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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The UKOER approach

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

Required descriptive set

Tag: UKOER Title Author Date URL File format (auto) File size (auto)

Recommended descriptive set

Language Subject classifications Keywords Tags Comments Description

Descriptive set (2)

Hoped for outcomes

Institutional change Release of OERs Freedom of choice allows opportunity to assess:

Selection Suitability Impact Sustainability

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

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

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

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]

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...

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

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

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

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

Patterns: system type

Patterns specific choices

Patterns: descriptive standards

Patterns: dissemination standards

Patterns: packaging formats

Patterns: resource types

PDF DOC PPT SWF QTI MP3 MP4 FLV

JPEG PNG SVG WMV OGG WAV AVI WMF AAC ?

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.

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.

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).

Next steps

Investigate details of deposit options Informing next programme and future work Xcri use/ course codes Work with JorumOpen

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