Article on Open Educational Resources in Times Higher Education

Get it out in the open by Rebecca Attwood (24th September 2009)

Would you like UKOER with that?

Yesterday I had a chat with the learning technologist from Innovation North (faculty) about all things repository and, more specifically, UniCycle – he also brought along a faculty colleague who is exploring the best way of disseminating laboratory training videos to students via the VLE.

intraLibrary can’t stream video and I candidly pointed out that if the only requirement was to make these video tutorials available to students through the VLE then the planet eStream server would be by far the simplest solution – just upload the video to eStream and drop the URL into an X-stream module.  Job done.  However, there is no reason we can’t also catalogue the URL in intraLibrary and there are several potential benefits to doing so not least for ukoer – depending on IPR and licencing considerations of course, more on that in a minute.

The only question that gives me slight pause for thought is the wisdom of effectively double-cataloguing the same resource in two systems – when I was initially exploring planet eStream some time ago, it was pointed out that eStream is already a fully searchable resource and there was some resistance to double-cataloguing in this way as being inelegant.  The issues are perhaps similar to the question I raised in a previous post about making ukoer available both via a local repository and JorumOpen. However, as far as I can tell, metadata attached to resources in eStream is extremely limited so why not add standardised ukoer metadata and link out to them from intralibrary – is there any practical reason why this is a bad idea?

Inelegance notwithstanding, other potential benefits of this approach are being able to search for eStream video via the VLE PowerLink and the concommitant advantage that resources catalogued in the repository aren’t restricted to an individual X-stream module.  In theory, of course, there is nothing to stop a tech-savvy tutor linking out to eStream – or YouTube for that matter – to their hearts content, from the VLE, via email or from anywhere else that takes their fancy – in practice, however, they need to be able to search for a wide range of resources from a single, simple interface that is well established in the institutional infrastructure and that clearly identifies ownership and licensing – that isn’t the eStream server, or likely to be (nor is it currently the repository.  Yet.  But I’m working on it!)

I asked my “guest” (hostage?) what limitations, if any, faculty would like to place on access – would they wish to ensure that it was, in fact, only available to students within a specific module of X-stream or would they consider wider dissemination across the institution/sector?  As I rattled on it became clear, and quite understandably, that my hostage hadn’t thought about this in any great depth and indicated that they were questions to be discussed at faculty level…

Would they consider licensing for reuse under Creative Commons?  Er…what’s Creative Commons?

So, apologies to the hapless soul who just wanted to disseminate some video and found himself in my office being harangued about repositories, PowerLinks, OER, IPR and Creative Commons but this is exactly the type of interaction we need to be having with colleagues across the institution who have their own specific requirements for disseminating digital teaching and learning materials and from where we can start building cultural change for ukoer from the ground up.

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.

UNESCO releases new publication on Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace

Download available free at:

http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Open_Educational_Resources:_Conversations_in_Cyberspace

Spinning plates: A repository update

I feel at the moment that I’m trying to spin plates, rushing around like a guest act on the Paul Daniels magic show to impart sustained rotation – when I get to the last plate the first is beginning to wobble….and then someone throws me another, just to make it more exciting.

Oh and all the plates are different shapes and sizes (some of them I swear aren’t even symmetrical which gives them a lop-sided gyration that is really tricky to maintain…)

Currently research material collectively comprises one of the biggest and wonkiest sets of crockery:

1. Peer reviewed journal articles
2. Book items
3. Conference proceedings
4. Conference items (e.g. ppt presentations)
5. Theses or dissertations
6. Reports

All of these need to be displayed differently by the Open Search interface which means Mike is currently hacking away at the code to ensure they are picked up by Educational properties: Type of resource and then formatted appropriately.  In turn this is having a knock on effect for metadata entry and workflow and I’m still not sure how it will all tie together.

We are also relying on Mike to develop advanced search as part of the interface; work is progressing well and we are now able to cross reference (toggling AND/OR) Title; Subject; Publisher; Description (abstract); DOI; Type and Format  – the interface also has a free text box.  Mike is currently trying to implement probably the most important field – search by author – and has identified a potential problem due to limits on the way we can differentiate contributor roles in the metadata – currently we are only able to query Dublin Core rather than the full LOM record.  N.B. Recent testing has indicated that this may not actually be the problem we originally thought and it may be possible to query contributor role=author after all.  Then we’d also like to incorporate browse by author – though this is currently another plate yet to be balanced and spun….

Then there is the ongoing issue of differentiating content (i.e. research material vs. learning objects) and ensuring these are returned appropriately by an extended/alternative Open Search interface – this functionality is crucial to Unicycle of course to make OERs available.  We’re currently exploring using collection tokens which should allow us to submit a query incorporating an authenticationToken such that a given query only returns content from a particular collection.  Initial testing has gone well and we’re pretty confident we can implement this over the next week or so.

(NB.  I need to start thinking about license models for Unicycle and some flavour of Creative Commons will need uploading to intraLibrary, another one for the to do list…)

Ideally we could do with a functioning PowerLink for the VLE by September – as well as being crucial for the PC3 project, it represents functionality that will really get people engaged and allow us to demonstrate the benefits of storing and sharing teaching and learning materials in the repository rather than within the modular, inaccessible silos of Blackboard-Vista.  Also important for PC3 is implementing LDAP authentication (which really should be happening soon!) thereby giving teaching-staff – and the first PC3 cohort – access to intraLibrary – NB.  PC3 doesn’t require Open Access in the same way as Unicycle.

I’ve also been working with Rachel on developing a workflow for CLA material and ensuring that we can generate suitable reports for the CLA – during this process, we uncovered a bug in the metadata editor which slowed us down a bit but with help from Intrallect, we’ve managed to implement a work-around pending the bug being fixed in a future build and Rachel has started using intraLibrary to store and disseminate CLA material on a pilot basis.

The most recent plate JISC have thrown our way, of course, is the Bibliosight project which will almost certainly have an impact on the developing infrastructure beyond the specific deliverables of that project – our first meeting is on Monday 13th July for which there is a draft agenda on the project blog.

I just hope that we can keep all the plates spinning and don’t end up with a Greek wedding scenario!

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?)

Open Educational Resources Programme start-up meeting

Twitter hash-tag: #oerstartup

(See http://cloudworks.ac.uk/node/1725 for aggregation)

UniCycle website

There is now a project website for UniCycle.  Not much there yet as it’s Ning and we’re relying on this newfangled Web 2.0 to generate content – so if you’re interested in Open Educational Resources come and join us.

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.