Forum on Education of the American Physical Society
The ComPADRE project (Communities for Physics and Astronomy Digital Resources in Education, http://www.compadre.org) is developing an online place to gather and share educational resources in physics and astronomy. Started in 1997 by the AAPT as the Physical Sciences Resource Center (http://psrc.aapt.org), it became part of the NSF’s National Science Digital Library (http://nsdl.org) in 2003. This collaboration of the AAPT, APS, AAS, and AIP/SPS gathers teaching resources, learning activities, and education research, organizes these resources through the work of editors and librarians, and presents them to the world. Users of the library can find materials here, but also can suggest resources, create private or public collections, and share their expertise through discussions, comments, and reviews. The project’s efforts were recognized in 2005 by ComPADRE being selected as an NSDL “Pathway” for physics and astronomy. Pathways are key partners of the NSDL and responsible for significant portions of the library.
The ComPADRE library is organized into collections targeted at specific audiences. In these specific collections, editors gather materials suitable for their audience and describe them using a vocabulary their users will best understand. Each collection also provides tools and services focused on their goals. The editors of three of these focused collections, for undergraduate physics students, for pre-college teachers, and for the producers and consumers of physics education research, describe their collections in the articles below. These articles give a broader picture of the ComPADRE collections and materials. Other existing collections focus on physics for the general public, on resources for faculty teaching introductory astronomy, and on quantum physics. New collections under development include those focused on advanced undergraduate laboratories, introductory undergraduate physics, and relativity. Editors for other topical collections are needed to continue to grow the library. Since these collections share the same technical infrastructure, all the collections can share resources and tools that best meet their goals.
Another important aspect of ComPADRE is the connection to the work of others in science education. An excellent example is the development of learning activities with the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College. The article on SERC describes this effort to build connections between online resources, effective pedagogies, and examples of teaching and learning activities. Other collaborations include hosting the online presence of PTEC and the Adopt-a-Physicist program. Using simple web connections, the ComPADRE library also automatically provides the search results of other resource collections such as MERLOT, the BQ-Learning/Physlets/Open Source Physics database, the PADs collection, the NSDL, and the Astrophysics Data System education collection. Leveraging and connecting existing resources is an important goal of digital libraries.
ComPADRE is a growing effort and we are always looking for ideas and suggestions. Comments can be emailed to the editors or to me, or can be made through the contact form available on every page of the collections.
Bruce Mason is an Associate Professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma and Director of ComPADRE.