CAISE Inquiry Group - Discussion 1 by marti

Canon SD800

On May 6-7, 2008 the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Learning in Out-of-School Eviroments (UPCLOSE) ran a two-day CAISE Inquiry Group on the topic of how to conceptualize and evaluate successful professional online learning communities, especially those serving the multidisciplinary field of informal science education (ISE).

A second goal was to exercise the new NSF/ISE guidelines for "Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Projects" www.informalscience.org/research/show/3643  by putting the Framework into practice with example research designs, instruments and metrics to assess the impact of recently funded professional online communities like InformalScience.org  and InSci.org  and ExhibitFiles.org 
This gigapan documents the discussion artifacts from BREAKOUT SESSION ONE which explored who are potential ISE professional users of these and future online community site and what might they want to be doing on these websites. In small groups we developed user scenarios for funders, policymakers, educators, and new media producers.
See the snapshots for more detail.

We are experimenting with sharing the breakout group discussion in this format. Please let us know your thoughts using the comment tool.

Thanks InformalScience.org