The document discusses challenges in finding relevant open educational resources (OER) and proposes solutions. It notes that using general search engines like Google to find OER results in too many irrelevant results. Existing OER search methods like native repository searches and federated search across repositories remain difficult. The document advocates developing user-friendly tools that leverage metadata standards to enable more precise searching and filtering of OER by relevance, openness, and other factors. Existing and prototype semantic and faceted search approaches aimed at improving OER discovery are overviewed.

1. OER Curation and
Search
The Issues at Hand
Conference Workshop
Inaugural International Conference on
Open and Flexible Education
(ICOFE 2014)
17th January 2014

2. Ishan Abeywardena
MSc, MSc (Brunel), BSc (Bangalore), MIEEE, MBCS, MIET, MTA
Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer
School of Science and Technology
Wawasan Open University
Penang, Malaysia

3. Outline
• The Current OER
Search Dilemma
• The Concept of
Metadata
• Existing Search
Methods
• Useful OER Sources

4. The Current OER Search Dilemma

5. Curation
Content repositories
Portal repositories
Content and portal repositories
McGreal, R. (2010). Open Educational Resource Repositories: An Analysis. Proceedings: The 3rd Annual Forum on e-Learning
Excellence, 1-3 February 2010, Dubai, UAE.

7. So…how do I find the material I need for my teaching?

9. Google “Advanced Search” results for OER on Chemistry (24th May 2012)

10. Literature
•
...The problem is in finding the resources, and more correctly finding the “right”
resources. Using a regular search engine like Google to find content is not always a
viable option as it will generate too many answers. There is, hence, a need to easily
find relevant content...” (Hatakka, 2009)
•
“searching this way (using existing search engines such as Google) might be a long
and painful process as most of the results are not usable for educational purposes”
(Pirkkalainen & Pawlowski, 2010)
•
No single search engine is still able to locate resources from all the OER
repositories (West & Victor, 2011)
•
One of the major barriers to the use and re-use of OER is the difficulty of finding
quality OER matching a specific context (Dichev & Dicheva, 2012)
•
“…the problem with open content is not the lack of available resources on the
Internet but the inability to locate suitable resources for academic use”
(Unwin, 2005).

11. Native search mechanisms perhaps?

12. Native Search in Repositories
Identify which material to look for (e.g. integration, C++ programming)
Identify the search queries (e.g. “undergraduate mathematics”)
Locate repository (word of mouth, some link somewhere, go to the more popular
repositories)
Run multiple queries to find resources
Read each resource to identify the usefulness (openness, access, relevance)
Identify useful resources
Repeat steps 3-6 on multiple repositories (hundreds to thousands…..)

13. Frustrated??

14. The Declaration
i. Facilitate finding, retrieving
and sharing of OER.
Encourage the
development of userfriendly tools to locate and
retrieve OER that are
specific and relevant to
particular needs.
(UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, 2012)
UNESCO. (2012). Paris OER Declaration, Retrieved September18, 2012 from
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf

15. How useful is a resource really?

16. Measures of usefulness
Desirability
Relevance
Openness
Accessibility

17. What is Desirability?
Less useful resources are less desirable for teaching and learning needs….

18. Concept of Metadata

19. Metadata
IEEE-LOM
DCMI

20. LOM
Casali, A., Deco, C., Romano, A. and Tomé, G. (2013) 'An Assistant for Loading Learning Object Metadata: An Ontology Based Approach', Interdisciplinary
Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO), vol. 9, p. 11.

21. DCMI
the DCMI resource model
Source: http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/ (29/08/2013)

22. LRMI
http://creativecommons.org/tag/learning-resource-metadata-initiative

23. However…the issue is

24. Existing Search Methods

25. Some Existing Solutions
• Federated Search: BRENHET2; OpeScout;
Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange
(GLOBE); and Pearson’s Project Blue Sky.
• Semantic Search: OER-CC ontology; the
“Assistant” prototype; the “Folksemantic”
project; and “Agrotags”.

26. Federated Search
User
Metadata
Federation
Organisation
Institution
Repos
Repos
Consortium
Institution
Repos
Repos
Institution
Repos
Repos

27. Semantic Search
Disease Prevention
Vitamins
Nutrition
Apples
Fiber
Varieties
Processed Products
McIntosh
Honeycrisp
Juice
Sauce
Cider
Pink Lady

28. Yeah…but which one do I choose?

29. http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/pearson-bluesky/

30. http://www.globe-info.org/

31. OERScout

32. Useful OER Sources

38. Thanks!
Questions?
I will also be happy to answer your queries if you
e-mail me via ishansa@wou.edu.my

39. Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the support provided by
Dr K S Yuen, Chair of the conference organising committee;
Dr K C Li, Vice-chair of the conference organising committee; and
Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK)
by extending full sponsorship for may participation at the Inaugural
International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014).

40. About…
Ishan Abeywardena
Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia
•
•
•
•
MSc in Wireless Enterprise Business Systems, Brunel University, UK.
MSc in Engineering Management, Brunel University, UK.
BSc in Computer Science, Bangalore University, India.
PhD Candidate in Computer Science, University Malaya, Malaysia. Areas of specialisation: text
mining, metadata, faceted search
Professional Member of
– Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (MIEEE)
– British Computer Society (MBCS)
– Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET)
– Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA)
Official Profile: http://www.wou.edu.my/IshanAbeywardena.html
Professional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ishansa
Research Profile: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishan_Abeywardena/
Tech Blog: http://www.ishantalks.com
E-mail: ishansa@wou.edu.my

41. Media Sources
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Multimedia_icon.png/120px-Multimedia_icon.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Nuvola_multimedia.png/120px-Nuvola_multimedia.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Open_Clip_Art_Library_Piggy_Bank.svg/120pxOpen_Clip_Art_Library_Piggy_Bank.svg.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_learning_-_jigsaw_map_of_Southeast_Asia.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F_800px-Ua-er9m-558-20070728.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_Bus,_Cairo_02.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polski_Fiat_126p_in_Krak%C3%B3w_(MWM_2010).jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PLM_2011_64_Jetalliance_Lotus.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkbeycRa2A
hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu