Digital Repositories for Teaching and Learning

JISC Regional Support Centre West MidlandsDiscover-e-2009Wednesday 19th May 2009

www.bath.ac.uk

UKOLN is supported by:

Mahendra MaheyRepositories Research OfficerRepositories Research TeamUKOLN and CETIS

My background…

• Teaching, management and learning resources• Lecturer in FE/HE in Psychology, English as a Foreign

Language, Computing, Multimedia in the UK and abroad• Management and development of open, distance and e-

learning materials, learning centres, departments• RSC Advisor for Learning and Teaching Resources for West

Midlands and Scotland North and East• Repositories Research Officer for UKOLN as part of the

Repositories Research Team (UKOLN, CETIS and JISC)

Objectives

• Explain what repositories are• Background information and issues around

them (technical and management)• Learning and teaching repositories in further

and higher education• Sharing e-learning resources, practices,

methods and tools• Discussion about issues surrounding them

Some conventions…about DIMDIM

• Technical problem? Matt Gallon available to help – use text chat, or phone if you can

• Please contribute to the discussion via text, when you see:• If you really want to speak, ask Matt to hand over the microphone

to you• Please leave questions to the ‘text chat ‘ sections or discussion

sections, if possible• However, if you really don’t understand something, please indicate

this via text chat and I will stop and explain• I will ask ‘please stop’ , try to summarise and move on to the next

section• How many of you are new to DIMDIM, just say yes or no?

text chat

text chat

JISC Vision‘To establish a network of digital resources and services, in order to significantly improve content use and curation for education and research’

JISC have invested a lot of money in the last 6 years in research and development into digital repositories

Repositories

MM

What is a repository?

A grain silo

What is a repository?

• ‘a collection of digital objects’, a keep-safe• Typically containing research papers, learning materials, data• In FE tends to be learning materials /objects (e.g. NLN materials and home grown things)

RepositoriesMore than just a store

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX3C80yWKbI

More than just software/hardware…

“an institutional repository is a set of services that an educational organisation offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution. ….. An institutional repository is not simply a fixed set of software and hardware.”

Clifford Lynch. 'Institutional repositories : essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age'. ARL Bimonthly Report, February 2003

http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html

MM

Characteristics of a repository• content is deposited• content is managed as well as the metadata• minimum services e.g. put, get, search, access control• should be sustainable and trusted, well-supported and well-managed• could support open access to content and / or metadata• may require authentication (many learning materials repositories)

Technical Requirements• Repositories built on open source standards

(Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP/PERL)• Requires specialist skills to install set, e.g. LAMP

(Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP)• Requires relatively high processing power• Most repositories can expose metadata for

harvesting if not the actual data – through OAIPMH (can be important for sharing) – Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

• May be built up of a number of service components invisible to user

MM

Open Source

• Is not really ‘free’• Requires investment, time, money, resources

The many flavours of repositories• Content

– Eprints, learning materials, corporate records, research data, multimedia objects

• Coverage– Departmental, Institutional, Regional, National, Personal (web site / blog)

• User Group / Domain / Community– Learners, teachers, administrators

• Access Policies– Open, restricted

• Distribution– Centralised, federated

• Function / Purpose– Open access, subject access, publication, sharing and re-use, preservation

JA

http://www.rubric.edu.au/extrafiles/wheel/index.html

Repository Wheel

Your institution?

• Please use the text chat to tell me if your institution has:– A repository – if so what?– Virtual Learning Environment? What?– Is your institution thinking of getting one?

text chat

I will give you a couple of minutes and then say ‘Please stop’I may ask further questions for clarificationAt the end of the chat I will try and summarise and then move on

Management

• Usually requires at least one person to manage it

• Manage content and metadata• Where?• Library, e-learning, department?• Typically under-resourced

Who manages it?

• Using your text chat window• Please tell me who manages, or who

might manage a repository in your institution

• Why?

text chat text chat

Drivers?

