1. The document summarizes findings from a UK program that funded 29 pilot projects exploring open educational resources (OERs).
2. The projects used diverse technologies to manage and share OERs, including eLearning platforms, repositories, and web 2.0 applications.
3. While many standards and formats were used, the choices often reflected the standards embedded in the systems selected by each project.
One Standard to rule them all?: Descriptive Choices for Open EducationR. John Robertson
R. John Robertson1, Lorna Campbell1, Phil Barker2, Li Yuan3, and Sheila MacNeill1
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
Drawing on our experience of supporting a nationwide Open Educational Resources programme (the UKOER programme), this presentation will consider the diverse range of approaches to describing OERs that have emerged across the programme and their impact on resource sharing, workflows, and an aggregate view of the resources.
Due to the diverse nature of the projects in the programme, ranging from individual educators to discipline-based consortia and institutions, it was apparent that no one technical or descriptive solution would fit all. Consequently projects were mandated to supply only a limited amount of descriptive information (programme tag, author, title, date, url, file format, file size, rights) with some additional information suggested (language, subject classifications, keywords, tags, comments, description). Projects were free to choose how this information should be encoded (if at all), stored, and shared.
In response, the projects have taken many different approaches to the description and management of resources. These range from using traditional highly structured and detailed metadata standards to approaches using whatever descriptions are supported by particular web2.0 applications. This experimental approach to resource description offers the wider OER community an opportunity to examine and assess the implications of different strategies for resource description and management
This paper illustrates a number of examples of projects’ approaches to description, noting the workflows and effort involved. We will consider the relationship of the choice of tool (repository, web2.0 application, VLE) to the choice of standards; and the relationship between local requirements and those of the wider community.
We will consider the impact of those choices on the dissemination and discoverability of resources. For example, the implications of resource description choices for discovery services which draw on multiple sources of OERs.
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projectsR. John Robertson
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projects, OCWC2010 Hanoi, May 5-7 2010.
R. John Robertson1, Sheila MacNeill1, Phil Barker2, Lorna Campbell1 and Li Yuan3
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
Presentation at the London Blackboard User Group meeting, 3rd April 2009. Reports on the IOE TQEF project on ePortfolios, including a comparison of Blackboard internal portfolios, Expo LX and Mahara.
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projectsR. John Robertson
R. John Robertson1, Sheila MacNeill1, Phil Barker2, Lorna Campbell1 and Li Yuan3
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
This paper examines CETIS experience of supporting a nationwide programme to release Open Educational Resources (the JISC Higher Education Academy UKOER Pilot Programme ). We consider how our model of support could inform others and be adapted to encourage sustainable technical support networks for Open Course Ware initiatives. As a national initiative involving universities throughout the UK, the UKOER programme involved a diverse range of OER providers, including individual educators, discipline-based consortia and institutions. Given this diversity it was recognised from the outset that no single technical solution would fit all projects, and therefore no specific tools, descriptive standards, exchange or dissemination mechanisms were mandated (apart from a requirement that the resources produced be represented in a national repository of learning materials ). In supporting this programme we have had to address diverse approaches and communities and it is likely that any similar pan-institutional initiative for supporting the release of OERs would face similar challenges.
Our approach to programme support has sought to move from the detail of specific support issues towards underlying support principles; thereby anticipating other issues and promoting good practice.
Our method has been: to provoke conversation through technical presentations and discussion opportunities at meetings or through blog posts; to investigate the technical choices made by individual projects through technical review conversations and record summary details of these conversations publicly online through an interface supporting searching and browsing; and to respond to issues arising from these calls or from project blogs.
In considering how this approach could be used more widely we will look at the challenges of working openly, the organisational overhead of this approach, its adaptability, and the role we think it has played in supporting the management and dissemination of OERs for this programme.
