Obligatory first post...

What is this all about?
Well, I am working with a project at Utah State University that is funded through the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The whole idea is to introduce K12 teachers to the use of Online Learning Resources (or resources for short), and study the integration into the classroom. Of particular are the role of digital libraries in supporting and accommodating teacher needs. More about the project can be found at the Digital Libraries Connect site.

As part of the project, we have developed the Instructional Architect (or IA). The IA is a simple end-user web-application that allows teachers to gather online resources (URLs), design learning activities, and share those activities (or projects) with their students and other teachers. One of the purposes of this work is to send the teacher-designed projects back into the NSDL to make them more widely available.

That said, we have had many conversations about what should be allowed to be public on our own site, let alone sending to the NSDL. Is there such a thing as "quality" that can be ascribed to these projects? And if so, whose quality?

This blog is for musings and comments about online learning resources and discussion about their quality.

-b