Adding Value to the DLESE Collections through Reviews and Annotations

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE; www.dlese.org) provides access to over 6000 resources of potential use for teaching and learning about the Earth and environment. The PI will enhance the value of this collection by providing review and annotation information about DLESE resources, so that resource creators can improve their resources, educators can strengthen their relevant pedagogical expertise, and all users can build on the experience of their peers in selecting and deploying resources. This will be accomplished by scaling up the DLESE Community Review System and developing an annotation service for related pedagogical resources. The existing DLESE Community Review System (CRS; crs.dlese.org) gathers, aggregates, and disseminates web-based feedback from people who have used DLESE resources to teach or learn. We propose to scale up the CRS by: (a) embedding an emphasis on the value of pooling pedagogical insights via the CRS throughout DLESE s outreach message, (b) opening CRS review to all instructionally-oriented resources in the DLESE collection, (c) soliciting reviews by email from registered members of the DLESE community whenever a new resource becomes available for Review that matches their interest profile, and (d) generating individualized summary reports for instructors by aggregating learners reviews from their own students. The goal is to reach the point where regular DLESE users habitually check out the CRS annotations before choosing or using a new learning resource, and habitually feed their experiences and expertise back to the community after using a DLESE resource.