Unleashing Supply: Services for Collaborative Content Development

Wayne State University, Detroit MI

Investigators

Abstract

This NSDL Services project is exploring how to increase the number and quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education learning objects by facilitating virtual communities of content developers. It is prototyping support services for collaborations of teachers and researchers who are developing learning objects in their discipline with an emphasis on open and non-proprietary materials. An open course application service provider (ASP) hosts the collaboration tools needed for each community. Services provided for all communities include a directory of open course projects, a collection of Web-based tools for student use, a consultant database to connect projects with skilled experts, and a set of licenses suitable for open course learning objects. The underlying concept of this project is rooted in the academic tradition of open sharing of ideas and results of scholarly inquiry. This project is enabling the NSDL to explore an infrastructure to support future content acquisition for its collections.