What is AMSER?
AMSER (the Applied Math and Science Education Repository) is a portal of free educational resources and services built specifically for those in community and technical colleges but available for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is developed by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout.
AMSER has collected over 30,000 STEM resources in its fully searchable database. Users may, if they wish, browse the resources by GEM Subject (broad and shallow), LC Classification (fine-grained and deep), Advanced Technological Education area, or Key Concept, a taxonomy developed by Internet Scout to identify the fundamental pieces that make up more complex knowledge in a given field. With a free account, users may save, organize, and share resources from the library. Users may also sign up to receive customizable AMSER bulletins, which notify them via email of new resources they might find interesting.
The resources collected in AMSER form the basis for AMSER publications: AMSER Quarterly and AMSER Science Reader Monthly.
In each issue of the Quarterly, editors highlighted one of the resource collections in AMSER. The bulk of the Quarterly highlighted the best resources in each collection with links and short descriptions. In addition, some issues featured articles on new educational technologies or materials. The goal of the AMSER Quarterly was to provide overviews of smaller collections within the thousands of resources available through AMSER and encourage readers to use the materials in their educational settings.
Published from 2009 to 2011, the AMSER Science Reader Monthly provides educators with a useful package of information about a particular topic related to applied math and science. Past issues are available online. Each issue combines freely available articles from popular journals with curricula, learning objects, and web sites from the AMSER portal. The AMSER Science Reader Monthly is free to use in the classroom.