Musing about metadata for OER

(Disclaimer: I am not a qualified librarian or cataloguer.)

Thus far I’ve only really considered, in detail,  the minutiae of research specific metadata (a consequence of the ongoing project to repurpose an LO repository as an OA archive of research).  However, this morning I uploaded my first learning object to intraLibrary that has been specifically designated as an OER for the Unicycle project.  The resource itself isn’t terribly exciting in that it is just a Word.doc but it makes sense to start with a relatively simple object than a more exotic file type or package.

The metadata template I’m using is taken directly from JORUM without any modification and is consequently (currently at least) based on IEEE LOM though it’s worth restating that we’ve recently learned that JORUM will be using DSpace to serve OER rather than intraLibrary so that service’s template is almost certain to change considerably in the very near future.

Mandatory fields:

Title
Description(s)
Keyword(s)
Contributor(s): Author(s)
Contribution Date
Payment Required (yes/no)
Subject to Copyright (yes/no)
Statement of Copyright and Restriction

Recommended Fields:

Version
Status
IMS LRM Metadata Identifier
Role of Metadata Contributor
Metadata Contributor(s)
Date of Metadata Contribution
Language of Metadata Record
Technical Format
Location of Resource
Language of Intended User
Type of Resource
Intended for Use In
Level of Difficulty

Optional Fields:

Description of Contribution Date
Module Code
Module Title
IMS LRM Metadata Identifier
Catalogue
Description of Metadata Contribution Date
Format of Metadata Record
Size Resource in Bytes
Type of Delivery System
Name of Delivery System
Minimum Version of Delivery System
Maximum Version of Delivery System
How to Install This Resource
Special Requirements for Use
Duration of Media Resource: Playing Time
Type of Interactivity
Educational Purpose Description
Language of Intended User
Level of Interactivity
Semantic Density
Intended for Use By
Completion Time
CLA Reporting Data

In addition, the resource is classified against JACS (Joint Academic Coding System) – again emulating the current (intraLibrary) JORUM configuration and can be ascribed one of the six Creative Commons attribution licences.

So off I went.

Title is straightforward, and Description – though this field does require some thought to make it useful – but what about Keyword(s)? My first thought is that we need some sort of controlled vocabulary – for research material I am using Library of Congress Authorities which is well established practice for this type of material but perhaps less appropriate for learning objects; one could rely on author produced keywords but these are perhaps not easily generated as formal metadata and will tend to lack consistency (social tagging is perhaps a slightly different issue and intraLibrary does have a facility for ascribing user-generated tags after the resource has been published.)

I posted my idle musings to Twitter and was immediately called to account by @philbarker and @LornaMCampbell who both asked what specific aspects of the learning object the controlled vocab would need to describe. @ambrouk acknowledged it was a big question and suggested two separate criteria: a) subject classification b) everything else author might tell you about / user says they want?

Input also came from @lynncorrigan and @KavuBob who pointed me to the HILT (High Level Thesaurus) project at Strathclyde – http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/hilt4/demonstrators.html

I haven’t yet looked closely at this project but from the Twitter response it’s clearly an area that needs further research so this is a quick post to further the discussion…I’ll come back when I’ve explored the issue in more detail and all perspectives in the meantime gratefully received.

Some final unstructured thoughts at this stage:

• The need for a lightweight metadata template – which I guess the mandatory subset is though even this requires Keyword(s) AND classification against JACS…AND social tags can also be applied.  To what extent the recommended/optional fields need to be completed depends to some extent on the type of resource though I suspect that some of these fields will actually need to be mandatory for certain resource types – Duration of Media Resource: Playing time for example
• How the metadata relates to resource discovery on the modern web – metadata is ultimately to aid resource discovery (and nail down copyright and licencing).  Where will our OERs be primarily discovered from?  A Leeds Met interface/a JORUM interface/Google/All of the above/somewhere else?
• Workflows – who uploads resources and applies metadata?  The creator/repository administrator?  Does there perhaps need to be a multiple stage workflow utilising something like the recently released JORUM quick deposit tool (ideally based on SWORD) whereby metadata is subsequently enriched by trained staff?