One Standard to rule them all?: Descriptive Choices for Open EducationR. John Robertson
R. John Robertson1, Lorna Campbell1, Phil Barker2, Li Yuan3, and Sheila MacNeill1
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
Drawing on our experience of supporting a nationwide Open Educational Resources programme (the UKOER programme), this presentation will consider the diverse range of approaches to describing OERs that have emerged across the programme and their impact on resource sharing, workflows, and an aggregate view of the resources.
Due to the diverse nature of the projects in the programme, ranging from individual educators to discipline-based consortia and institutions, it was apparent that no one technical or descriptive solution would fit all. Consequently projects were mandated to supply only a limited amount of descriptive information (programme tag, author, title, date, url, file format, file size, rights) with some additional information suggested (language, subject classifications, keywords, tags, comments, description). Projects were free to choose how this information should be encoded (if at all), stored, and shared.
In response, the projects have taken many different approaches to the description and management of resources. These range from using traditional highly structured and detailed metadata standards to approaches using whatever descriptions are supported by particular web2.0 applications. This experimental approach to resource description offers the wider OER community an opportunity to examine and assess the implications of different strategies for resource description and management
This paper illustrates a number of examples of projects’ approaches to description, noting the workflows and effort involved. We will consider the relationship of the choice of tool (repository, web2.0 application, VLE) to the choice of standards; and the relationship between local requirements and those of the wider community.
We will consider the impact of those choices on the dissemination and discoverability of resources. For example, the implications of resource description choices for discovery services which draw on multiple sources of OERs.
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projectsR. John Robertson
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projects, OCWC2010 Hanoi, May 5-7 2010.
R. John Robertson1, Sheila MacNeill1, Phil Barker2, Lorna Campbell1 and Li Yuan3
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
Presentation at the London Blackboard User Group meeting, 3rd April 2009. Reports on the IOE TQEF project on ePortfolios, including a comparison of Blackboard internal portfolios, Expo LX and Mahara.
Approaches to supporting Open Educational Resource projectsR. John Robertson
R. John Robertson1, Sheila MacNeill1, Phil Barker2, Lorna Campbell1 and Li Yuan3
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
This paper examines CETIS experience of supporting a nationwide programme to release Open Educational Resources (the JISC Higher Education Academy UKOER Pilot Programme ). We consider how our model of support could inform others and be adapted to encourage sustainable technical support networks for Open Course Ware initiatives. As a national initiative involving universities throughout the UK, the UKOER programme involved a diverse range of OER providers, including individual educators, discipline-based consortia and institutions. Given this diversity it was recognised from the outset that no single technical solution would fit all projects, and therefore no specific tools, descriptive standards, exchange or dissemination mechanisms were mandated (apart from a requirement that the resources produced be represented in a national repository of learning materials ). In supporting this programme we have had to address diverse approaches and communities and it is likely that any similar pan-institutional initiative for supporting the release of OERs would face similar challenges.
Our approach to programme support has sought to move from the detail of specific support issues towards underlying support principles; thereby anticipating other issues and promoting good practice.
Our method has been: to provoke conversation through technical presentations and discussion opportunities at meetings or through blog posts; to investigate the technical choices made by individual projects through technical review conversations and record summary details of these conversations publicly online through an interface supporting searching and browsing; and to respond to issues arising from these calls or from project blogs.
In considering how this approach could be used more widely we will look at the challenges of working openly, the organisational overhead of this approach, its adaptability, and the role we think it has played in supporting the management and dissemination of OERs for this programme.
Lilac 2012 Essential information skills for researchers: A collaborative proj...Chris Bark
This presentation gives an overview of a project involving four institutions: Loughborough, Nottingham, De Montfort and Coventry Universities to create an open source repurposable information skills tutorial appropriate for early career researchers. It covers the rationale for undertaking the project, the proposed content, the research conducted and methodologies used which informed the design and final content of the online module.
The module that has been developed is called: Dissemination of your research and includes the following units:
Journals and journal articles
Other forms of publishing
Journal bibliometrics
Author bibliometrics
Networking
The presentation then moves on to look at in some depth the benefits of working in a consortium but also the challenges the group faced as a result of working as a collaboration.
