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A National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center, this site is a collaboration between the University of Washington, Stanford University, and SRI International, and is funded by the NSF. A quick scan of the Research tab shows publications in a wide-range of areas from "National Technology Plan 2010 - Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology" to "Learning Science in informal environments."

This edition of UPDATE focuses on partnerships, beginning with an interview with Dr. Gene Bottoms, founder of High Schools That Work (HSTW). Dr. Bottoms provides important insights into the ways partnerships were used to create HSTW, as well as the ways they are necessary to involving high schools and community colleges in the implementation of Programs of Study. This volume also includes two invited articles, one by Dr. Pamela Eddy, College of William and Mary University, and Dr. Marilyn Amey, Michigan State University, that give OCCRL readers a glimpse into their new book on partnerships and collaboration, and a second by Dr. Louise Yarnell, who shares a model that she and her colleagues at SRI are developing for the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

By M. Ginsburg and S. Weisband, Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004. Written in 2004, this article is somewhat dated (e.g. before the notion of the "social network" really took hold). That said, the article looks at a subscription-based virtual community, the Internet Chess Club, and finds that the real key to success is a carefully structured 3-tier approach to volunteering. Some volunteers help/coach new users; others are available to handle administrative tasks and volunteer managers run on-demand tournaments. Volunteers gain status and recognition, as well as the benefit of a private sub-community in which they can communicate with each other. NOTE: As of Jan 2012, the club is still in existence.

Librarian notes: While much here does not apply to the current manifestation of our e-communities, the structure and function of the various volunteer roles is very interesting, as is the "communication segmentation strategies" to filter out information overload. An impressive database of the community's work (in this case chess matches) is discussed as well.

Joint project of the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation (2005), this project looks at the costs, technologies, and processes associated with long-term archiving of data collections and how this potentially impacts science. This page provides links to individual chapters of this report (in PDF format) along with the full report.