10 Years of Online, Earth System Education through DLESE

For the last decade, the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) has been operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). DLESE is a free library service providing access to over 10,000 high quality, web-based Earth System educational resources. First developed, with generous funding from the Geoscience Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF), by UCAR's Digital Learning Sciences and now managed by the NCAR Library, DLESE has for 10 years served as a large, geoscience education community undertaking involving scientists, educators, and library builders from many institutions across the nation.

The goal of this grassroots, community-led project is to provide searchable access to high-quality, online educational resources for K-12 and undergraduate Earth System science education (Marlino et al., 2001). These goals were met with the development and operation of the library's core technical infrastructure; the maintenance of collections; provision of user support in educational settings; and the guarantee of program continuity across distributed technology and collection building efforts. In addition to these services, DLESE also offers educators six content-specific “Teaching Boxes;” curated collections of interrelated learning concepts, digital resources, and cohesive narration that bridge the gap between discrete resources and understanding. Created, tested, and evaluated by teachers themselves, the activities in each Teaching Box are aligned to National and California State standards.

In the coming months, DLESE will be enhanced with additional Teaching Boxes and an updated approach to the delivery of online, Earth Systems educational resources. In this poster, we will introduce and reorient educators to the value of DLESE resources while also looking forward to new collaborations and developments.