DLESE EVALUATION CORE SERVICES

The new Evaluation Core services team is responsible for providing evaluation services to the DLESE community and investigating the ways and extent to which DLESE is meeting its goals. A major focus of the work will be to further the DLESE mission through interaction and collaboration with the other core service entities, major NSDL and DLESE projects, and through its own evaluative and community-building activities. In order to meet the goals of the project, the Evaluation Service center will serve five important functions or roles. They are to: 1) Develop an overarching DLESE evaluation plan with robust community input. 2) Serve as central evaluation consultant to the core service centers and build capacity for evaluation through DLESE, 3) Conduct and coordinate evaluation work needed to address major DLESE evaluation questions in order to inform development of the library 4) Evaluate the effect of DLESE use within classrooms upon teaching practices and student learning, and 5) Collect, synthesize and report upon the body of findings from all sources. Through this effort, we will learn more about the use and development of digital libraries in general and within geoscience education in particular. The development of evaluation capacity within the DLESE community will continue to provide DLESE evaluation data, promote work that is goal-oriented and reflective, and contribute to the body of evaluation knowledge specific to geoscience education. The evaluative work directed at DLESE overarching goals will provide data to guide the further development of the library. Broad community engagement is a necessity for DLESE success; this talk will introduce the Evaluation Services team, outline plans and activities, and highlight opportunities for community involvement and collaboration.