This document is the proposal for the TRACKOER project that is supported by the JISC Open Educational Resources Rapid Innovation programme (OERRI). In TRACKOER we are developing potential solutions to how to keep track of content in the open. We are looking both at ways to follow content as it moves from one server to another and then gets reused, and at how to capture other changes that people may make with cut and paste editing. The rationale for the project is to understand whether content gets reused but it also offers a model that could help track other activity around shared content. More about the project progress is available via http://track.olnet.org/ and the project blog at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/tag/view/TrackOER .
This work presents a data architecture based on semantic web technologies that support to the inclusion of open materials in massive online courses. The framework provides transparent access to RDF data sources for Open Educational Resources stored in OpenCourseWare repositories.
Speaker(s): Nelson Piedra and Edmundo Tovar
Francisco Iniesto and Covadonga Rodrigo Institute of educational Technology. The Open University
Department of Computer Systems and Languages. Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED)
CCCOER March Webinar: Creating Open Education Friendly Policies on Your CampusUna Daly
Slides from March 2012 CCCOER Fostering OER Friendly Policies on Your Campus: James Glapa-Grossklag, Angela Secrest, Tom Caswell, Robin Donaldson, Cable Green.
Oct 30 Supporting All of Our Students with Accessible OERUna Daly
Community College Consortium for OER at the Open Courseware webinar on October 30, 1:00 pm Eastern for a webinar on how to best support our diverse students by selecting and creating “accessible” open textbooks and open educational resources that provide equitable learning opportunities regardless of disability. A 2011 study of enrollment at post secondary educational institutions indicated that 11% of students self-identify as having a disability and many of these students with disabilities attend our two year public colleges. Speakers include staff from BookShare, the largest online library for students with print disabilities; the Cerritos Community College educational technology department chair who trains faculty to create and evaluate instructional materials for accessibility compliance; and the president of Virtual Ability, a support organization for users with disabilities in Second Life, who reviewed 60 open textbooks for accessibility.
Fred Slone, Director of Literacy at the BookShare project of Benetch. Fred will give us an overview of Bookshare, the largest online library for students with print disabilities and the different technology enhanced options for making the lives of these students easier.
Dr. Cynthia Alexander, Educational Technology Department Chair, Cerritos Community College. Cynthia will give us an overview of accessibility standards and universal design for learning and how faculty can make informed decisions when selecting and creating open educational resources to support all of their students with digital accessible materials.
Alice Krueger, President of Virtual Ability, a support organization for users with disabilities in Second Life. Alice employs workers with disabilities on projects worldwide to evaluate and improve virtual worlds and learning materials so as to better support everyone.
Lilac 2012 Essential information skills for researchers: A collaborative proj...Chris Bark
This presentation gives an overview of a project involving four institutions: Loughborough, Nottingham, De Montfort and Coventry Universities to create an open source repurposable information skills tutorial appropriate for early career researchers. It covers the rationale for undertaking the project, the proposed content, the research conducted and methodologies used which informed the design and final content of the online module.
The module that has been developed is called: Dissemination of your research and includes the following units:
Journals and journal articles
Other forms of publishing
Journal bibliometrics
Author bibliometrics
Networking
The presentation then moves on to look at in some depth the benefits of working in a consortium but also the challenges the group faced as a result of working as a collaboration.
This document is the proposal for the TRACKOER project that is supported by the JISC Open Educational Resources Rapid Innovation programme (OERRI). In TRACKOER we are developing potential solutions to how to keep track of content in the open. We are looking both at ways to follow content as it moves from one server to another and then gets reused, and at how to capture other changes that people may make with cut and paste editing. The rationale for the project is to understand whether content gets reused but it also offers a model that could help track other activity around shared content. More about the project progress is available via http://track.olnet.org/ and the project blog at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/tag/view/TrackOER .