OER projects – liaison with other projects in the institutional strand

Or come to think of it subject and individual strands too…

As a repository development officer working on an OER project – Unicycle – I am interested in how we can most effectively integrate with JorumOpen and liaise with other projects in the institutional strand around technical infrastructure, standardised metadata and version control (to name but a few). We are using the intraLibrary repository platform and our project will aim to disseminate OERs via both our own and the national service; such liaison could be of potential benefit to JorumOpen and the wider community looking at OERs. For example I would like to explore a deposit tool utilising SWORD which could deposit a resource into both repositories simultaneously – such a tool could potentially be used by other projects to deposit resources into their local repository and JorumOpen. (N.B. How would such a tool deal with version control/synchronisation across platforms?) When I saw the recent demonstration of the Jorum OER deposit tool at the programme start-up meeting I hoped this technology might be suitable for this but have since learned that it is based on MrCute and does not actually link in with IntraLibrary or any other repository platform – it simply stores the IMS packages on a file system (Question: Are IMS packages ingested into the repository from there?) I’d be very interested in any feedback from Jorum and/or the community of OER projects.

Open Educational Resources Programme start-up meeting: What I learned

I very much enjoyed the OER programme start-up meeting on Tuesday, in spite of the 05:30 alarm and having to hoof it across Manchester on account of ‘improvements’ to the Metrolink.  I recognised several colleagues from other JISC programmes and was socially disorientated once more by the 21st Century experience of finally  meeting f2f with real people with whom I’m already well acquainted in cyber-space – more so now than ever with fellow Twitterers.

Projects in the programme are divided into 3 discrete strands: subject; individual and institutional.   In the institutional strand, UniCycle will aim to build a prototype mechanism for the import and export of OERs using our intraLibrary repository and the new JorumOpen service.  Other projects in this strand are BERLiN, Open Exeter, OpenStaffs, Otter, Open Spires and Open Content Employability Project (link?).

The agenda for the day can be viewed at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/node/1725 along with aggregated tweets tagged #oerstartup ; Cloudworks is an environment that I haven’t encountered before but it looks very useful and I intend to explore it further – it was described to us as a way of making transient events more persistent and of bringing our fragmented online communications back together.

Like many on the day I was looking forward to the presentation from Jorum to learn exactly how that service is evolving to facilitate the OER programme.  I have a particular interest, of course, as we also use intraLibrary as our repository platform and Unicycle will aim to disseminate OERs via both our own and the national service.  The experience of Jorum and the problems they have had persuading folk to sign their institution up to their extensive licence agreement, become registered users and deposit their learning resources in intraLibrary – from where they can only be discovered and reused by other registered users – has been instructional for us and I am also aware, first hand, of the training required to use intraLibrary – an undeniably powerful system albeit where flexibility can perhaps translate to complexity for the user.  In short, I was keen to discover how they plan to tackle these issues with the introduction of their three licence model and by facilitating easy deposit and (where appropriate) open access to LOs.

Current Jorum model

In her presentation (available here), Nicola Siminson first gave an overview of Jorum and JorumOpen; how the current model (illustrated above), is developing and the technical and policy initiatives that will underpin this development.

The 3 new licensing regimes are key:

• JorumOpen – for content whose creators and owners are willing and able to share their materials for anyone to use via the web, under Creative Commons (CC) licences

• JorumEducationUK – for content sharing where creators and owners need to restrict the availability of resources to members of UK Further and Higher Education institutions, authenticated via the Access Management Federation (this is most similar to the current licence)

• JorumPlus – for sharing content with additional restrictions, for example where material licensed via JISC Collections or from third parties is involved; this will require institutional authorisation

Work on the platform is ongoing and we were promised that:

• access will be open to anyone

• materials will be more discoverable – e.g. Google – JorumOpen will be exposed to search engines

• users will be able to search the whole Jorum repository via the website – no logging on to download

These are all issues that we have also been exploring and I expect that Jorum will need to develop an interface based on SRU similar to that developed by IRISS and our own research interface.  It would be very useful too if we can compare notes on facilitating effective Google search/SEO.

Then came the demonstration of the OER deposit tool – http://deposit.jorum.ac.uk – which:

• allows the deposit of a simple item, or collection of items

• a link/URL to an open educational resource from a remote site

• authenticated access and a simple one-off registration

• UK Access Management Federation – single sign-on at home institution

• upload content, submit basic metadata and select a suitable Creative Commons licence

• with option to add more metadata, for greater discoverability…and will ultimately enable the sharing and finding of OER via JorumOpen!

