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.

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

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?