This work presents a data architecture based on semantic web technologies that support to the inclusion of open materials in massive online courses. The framework provides transparent access to RDF data sources for Open Educational Resources stored in OpenCourseWare repositories.
Speaker(s): Nelson Piedra and Edmundo Tovar
Francisco Iniesto and Covadonga Rodrigo Institute of educational Technology. The Open University
Department of Computer Systems and Languages. Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED)
CCCOER March Webinar: Creating Open Education Friendly Policies on Your CampusUna Daly
Slides from March 2012 CCCOER Fostering OER Friendly Policies on Your Campus: James Glapa-Grossklag, Angela Secrest, Tom Caswell, Robin Donaldson, Cable Green.
Oct 30 Supporting All of Our Students with Accessible OERUna Daly
Community College Consortium for OER at the Open Courseware webinar on October 30, 1:00 pm Eastern for a webinar on how to best support our diverse students by selecting and creating “accessible” open textbooks and open educational resources that provide equitable learning opportunities regardless of disability. A 2011 study of enrollment at post secondary educational institutions indicated that 11% of students self-identify as having a disability and many of these students with disabilities attend our two year public colleges. Speakers include staff from BookShare, the largest online library for students with print disabilities; the Cerritos Community College educational technology department chair who trains faculty to create and evaluate instructional materials for accessibility compliance; and the president of Virtual Ability, a support organization for users with disabilities in Second Life, who reviewed 60 open textbooks for accessibility.
Fred Slone, Director of Literacy at the BookShare project of Benetch. Fred will give us an overview of Bookshare, the largest online library for students with print disabilities and the different technology enhanced options for making the lives of these students easier.
Dr. Cynthia Alexander, Educational Technology Department Chair, Cerritos Community College. Cynthia will give us an overview of accessibility standards and universal design for learning and how faculty can make informed decisions when selecting and creating open educational resources to support all of their students with digital accessible materials.
Alice Krueger, President of Virtual Ability, a support organization for users with disabilities in Second Life. Alice employs workers with disabilities on projects worldwide to evaluate and improve virtual worlds and learning materials so as to better support everyone.
CCCOER OER Faculty Development: 3 Successful ModelsUna Daly
Dr. Andrea Henne, Dean of Online and Distributed Learning at the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD). Andrea will present on the faculty development program for awareness, use, and creation of OER which is part of the SDCCD Online Faculty Training and Certification Program. Faculty contribute to a wiki with quality web resources in their subject areas and participate in a collaborative forum to share OER that they found to enhance their curriculum and improve instructional outcomes.
John Makevich, Director of Distance and Accelerated Learning at College of the Canyons. John will present on the OER FIPSE grant where faculty at his community college were encouraged to find and contribute open content learning objects for generating OER play lists to improve instructional outcomes and student engagement.
Quill West, OER Project Director at Tacoma Community College. Quill, an experienced college librarian, will present on the OER faculty development at Tacoma Community College with a current focus on the English sequence. She will also report on related efforts at other Washington community and technical colleges to create awareness and promote adoption of OER among faculty and students.
Jan 29 using oer for workforce developmentUna Daly
Please join CCCOER on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 10:00 am (Pacific time) for a webinar on finding, developing, and adopting OER for workforce training and job search skills at community colleges. This webinar will feature three projects that are actively engaged in developing and promoting free and open resources to expand student access and improve career opportunities.
nursing students
The Saylor Foundation – Their Clinton Global Initiative project to provide open and free career skills training to disconnected youth and adult learners through the creation of multiple professional development modules will be shared. Courses available on on their website as well as options for mobile learners through iTunes will be shown.
Twenty Millions Minds Foundation - Their work with community college faculty to develop open textbooks for the allied health professions including nursing and physical therapy will be shared. Innovative approaches such as faculty hackathons for digital content development will be discussed.
KQED Education - The work voice video series featuring ESL students in Silicon Valley who have achieved new careers through programs and skills received at community colleges will be shared. Additional lesson plans for faculty who work with ESL students will be shown.
