Cataloging and Searching by Standards in DLESE

1. Cataloging and Searching by Standards in DLESE Metadata Workshop 9-10 March 2004 Holly Devaul

2. Community request for “search-by-standards” functionality • Materials must be reviewed and standards assigned at cataloging • Resources are cataloged by a wide range of community members • Need best practice guidelines for assigning standards appropriate for community cataloging • Understandable search interface • Context for the user

3. What does it mean? • Needed to clarify in order to support • consistent cataloging • informed searches in discovery • What terminology best describes the intended association? (aligns with, correlates to etc) • At what granularity should we be cataloging the NSES standards?

4. What are others doing? • Ohio Resource Centerhttp://www.ohiorc.org Resources correlated with and browsable by National and Ohio State standards. Content specialists and review board staff select resources and assign standards. • The Learning Matrix http://thelearningmatrix.enc.org Resources are selected and reviewed by staff; collection policy gives high priority for resources aligned with national standards. No search by standards offered. • McREL http://www.mcrel.org Offers in-house resources developed by McREL staff in direct connection with the McREL Standards Database, as well as external resources linked to standards from the Database. No search by standards offered.

5. User-centered design: What do users want? Focus groups to • Ascertain user expectations of and needs for a search-by-standards functionality • Use that feedback to craft appropriate best practices for cataloging • Explore ways to articulate the association of a standard to a resource once implemented

6. Search-by-Standards – the data • Currently • National Science Education Standards (NSES) content standards – ability level • National Geography Standards – flat list • Proposed/possible • Additional NSES • More detailed content stds • Teaching standards • State standards • AAAS Benchmarks • NCTM Math • Technology

7. NSES structure • Grade level • Lettered content standard • Ability • Concepts and objectives

8. User focus groups • Thirty three participants, 4 groups • DWEL K-12 and Informal educators • Local middle school teachers, district coordinator, university geology/education professor • Pre-service teachers

9. User focus groups • Looked at 3 resources in DLESE with standards data, reflecting a variety of resource types and origin of standard associations (creator or cataloger) • Discussed specifics of the example resources as well as general expectations of a library search-by-standards functionality

10. Results • New teachers, curriculum developers and district supervisors were suggested as primary users of this functionality • Experienced teachers will review the stds information, but are not likely to search by standards • State and local standards are more useful than national standards (at the ability level)

11. Results (2) • Experienced teachers rely on their own judgements re: resource and standard associations. They were less concerned about the origin and process of associating them. • Pre-service teachers expressed more concern and interest in how the association was made.

12. Results (3) • From a cataloging *and* searching perspective, participants preferred a looser association when using the current granularity of data • “supports the student learning of ….” • Include text-based, background material • Exclude datasets and software without accompanying learning materials

13. Search interface

14. User context information

15. What granularity is appropriate? • NSES concepts and objectives are more easily mentally mapped to state stds by users • AAAS has mapping to concepts and obj. – Strand map service • More detail makes associating resource content easier intellectually but more time consuming to catalog

16. Search interface issues • Complex and text-dense data difficult to present to user for searching • One option: • Catalog at more detailed level • Continue search at ability level • Display the more detailed level • Allows mapping to AAAS benchmarks, maybe state stds • However, manual retrofit not trivial

17. State standard mapping • Create mapping of all states to baseline vocab of more specific NSES to enable search by state standards without cataloging each state separately • Two approaches • Auto-association of stds to stds, stds to resource content (Liz Liddy @ Syracuse) as first cut at selecting standards • Manual keyword indexing of state to national standards (Ted Sicker @ WGBH teachersdomain.org)