It looks good.  Albeit in beta.  Jorum are keen for the community to test it over the coming months and submit any feedback from the website.

I asked whether the software/code will be made available so we may implement a similar tool as part of our repository infrastructure at Leeds Met; in addition, as Unicycle will use both our own repository and Jorum to disseminate OERs, I would also like to explore dual deposit from a web based interface so users may deposit into both repositories simultaneously.  As such I would also be interested in the workflow(s) and metadata templates that Jorum are using with the deposit tool. Will resources be published directly to the library, for example, or will they go into a user’s work area or into an administrative work area for metadata enrichment?

I was advised that the software will indeed be available to other projects though not in a neatly packaged format.

NB.  I had assumed that the deposit tool was based on SWORD which I know does facilitate deposit into multiple repositories – it appears, however, that it is actually based on MrCute which does not, in fact, use the SWORD protocol so this will need further exploration.

Finally delegates were urged to join the Jorum community – http://community.jorum.ac.uk/

Other useful presentations throughout the day included Project Management
Evaluation and Synthesis project, OU-supported communities and OER infokit

(links to all presentations in one place at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/oer/startupmeeting090609.aspx)

And then, on the way back to Euston, I popped in the British museum and admired bits of the Parthenon and some Sarcophagi (Sarcophaguses?)

A new era

In my last post I suggested that Repository News would be mothballed now that the final report has been submitted (still not published but soon!). However, our JISC funding was for a start-up project and we are still very much nurturing our neonate repository which, like a human infant, still has a lot of growing up to do.  I enjoy blogging and it seems rather artificial to start again so, like an infuriating parent sending a round-robin at Christmas, here is my first update of the new era.

All in all the little fella is doing very well though we were very disappointed to miss out on enhancement funding from uncle JISC – bid feedback was positive and stressed just how competitive the call had been. All is not lost, however, and we’ve just learned of institutional success in the recent JISC call for the Open Educational Resources programme; Unicycle will be underway very soon and will necessarily use our intraLibrary repository which should put us in a very good position with respect to JORUM – also based on intraLibrary of course – and I’ve already implemented the JORUM metadata template (with permission). The repository will also be an integral component of the PC3 project funded under the e-Learning Capital programme which is already underway.  In addition,  we intend to submit a bid for the rapid innovation call – the #jiscri projects are relatively small scale timetabled for just 6 months, but it would be very nice to get one; the deadline is Wednesday so it’s fingers crossed (again!).  Finally, there may also be a project in the pipeline with the NHS looking at deposit into multiple repositories using SWORD.

The difficulty is knowing where to start!  In terms of OA research the search interface still needs a lot of work to integrate advanced search; we also need to ensure that we are properly indexed by Google and I’m ashamed to say that I am yet to register with the Open Archives Initiative. Then there is the small matter of advocacy and full text content.  We also need to integrate with SFX, our URL resolver.

I want to look at using the repository for the CLA digitisation service emulating what Keele are doing with intraLibrary and a functioning PowerLink to the VLE would be nice, something like MrCute2 and more work around the conceptual PERSoNA outputs.

We have a meeting next week to discuss priorities and project management activities over the coming months which promises to be a headache inducing affair.

MrCute for Moodle

I really haven’t had chance to think about our VLE PowerLink which is languishing at the moment, with minimum functionality (ie. a lowly search box), on the X-stream (aka Blackboard Vista) development server.  Any sort of extensive development work really isn’t viable before the end of March or within the remit of the current project, nevertheless I am very interested in MrCute for Moodle which looks like it will offer much of the functionality that we should be aspiring to including full blown content package creation from multiple files and subsequent repository deposit (to multiple repositories including JORUM – Q.  Does it use SWORD?).

The search facility for a local repository appears to be more sophisticated than a simple search box and allows a search to be restricted by category.  In due course it will also be possible to search JORUM as well.

JORUM forum (which I missed)

I would have really liked to have gone to this event but unfortunately wasn’t able to attend – it sounds like an interesting day:

http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/philb/2008/12/10/jorum-forum/#more-60

I will certainly be thinking more about potential synergies with JORUM in the new year.