The Serious Sports Digital Game is a new, free, online “Coaching Game” The game is designed to help support the learning process of developing good basketball coaching principles in areas such as fitness training, skills training and tactics and strategies through a number of in-game activities and is available for piloting. The Serious Sports project aimed to develop a digital sports game and reusable framework that will offer sports/fitness coaches the opportunity to simulate the physical conditioning, training content and structure in different (training) seasons for a European-wide sparring sport.
Furthermore, it provided the VET system with a ‘good practice’ guide that is scalable, applicable and transferable in training courses for initial and continuous professional development and a reusable framework that will be used to populate the digital game with other disciplines thus expanding the scope of the project to benefit a wider variety of trainers.
Community College OER Showcases: Scottsdale's OER Math Program and Tacoma's ...Una Daly
Community College OER Showcases: Scottsdale College’s OER Math Program and Tacoma College’s Liberate Project
This webinar starts at 1:00 pm (PDT), 4:00 pm (EDT) and will showcase two innovative OER projects at U.S. community colleges in Arizona and Washington State.
• Dr. Donna Gaudet, Mathematics Department Chair at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona will share the three-year odyssey of developing and adopting OER for all the math curriculum from arithmetic through pre-calculus. Results presented will include the cost savings and feedback from students on using the new materials.
• Quill West, OER Project Director, has lead the Liberate Project at Tacoma Community College in Washington since 2011 promoting OER awareness and adoption among faculty and students. The project saved students an estimated $271,000 in textbook costs in the first nine months and encourages student advocacy in OER selection and adoption.
PosITa is an upgrade of the services provided by the Business Centre, which combines Pošta Slovenije’s well-known information services, such as the Digital Office, E-Archive, My Mail, POŠTA®CA and back-up data centres, which are trusted by more than 100,000 users, with new services intended for a broader range of business users. It is designed as a flexible platform for all those who deal with increasingly more advanced IT solutions, the need to access data and files from anywhere using any device, and high IT costs in their operations. The platform is designed in such a way that it can be adapted to your needs, and to the growth and development of your operations. It is based on the software-as-a-service concept, and is implemented using the most state-of-the-art hosting technologies. For you as the user this means you can use the latest software solutions and pay for them on a monthly basis, which contributes to the transparency of the business model.
One Standard to rule them all?: Descriptive Choices for Open EducationR. John Robertson
One Standard to rule them all?: Descriptive Choices for Open Education, OCWC2010 Hanoi, May 5-7 2010
R. John Robertson1, Lorna Campbell1, Phil Barker2, Li Yuan3, and Sheila MacNeill1 1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University 3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
Developing patterns in technical approaches for Open Educational Resources. R. John Robertson and Lorna Campbell, & Phil Barker
JISC CETIS. Presentation at OER 11, Manchester, May 11th 2011
CREW (Collaborative Research Events on the Web) aims to improve access to research event content by capturing and publishing the scholarly communication that occurs at events like conferences and workshops. This is a Virtual Research Environment funded by JISC within the UK.
This slide show describes release 5 of the development. See site: http://www.crew-vre.net/
Slides for talk on Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards given at Museums & the Web 2007 conference.
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/mw-2007/talk-standards/
Capturing Conversations, Context and Curricula: The JLeRN Experiment and the ...Sarah Currier
These slides accompany the paper "Capturing Conversations, Context and Curricula: The JLeRN Experiment and the Learning Registry" published by the Cambridge 2012: Innovation and Impact - Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education conference, organised by OCWC and SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education).
These slides accompany the paper "Capturing Conversations, Context and Curricula: The JLeRN Experiment and the Learning Registry" published by the Cambridge 2012: Innovation and Impact - Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education conference, organised by OCWC and SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education).
Cultivating Sustainable Software For ResearchNeil Chue Hong
Keynote given at the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Software and Sustainability Workshop, March 26th-27th 2009, Indianapolis.
