STEMEdhub.org a Group Approach to Hubs
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Abstract
Unlike most hubs that are designed around one central concept, STEMEdhub.org was created under the general concept of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Education and it was designed as a set of smaller hubs set up as groups. We envisioned communities of practice being created under these smaller group umbrellas in the beginning, but as the hub evolves and grows over time we see the communities blending with each other and new larger communities emerging. The group approach has also allowed us to maximize the benefits of having a hub to many projects while sharing the expense of creation and maintenance amongst them. It also provides a robust and sustainable base that will continue beyond the life of any one project.
At the moment STEMEdhub.org has groups under three central themes: K-12 education, undergraduate education, and STEM education conferences. While developing groups in these areas we have discovered best practices, as well as how to maximize group features. During the presentation I will show how we have set-up the hub amongst the different groups, the best practices we have learned, new resource organization developed for groups, the challenges of working with multiple groups and agendas, as well as ideas for future group developments.
Bio
Ann Bessenbacher is a Project Coordinator for the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue University. She is the technology steward for STEMEdhub.org and also works on the management team for CLEERhub.org. She is also the database administrator and curator for all of the assessment data at the DLRC. Before that Ann served as the Data Operations Manager at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. She works on the communities of practice for two different websites built on Purdue's Hubzero technology. She has fifteen years of experience in the delivery of information and data, as well as the management and analysis in both scientific and administrative areas.
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