This document discusses international learning object repositories and open educational resources (OER). It introduces organizations like Open Educational Resources (OER) repositories and the Global Learning Objects Brokering Exchange (GLOBE) Alliance that aims to develop a global learning infrastructure. The document also discusses metadata for describing educational resources, learning outcomes, and opportunities. It presents opportunities for cooperation around connecting repositories, generating metadata, improving recommendations, and tracking learner achievements and outcomes.

1. International Learning Object
Repositories
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Dr. Jad Najjar
jnajjar@eummena.org
www.eummena.org
LTSC LOM
Twitter: @najjar
8 May 2012 – Tunis, Tunisia

2. Outline
• Introduction of organizations
– Open Educational Resources (Learning
Objects) repositories
• Outcome-based learning
• Cooperation opportunities

3. Share and Reuse of Open
Educational Resources
Educational resource example
Find to reuse (reuse)
Teachers (seekers)
n
to lear
Find
Provide metadata
Describe (index)
Learners (seekers)
Teacher (creator)

4. Educational Resources
‘any digital resource that can be reused to support learning’ [Wiley,
2000]
- Mona Lisa Picture
- Document
- Chapter, Lesson on
the painting or the
painter (Da Vinci)
- 4 year curriculum on
art
[Hodgins, 2002]
4

5. Metadata
• Descriptive data
• “data about data”!!
• Purpose
– Describes a resource
– For discovery and identification
• Includes elements like
– title, description, author, keywords
5

6. Metadata & Educational Resources
- IEEE LTSC
LOM
Example taken from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january08/ceri/01ceri.html
6

7. alliance with
• Global Learning Objects Brokering Exchange
(GLOBE) Alliance
• contributing towards the development of a global
learning infrastructure that can be accessible from
all
• one-stop-shop for learning resource broker
organizations, each of them managing and/or
federating one or more learning object
repositories
www.globe-info.org

9. GLOBE is powered by ARIADNE
• metadata infrastructure of ARIADNE used to
support federated search in allied GLOBE
repositories

10. Brokering Metadata
Metadata
Exposure
User
Author User
User
GLOBE
(Broker)
Provider Provider User
User
Author OU ARIADNE User
Broker
Japan Broker
Metadata Metadata
Gathering Exposure

11. Technologies
• GLOBE uses the ARIADNE
infrastructure
• About 100 partners providing more
than 200 collections
• About 20 different validation schemes
• Harvesting more than 2,000,000
metadata but not all are selected

12. Technologies (2)
• Metadata Gathering and Exposure
– Registering Collections
– Harvesting through OAI-PMH: Open Archive Initiative –
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
• Get copy of metadata localy
– Federated Search through SQI: Simple Query Interface
• Send quesries to remote repositories
– Validation
– Transformation
– Indexing
• Exposure through the GLOBE portal

13. Open Educational Resources (OER)
• In the last decade, the challenge was to
– Put open educational resources (OERs) in online
repositories
• Connecting the repositories worldwide
• Limited OER initiatives in the Arab World
– No dedicated financial support in form of research
projects
– Copyrights issues
– Low availability of Arabic content in existing
international repositories
• Opportunities?

14. Eummena
• Not-for-profit association established to advance
learning technologies and foster Share and Reuse of
Learning Resources
• Create standards-based applications that allow retrieval
and publication of open educational resources
• Support Globe and Ariadne in covering the Arab region
– Use of Globe/Ariadne technologies
– Contribute the Arabic experience, technology and content to
Globe
– We need you…
www.eummena.org

15. OER & LMS
• Offer OERs in the living cloud of teachers and
learners (learning management systems
(LMS), social learning networks)
– Moodle, Sakai, Elgg, etc..
• All-in-house features, just blend it in
• Adapt applications for culture
• Encourage connecting to global OER
repositories

16. LMS OER widgets
• Finding and sharing OER
 Ariadne/Globe Moodle 2.0 search widget
o Search and share OERs from within Moodle
o Track user activities for improving recommendations
and personalization
• Publishing OER into repositories
 Ariadne/Globe Moodle automatic metadata
generator module
o Building on Ariadne Samgi framework
o Context and usage (attention) metadata is captured

17. Live Demo
1) Moodle Globe Search widget
2) Generation of metadata and
indexation of learning objects
into an educational repository

18. Ariadne Moodle 2.0 search widget
Link to Ariadne search widget demo

19. Ariadne Moodle 2.0 search widget
OER Detail

20. Open Discovery Space
• CIP PSP funded initiative aiming to deploy a pan-
European open eLearning content infrastructure
14 M Euro

21. Research Challenges and
Opportunities
• Improve recommendation services of
open educational resources
– Usage metadata, context, etc.
ata
me sage
• Smart generation of metadata
tad
U
conformant to standards
• Personalization, integration and
usable interfaces
www.eummena.org

22. Open ICOPER Content Space

23. Metadata for Learning Outcomes
• Describes the characteristics of a learning outcomes
• Enable storage, referencing, sharing Learning outcomes data
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24. CEN WSLT InLOC project

25. Metadata for Learning Opportunities (MLO)
• Describe an opportunity a learner can follow
• Enables publishing metadata across universities/countries
O
ML
P ER
ICO P
AP

26. Metadata for Personal Achievements
• Represent information on achieved/required/desired learning outcomes of a learner. Also teachers (taught
outcomes)
• Share data with LMSs, recruitment systems, social applications
ALO
RP
PE
ICO
O
ML
P ER
ICO P
AP

27. Import Outcome-based Learning Design
http://develix.iml.umu.se/moodle/

28. Learning and tracking of achievements…….

29. View achieved learning outcomes and
recommendations of content and peers
2
1

30. Potential cooperation
opportunities
• Arab partners join network of Eummena and
Globe
– Use of technical framework
– Access learning content
– Publish content (connect your university
repository)
• Joint research projects
– International/EU/USA
– Anything else?

31. Thanks .... ‫شكرا‬
Dr. Jad Najjar
jad@eummena.org
www.eummena.org
Questions