Exploration of software sustainability based on experiences from UK.
During the last decade several projects with respect to digital preservation have been funded in Europe by the European Commission and have delivered interesting results. Such projects include community building projects or coordination actions such as ERPANET, Delos2, and Digital Preservation Europe (DPE), but also research projects such as Planets, CASPAR, Shaman, Protage. In December 2009 a new call for digital preservation will be closed, so new projects may start in 2010.
One result of all these projects and all the work done is that there is a growing community involved, more organizations and people are aware of the issues, definitely has enhanced the collaboration amongst institutions and universities in Europe, and with the last research projects some potential practical solutions are emerging that could be applied by institutions. How it all will work out in the end is still one of the big questions. For one thing it may have helped to create a good foundation for further collaboration, perhaps even without funding from the European Commission.
This presentation will provide a brief overview of the main results of some of these projects, especially Planets, and what issues they try to resolve, and a brief outlook on possible future developments.
Starting where we are, moving through changes open education is bringing at institutional, national, regional and international levels, and how we can continue to strengthen open education and its positive impacts
Collaborating across borders: OER use and open educational practices within the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (OE Global 2015)
Accessible services based upon MOOCs OE Global 2015
Cetis one john robertson
1. One Standard to rule them all?:
Descriptive Choices for Open Education
OCWC2010
Hanoi, May 5-7 2010
R. John Robertson1, Lorna Campbell1, Phil Barker2, Li
Yuan3, and Sheila MacNeill1
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning
Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for
Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University
3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton
2. UKOER Programme
The Open Educational Resources Programme
is a collaboration between the JISC and the
Higher Education Academy in the UK.
The Higher Education Funding Council for
England (HEFCE) has provided an initial £5.7
million of funding, (April 2009 to March 2010)
which will explore how to expand the open
availability and use of free, high quality online
educational resources.
3. UKOER Programme
The UK OER programme consists of 29 pilot
projects divided into three categories:
individual (i.e. personal) projects (8);
institutional projects (7)
multi-institutional subject-based consortium
projects (14).
Support for the programme is being provided by
a number of existing JISC services and the
Open University (UK) Score project.
4. JISC CETIS
JISC CETIS is one of three JISC
Innovation Support Centres (ISC),
supporting the sector through:
participating in standards bodies,
providing community forums for
sharing experiences in using
particular technologies and
standards
providing specific support for
JISC funded development
programmes such as the
UKOER programme.
5. Stereotype: the ‘Learning Object’
The „classic‟ model
the reusable learning object (RLO).
to strive to create context independent learning materials
IMS Content Packaging or ADL SCORM , IEEE LOM.
Description of pedagogy in metadata
VLE‟s and refined search tools
Examples: Ariadne network ,
But
real use of detailed educational fields, can be limited
seen as complex, requiring support from learning
technologists
often closed networks ~learning object economies
6. Stereotype: the ‘light touch’
Blogs, web 2.0 tools, websites
Minimal metadata
often author, title, license
often applied at site level
Frequent use of CC licenses (often integrated with tools)
RSS
Enthusiastic individuals
Examples:
But
Can be „closed‟/ unknown groups of people
Discoverability of specific items / unknown items can be
tricky
8. Guidelines
“any system capable of delivering content on the
open web”
Strongly encouraged to use platforms that can
create RSS for collections
Utilise existing technologies - not develop
Some descriptive information required
9. Required descriptive set
Tag: UKOER
Title
Author
Date
URL
File format (auto)
File size (auto)
12. Hoped for outcomes
Institutional change
Release of OERs
Freedom of choice allows opportunity to assess:
Selection
Suitability
Impact
Sustainability
13. Factors: CETIS
Seminar and presentations
Encouragement to consider local resource
description requirements
Presented context of wider OER initiatives
Did not promote any particular system, standard, or
other approach
Influence of CETIS‟ experience with standards
14. Factors: System Choice
Single biggest factor: native standards supported/
implemented in the system.
Pattern somewhat visible in project bids/plans
emerged clearly in technical conversations
True for both LO repositories and for web2.0 tools
Partially result of explicit prohibition of development
Some exceptions:
Support for multiple standards
Creation of mappings
15. Factors: project team background
Parallel to influence of system choice, teams will
use what they know
but lesser influence:
No budget for new systems
Though unlikely, staff turnover more likely than
system turnover
16. Factors: role of network/ community
Some communities have entry requirements
But relatively few projects engaged – most had
existing connections, or had deliberate aim to
engage.
Some examples:
OpenSpires – Matterhorn, iTunesU, and more
Berlin – OCWC RSS [predating programme but
revised]
17. Factors: aggregator services
Discovery tools
Often-based on OAI-PMH and RSS
But not as much of an influence as expected
Note: aggregation does not need to dictate local
standards; mapping is often possible, but system
dependent
One major exception...
18. Factors: iTunesU
Participation in iTunesU is
by agreement with Apple,
specific and somewhat idiosyncratic metadata
set granularity of materials
associated cover images
Issues around openness (license, software, reuse)
Massive draw for faculty contributions
Aside: institutional channels and individual channels
19. Factors: JorumOpen
National repository for learning materials
Launch of JorumOpen
Slightly different descriptive requirements to
programme
Influence of deposit tools
Version 1
Version 2
Bulk options
Influence of perceptions on both platform and
standard
Influence on international participation
20. Patterns of use: one standard?
Is there [with apologies to Tolkien]:
‘One [standard] to rule them all,
One [standard] to find them,
One [standard] to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them’?
20
21. Patterns of use: preliminary notes
Data gathered from technical review calls as part of programme
support
All 29 projects recorded.
Projects may occur more than once in any given graph if they use
more than one of the technologies listed.
The graphs refer to the number of platforms that support a given
standard; they do not refer to or imply active use of the standard.
CMS refers to Content Management System and not to Course
Management System.
The data itself is available from the tool CETIS project monitoring
tool, PROD. http://prod.cetis.ac.uk tag ukoer
28. Impact of choices
1. Existing technologies used
2. Diverse technical responses to the challenge of
managing and sharing OERs. A mixture of
elearning platforms, repositories, and innovative
approaches to sharing have been used.
3. The standards being used are often embedded in
systems and their selection of a standard is often
derivative
4. The pilot programme points to ways forward to
using both web2.0 applications and digital
repositories for sharing and managing OERs.
29. Impact of choices (2)
5. Projects have chosen multiple platforms to support different
functions such as: preservation, streaming, marketing,
advocacy.
6. Choices made mostly reflect an emphasis on resource
management and sharing; few projects are using technology
that supports course delivery. Tendancy to focus on other
academics, rather than students, as the consumers of the
materials produced.
7. Although many projects can produce RSS feeds, the ability to
use these feeds to support any form of bulk import into
JorumOpen has been problematic as the content and format
of these feeds varies dramatically.
30. Impact of choices: aggregation (in JorumOpen)
1. Author names have been recorded differently.
2. The JorumOpen deposit tool will provide some form of
standardization by requiring a minimal set of descriptive fields.
3. The infrastructure of JorumOpen will be able to generate some of
the required information, e.g. file format, size, etc; across the set
of resources it holds.
4. The redevelopment of the deposit tool has resulted in some
issues regarding the inclusion of contributing institution details.
As a result the author field of some resources will also include
institutional information.
5. Project led creation of a short cataloguing guide to address
issues they noted. (UK Centre for Bioscience, 2010).
31. Next steps
Investigate details of deposit options
Informing next programme and future work
Xcri use/ course codes
Work with JorumOpen
32. Further Information
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Educational_Content_OER
http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk//topic/oer
Contact details
robert.robertson@strath.ac.uk
s.macneill@strath.ac.uk
lmc@strath.ac.uk
L.Yuan@bolton.ac.uk
philb@icbl.hw.ac.uk