Testing the VLE PowerLink

To be honest, PowerLink is probably overstating it a bit but it is a link that allows us to search intraLibrary from the VLE and it does work. Sort of. But it’s not very powerful.

The main issue is the very basic nature of the search facility – just a simple search box with no way to perform a more advanced search:

So it’s not a great deal of use unless you know what you’re looking for.

The search functionality does support Boolean operators; the term ukoer, for example, will return the 13 items that I currently have identified with that tag in the keyword field:

Whereas ukoer AND decision will return the single record “Decision Making” (ukoer OR decision of course, will still return all 13 records) – there is no automatic Boolean however and ukoer decision will return no results at all rather than, say, doing an OR search by default.

Search is also a little crude in that it will find adjacent words in the metadata but only if they are entered in quotation marks. So decision making without quotes will not return any results though “decision making” does return the expected result:

An additional issue is that, as we are using intralibrary to manage research material as well as learning and teaching material, at the very least we will want to differentiate between these two categories. It is possible to configure the PowerLink to filter by collection and we are currently filtering on Open Educational Resources (and Learning Objects though that collection is not currently searchable externally until we have further developed Leeds Met Open search and configured that interface to differentiate between research & learning and teaching material). It will be useful, however, to also search for full text research papers that may not be available elsewhere but without an advanced search the only way to do this would be to switch off all filtering and allow the PowerLink to return everything….unless we can install two separate instances of the PowerLink in Blackboard and configure them to search different collections. This would be a quick and dirty solution and a bit clunky but, failing technical development of the PowerLink itself, might be the only option – of course, the two instances would need to be clearly named to identify the respective content they would return. We don’t even know if it’s possible yet though and my colleagues in the VLE team are looking in to it as we speak.

So not perhaps a full solution, not as sophisticated as MrCute for Moodle, for example, which, as well as more advanced search functionality also supports searching multiple repositories and depositing from the VLE back into a repository (it was supposed to include Jorum though was disabled last I heard and not sure what the status quo is with ongoing development to JorumOpen).  Limitations notwithstanding, I’ll certainly be testing with teaching staff as is, as something is better than nothing and experience has shown that I’d be ill advised to wait for the perfect solution!

If any of the Keele crowd should pass by these parts I’d be very interested to know if they have done any work refining/extending the functionality of the PowerLink or plan to do so – like us Keele are running intraLibrary 3.0 and Blackboard Vista. I’d also be keen to learn of anybody adapting MrCute for Blackboard.

Link or file in JorumOpen?

At the OER startup meeting back in June there was some discussion around including a link to a resource in JorumOpen rather than the file itself – this obviously makes sense, for example, if the resource is already out there on the web and adding the relevant URL to Jorum will certainly aid appropriate discovery in the context of #ukoer.  I’m not certain, however, if this can apply directly to the Unicycle project which requires us to make resources available via JorumOpen as well as the Leeds Met repository.  I can’t immediately see why not but I’ll have to discuss it further with Simon.

As I mentioned last week I’ve begun uploading learning objects to intraLibrary that have been specifically designated as an OER for the Unicycle project and this morning I’ve also used the Jorum OER Deposit tool – http://deposit.jorum.ac.uk/ – to submit the same resource to JorumOpen (currently in beta and for testing only).  Rather than uploading the file again, it seemed to make sense to submit the public URL generated by intraLibrary instead – this will also, to some extent, account for version control issues as there will only be a single locus at which the original resides rather than two (though of course folk could still modify and resubmit to either JorumOpen or our local repository – or indeed somewhere else).

The only other thing that immediately occurs is that we will also be linking out to URLs from intraLibrary which means there would effectively be a chain of URLs from JorumOpen to the Leeds Met repository, to the resource on the web – I’m not sure whether this would create a problem though.

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?)