Informal Commons
The Informal Commons allows users to search for digital resources across ISE web sites by important resource-level metadata such as audience, subject matter, and resource type. This powerful search engine allows ISE professionals to quickly and efficiently characterize the state-of-the-field, and fuel new project development and partnerships. Currently the site search includes CAISE, Assessment Tools in Informal Science (ATIS), Exhibit Files, Informal Science, National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME), Open Exhibits, Visitor Studies Association (VSA) and HowtoSmile.
Visit the Informal Commons search website
A New Dissemination Tool to Include in NSF ISE Program Proposals
CAISE is committed to coordinating technical linkages across NSF ISE Program-funded projects to improve community access to digital informal learning resources. CAISE oversees development of the Informal Commons search website to provide access to an index of these resources, and facilitates the Infrastructure Coordination Roundtable (ICR) to coordinate technical systems and maintain metadata standards that dynamically link ISE web sites.
CAISE will continue to support the Informal Commons by adding new digital ISE resources, participating ISE websites, and application programming interfaces (API) to allow search of important resource-level metadata fields such as audience type, STEM discipline, and resource type, from any partner site. CAISE will also coordinate its resource curating activities more broadly with other federal investments by making the Informal Commons interoperable with ongoing and new learning resources, such as the Learning Registry.
CAISE encourages ISE-related projects that are designed to produce digital ISE resources to state their intent to include their resources in the Informal Commons in their proposal to NSF or other funders. For sites that are appropriate for integration into the Informal Commons, priority will be given to projects that are specific to NSF ISE, but CAISE actively seeks to integrate resources more broadly from relevant informal learning sites that are not funded by NSF.
Proposed projects that are ideal to join the ICR are ones that collect, curate, synthesize, or otherwise connect digital resources that are relevant to the ISE field and its collaborators. Some examples include informalscience.org, ExhibiFiles.org, Open Exhibits, HowtoSmile, and PEAR/ATIS. In order to participate in the ICR, your proposal should budget for ICR coordination and programming activities. This includes two annual, in-person ICR meetings. Depending on the number of resources to be included, the proposed project must also budget time for either hand-cataloging individual resources or for software engineering efforts to implement an API that connects dynamically to the Informal Commons index. CAISE does not have to be notified in advance of submitting a proposal that includes the ICR in the dissemination plan.
For additional information on integrating Infrastructure Coordination Roundtable activities and the Informal Commons into proposals, contact Trevor Nesbit, CAISE Web Strategist, at tnesbit@astc.org.
