Brandon Muramatsu

Best practices in the design, development and use of courseware in engineering education

This paper discusses best practices in the design, development and use of engineering education courseware by examining the courseware recognized through the Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. Led by NEEDS - A Digital Library for Engineering Education and supported by industry, the courseware recognized through the Premier Award since 1997 covers most engineering disciplines; ranges from case studies to collections of Java applets; addresses both formal and informal learning; and targets learners at multiple levels. The Premier Award evaluation criteria are transformed into best practices in design and development of engineering courseware. Through illustrative examples drawn from the submissions recognized by the Premier Award, courseware developers will be able to improve their designs leading to potential increases in learning effectiveness

The national SMETE digital library program (panel session)

“To catalyze and support continual improvements in the quality of scien ce, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) education, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has established the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program. The resulting digital library, a network of learning environments and resources for SMET education, will ultimately meet the needs of students and teachers at all levels-K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and lifelong learning-in both individual and collaborative settings, as well as formal and informal modes.” -National Science Foundation, 2001 The national in the NSDL program is quickly becoming a reality with the broad reach of the currently funded projects. This panel session will provide bring together the leaders developing the National SMETE Digital Library to provide a brief background and broad overview of the NSDL program. Panelists will discuss the overall vision and broad steps underway to develop the National SMETE Digital Library. Building the National SMETE Digital Library presents many challenges: Developing a shared vision for the form and function of the NSDL; Meeting the needs of diverse learners and of the many disciplines encompassed by the NSDL; Acquiring input from the community of users to ensure that the NSDL is both used and useable; Evaluating progress and impacts; Integrating technologies that already exist, and the development of new technologies; and Providing mechanisms for sharing and cooperation of knowledge and resources among NSDL collaborators.

If you build it, will they come? Lessons learned from the workshop on participant interaction in digital libraries

A workshop hosted by the Math Forum, brought together over thirty experts from the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program and representatives from online communities to discuss and identify promising models of participant involvement for the NSDL and NSDL-funded projects. The workshop leveraged the expertise of attendees to identify tools and reporting mechanisms, develop strategies and formulate recommendation that helps NSDL projects incorporate, support and grow the communities who use their digital libraries. Workshop attendees also provided a rich set of examples of how users are currently involved in building and maintaining NSDL digital libraries and the potential impact of their involvement. Participant involvement is a critical factor not only in developing educational digital libraries, but also in sustaining the resources, the technology and most importantly, the communities who use them.

Towards a digital learning community for engineering education

The paper presents lessons learned from the decade of experience NEEDS (National Engineering Education Delivery System) has in developing and running a digital library for engineering education. It demonstrates and discusses current features and services. NEEDS has developed a scalable infrastructure that allows engineering educators to locate and discuss digital learning resources and participate as part of a community of practice. NEEDS is now in the process of expanding to include a broader community of learners and educators in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education (SMETE).

Use vs. access: design and use in educational digital libraries

The poster will compare and contrast the design and usage assumptions of existing educational digital libraries and repositories to challenge digital library developers to meet the needs of their increasingly sophisticated users. Traditionally, assumptions have focused on access to a site and discovery of content, whereas we define use as content and its application (context, audience, etc.). In this poster we will review the assumptions that have driven the design of digital libraries, their services and evaluation. Measures of success such as page views of metadata rest on assumptions associated with access, i.e., the number of times a metadata record is displayed. This measure provides a very limited view of how a digital library is used. We believe that educational digital libraries need to go beyond such a limited view and think about what people actually do with material: Are they using it? Are they returning to it? Are they modifying it? Are they sharing it with others? We will explore an alternate set of metrics for determining the success (or failure) of educational digital libraries by examining metrics focused on use of the contents of educational digital libraries.

Implementation Issues on the Quality Evaluation of Web-Based Courses and Digital Learning Resources

The emergence of the Web as a delivery mechanism for education has led a number of organizations to develop and implement quality evaluation criteria for digital learning resources and Web- based courses. The Chinese E-Learning Technology Standardization Committee is developing a specification for evaluating Web-based courses. This paper introduces the background on the standard, CELTS-22, and its guidelines for use. Further, this paper explores critical implementation issues through a case study of two similar evaluation criteria and systems that are used by NEEDS – A Digital Library for Engineering Education and MERLOT – the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching in the United States.

Innovative uses of engineering courseware available through NEEDS-the National Engineering Education Delivery System

This presentation addresses two questions: what kinds of teaching innovations are available on NEEDS; and how do faculty adapt or adopt courseware developed by others for their own use in the classroom? The first question is addressed by a short demonstration of how NEEDS works and precedes the discussion of how the innovations have been used in the classroom. The response to the second question is based on the results of a case study of faculty use of the Premier Courseware of 1997.