

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Collection-level Operations
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.
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Quality Control
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.
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The Mortal behind the Portal
This space left intentionally blank.
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Research Challenges

• 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

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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.