• Effective management of institutional assets•Open access – impact, visibility, value of public funding• Serials crisis – institutions can’t afford all subscriptions• Enhanced communication amongst peers• Linking data to research• Learning materials sharing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yannisag/1835411334/

• VLEs ‘locking’ content in – Learning Object repositories ‘free objects’ from course, easier to reuse

Learning and teaching drivers… text chat

•What do you think?

http://www.opendoar.org/

OpenDoar

Directory of Open Access Repositories

Quality-assured listing of open access repositories around the world

Includes details of available policies

(Very useful tool)

Register your repository!

Repositories around the world

Example Repository Software platforms

Learning Object Repositories• Intrallibrary – JORUM based on this (from Intrallect )£• Harvest Road Hive£• Core – developed at Coventry City College£(cheap)• Moodle and MR CUTEResearch Repositories• Eprints• DSpace• Fedora• (most popular in universities)• Open repository – commercial venture (www.openrepository.com)

A quick tour…

JORUM national repository for learning materials

Jorum developments

Jorum Community Bay• aims to support knowledge sharing and

discussion about all aspects of sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching resources

• using Moodle• in development• next stage will be to populate the Community

Bay - with help and input from our community

Language Box

http://languagebox.eprints.org/

CoRe – Coventry City College

http://learning.covcollege.ac.uk/demo/

LORENET

http://www.lorenet.nl/nl/page/luzi/show?showcase=1

Harvest Road (Gunti Labs)

http://www.giuntilabs.com/HarvestRoad_Hive/index.php?info.php?vvu=12&

MR CUTE and Moodle

• An optional add-on repository for Moodle• A search system for finding ready made learning

materials both inside and outside an institution and embedding them in Moodle courses

• A way of storing and sharing materials outside specific courses to – minimise server space usage– encourage sharing– enable site wide use of materials without further upload– allow non technical teachers to create packages

Getting access to MR CUTE2

• MrCute 2http://www.mrcute.co.uk orhttp://www.learningobjectivity.com/mrcute

• Enrolment key for test area: cutie

• No key required to download, but you must create an account

Flickr• Content: Images• Coverage: International; community-based; personal• Function: sharing and re-use• Community / Domain: Anyone / Public• Centralised• Part open access, part access controlled

http://www.flickr.com/• Flickr API

– Allows innovative re-use of Flickr data, e.g. http://metaatem.net/words/

JA

Show us yours…

• If you have a repository or VLE, paste the link into the chat window for everyone to see

• Do you use any cool tools to share?

text chat

Benefits Discussion

• What benefits do you see for your institution?

text chat text chat

Legal• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

– Copyright– Other: database rights, moral rights, performers’ rights, trademarks, patents

• Copyright– Who owns? Author, Institution– Publisher agreements - Sherpa Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php)– Moral rights are also important – paternity and integrity rights

• Institution as publisher– Securing the right to publish, store, preserve– Plagiarism/copyright infringement, other infringements– Defamation, inaccurate information, confidentiality, libel– Freedom of Information and Data Protection

• Risk Assessment• Licences / policies

– deposit AND end-user• Creative Commons licenses seem to popular

JA

Trust DR project

• Produced some excellent resources for institutions in this area

• http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/

Discussion

• Any IPR issues you can see emerging or have emerged?

text chat text chat

Policy

• Policies are important when implementing any service• Policies can cover; legal issues, who deposits, who adds

metadata, long term preservation, etc• One current concern is whether it is good to mandate

deposit into the repository or not and whether this is a good thing

• It’s one thing having a policy, it’s another thing complying to it though!

• Open Doar policy tool• http://www.opendoar.org/tools/policytool.php

MM

Key issues for institutions

• So what are your key issues?

text chat

Implementation Issues

• Are there any specific issues that you would like mention?

text chat

Wrap up

Thanks

• m.mahey@ukoln.ac.uk