Collaboration, Collective Perspectives and Practices
The highly collaborative nature of the NSDL program has worked well through an overarching framework of shared mission, interoperable technology, and common policies which are customized to meet the needs and interests of the communities taking part in NSDL. NSDL priorities support dissemination of high quality, sharable STEM resources through metadata with open source software and protocols, such as Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and based upon consistent and community-based practices, such as the NSDL privacy policies. The NSDL mission not only reinforces objectives recognized in the MatDL project, such as the Dublin Core metadata schema, but also guides MatDL’s practices in areas under development such as reuse and repurposing of information. Most importantly, for the many projects taking part in the NSDL program, this collective identity represents a recognizable presence of credibility and stability in the larger STEM communities and that presence has a greater collective impact than any single project could have. Correspondingly, the individual projects representing specific audiences and disciplines contribute to the NSDL’s clear vision for targeting particular needs and emerging interests within STEM communities.
The NSDL collective identity is made up of the larger network component (i.e., NSDL) which is customized by the “community” component “(e.g., Materials Digital Library Pathway). Both components team up to enhance the credibility and stability that NSDL & Materials Digital Library Pathway carry in the scientific community. NSDL, as the network component, contributes broad outreach, visibility, and connections to other parts of STEM initiatives while MatDL, the community component, brings out the specific and emerging interests and needs of the materials community. MatDL is more readily accepted the STEM community because of its participation in the NSDL while the NSDL is strengthened as MatDL’s involvement in the materials community grows. A key factor in the NSDL collective identity is NSDL’s participation in the NSF peer-reviewed grant model because it reinforces credibility and confidence within STEM community.
Contributing to the creation of NSDL’s multidisciplinary enterprise gives individual projects, like MatDL, broader possibilities and approaches. The variety of groups involved provides many opportunities for networking to discover who is involved in what areas. The multi-institutional structure of NSDL encourages individual projects to informally exchange ideas and expertise with one another which may not have occurred without the NSDL framework linking their individual efforts. The exchange often leads to streamlined and collaborative activities by which the individual groups work together to reach multidisciplinary audiences. As an example, MatDL and ChemCollective, two individual projects with mutual interests in virtual labs for undergraduate education are contributing to a larger, multidisciplinary outreach, connecting with audiences that individually would have been difficult for each project to reach.
In addition to developing collective perspective and practices, NSDL has regularly initiated and supported numerous small group workshops to bring together a cross section of people and projects focused on particular issues of common interest throughout its evolution as a program. These informal and close interactions are particularly effective in being informative, initiating communication, and increasing the likelihood for group collaboration. For example, Pathways, like MatDL, are domain and audience focused projects. As a result of regular meetings and discussions, our individual projects have worked together to begin offer joint outreach at professional society meetings on an ongoing basis. Workshops have also brought NSDL projects together with other NSF efforts and professional STEM organizations to learn about complementary missions and to explore possible collaboration. These gatherings focus on sharing information and developing cooperative activities to have greater impact on STEM and society.
NSF and NSDL’s broad vista of the evolving landscape of learning and research promotes participation and contributions by its projects in the broader STEM community. Through my MatDL work as part of NSDL, I have been able to develop growing relationships with professional societies related to materials, such as TMS (The minerals, metals, and materials society) and its Education Committee as well as the International Council for Science’s Committee on Data and Technology (CODATA) as Co-Chair of the Task Group on Exchangeable Materials Data Representation to support Scientific Research and Education. As the NSDL Pathway in materials science, MatDL has been invited to participate in past NSF workshops, such as From Cyberinfrastructure to Cyberdiscovery in Materials Science (2006), as well as future ones, such as the upcoming Materials Education Workshop and the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement PI Conference. These venues enable NSDL projects to interact with other members of the STEM community, have a voice in community forums, contribute ideas to workshop reports, and bring these community discussions back into the NSDL efforts.
As NSDL continues forward, it is important for everyone to recognize how much has been accomplished over a relatively short period of time as well as how much more can yet be attained. As part of NSDL, a broad base of STEM content, services, and tool developers are successfully building and forging their individual efforts in order to serve particular audiences and disciplines as well as to reach across user groups and domains. To me, it seems that the overarching framework of the NSDL and its community-based projects offer clear complementary benefits to other STEM efforts. It’s the “NSDL’s style” of networks that the program and its projects seek to contribute in their collaborations with other initiatives to implementing new forms of STEM research and learning.
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Laura points out some of the strengths of the NSDL in its efforts to bring together groups and individuals with varied backgrounds and goals to form new and sometimes unexpected networks. Is there any down side to the breadth of focus supported by the NSDL? For example, should the NSDL focus on a narrower audience or range of grade levels.
Among past NSDL efforts to identify and foster collaboration, such as special topic conference calls, mentoring, and “birds of a feather” gatherings, which do you think are most effective? As the NSDL matures, which are still ongoing and have stood or are likely to stand the test of time?
As an example, Laura notes the effectiveness of small groups workshops in the past. Workshops can sometimes be supported through the RFP proposal process. If more workshops were initiated, what topics would be of most interest to the NSDL community? Should a regular series of workshops be instituted to supplement the Annual Meeting?