Article
The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library
D-Lib Magazine
(2002)
Abstract
The US National Science Foundation has established a program to create a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL). One of the subsidiary NSDL libraries under development is the National Civil Engineering Educational Resources Library (NCERL). The first phase of NCERL is the creation and collection of digital resources in three areas of civil engineering—geotechnical (soil), rock, and water engineering (GROW). The concept of interactivities guides the design, development, and evaluation efforts of the GROW digital collection. This article describes the salient features of GROW, defines and discusses interactivities as an emerging, integral part of teaching and learning in civil engineering education. Interactivities take place at three distinct levels: the information resource, the collection, and the context. Very simply, the concept of interactivities can be defined as the emphasis on structured representations of interactive multimedia resources. Additionally, resources are designed with rich learning tasks and organized in pedagogical collections supplemented with contextual information. Preliminary evaluation of GROW-NCERL using interactivities is briefly described.
Disciplines
Publication Date
November, 2002
DOI
10.1045/november2002-coleman
Publisher Statement
This article originally appeared in D-Lib Magazine, 8, 11, 2002. ©2002 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. This work can also be found online at this link http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2002-coleman
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Citation Information
Muniram Budhu and Anita S. Coleman. "The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library" D-Lib Magazine Vol. 8 Iss. 11 (2002) ISSN: 1082-9873 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anita-coleman/48/