Compass Plan

Following our Design Cycle approach and reflecting input from the CDA and community members, SERC has developed the following plan for our work between the Spring of 2024 and 2025.

New Serckit Features to Support Improved Discovery

  • User Favorites A more robust and visible set of tools for users to save, annotate and share personal collections of SERC-hosted pages. This may integrate with the existing 'Where I've Been' feature and could be used to pilot users collecting and sharing sequences of activities appropriate for a specific course. Summer
  • Generative AI to support discovery. We will explore vector search, retrieval augmented generation, and strategies to use generative ai to streamline content summarization and augmentation (e.g. assignment of controlled vocabularies). Fall
  • Complete and publish a redesigned SERC front page. Early Summer

Discovery Partnerships  

  • Work with the Teach the Earth Committee to develop guidelines for future partnerships. Fall
  • Work to identify and develop several new discovery partners.

Evaluation: Looking Toward the End of the Project

  • Reflect on where we think we might see measurable improvements in discovery given the project efforts to date. Fall
  •  A repeat of the happiness survey and walk-through study done earlier in the project. Fall/Winter
  • Explore what what can we learn summatively from the analytics.  Winter

Publishing/Dissemination  

  • Develop paper(s) to share key findings.  Fall/Winter
  • Develop webinars that will help users capitalize on SERC discovery features. Record and package this content so it can be used more broadly. Fall/Winter

Integrate Discovery-Supporting Practices into SERC and Project Workflows

  • Develop and document a checklist of steps to optimize discovery of key pages including tagging with controlled vocabularies, including in featured sites collection and best bets, and page-level search engine optimization. Summer
  • Develop a process for identifying key pages as part of the SERC/partner workflow.  This would include working with project leaders to identify important content. Fall
  • Develop a standard process for identifying and labeling older content in ways that support users in making decision appropriate to their needs. Fall
  • Test the above processes on existing SERC-hosted project websites. Winter
  • Explore and develop standard templates and approaches for the use of the new analytics tools in support of individual projects. Fall

DEIJ Strategy

  • Explore ways in which SERC discovery can better support educators wanting to advance DEI goals while operating in local environments that aren't supportive.  Summer/Fall/Winter