Open Educational Resources e-Infrastructure Update
Back in 2008 I helped define the technical requirements for the UK OER Programme . We were very keen to have as minimal technical requirements as possible so that we can find out what choices people make, for example, decisions about their metadata, and we wanted to see how people use different platforms, as individuals and within teams.
As we described in the last IE blogpost on OER (May 2010) the non-prescriptive approach has allowed us to monitor organic emerging trends. For example, the Key Lessons of the evaluation and synthesis report states: “There is a clear model emerging of resources being deposited in a local repository (institutional or subject centre) where trust and community engagement can be built, then surfaced through syndication to general open repositories such as JorumOpen, Merlot, and to third-party sites such as iTunesU, YouTube, flickr, scribd, slideshare”
There is much more in the synthesis report section on technical and hosting issues and the detail can be found in John Robertson’s excellent summaries of technology and descriptive choices.
There’s a lot to absorb from the OER Programme Phase 1, and more to explore. Here are some issues that I think might benefit from from further work:
- Rights – how effectively are creative commons licences being used, are they being accompanied by attribution information, are they being used by machine services to help find and filter content?
- Platforms – what’s the mix of institutionally- JISC- and commercially- managed services that best support the range of OERs produced within the UK FE/HE community?
- Aggregation – how is the distributed content drawn back together, by who, for what purpose? Will people use search to source content that is then packaged into e-textbooks, courses, journals, wikis and blogs?
- Data model – will content be embedded, rendered, mirrored, copied? Do we want or need to track it? Is the virtuous circle of use, reuse, feedback an idealised process rather than a reality?
- Scope and scale – how far do we need to zoom out to find the most effective points of critical mass for presenting content? Should we only focus on open resources? Is granularity an issue for aggregation and resource discovery?
- Curation and sustainability – how do we sustain subject collections not owned by individual institutions? What needs preserving? Who pays for the long-term hosting?
These questions are being explored by so many people it’s impossible to summarise in a blog post. There is some really useful work done by Lisa Rogers about discovering OERs through RSS and APIs. Brian Lamb’s vision for OER, illustrated in his Open Contempt talk (audio available) includes presenting syndicated content in wiki-stype interfaces, blending open assets into more packaged experiences for the end user. Jorum is exploring issues around hosting open collections, such as rss export and import, collections policy and licensing. The OER Phase 2 projects will soon be announced, and particularly relevant to these issues will be the Strand Ci “Thematic Collections” projects, who will be using aggregation approaches to making the most of existing OERs. I’ll be taking a keen interest in how the work of the JISC Resource Discovery Task Force can provide some answers for effective release and sharing of OERs. Licensing and rights are an important part of the jigsaw, and JISC is discussing with Creative Commons where we can usefully collaborate, for example with DiscoverEd search. Meanwhile the Learning Registry project in the US is exploring similar issues on a large scale, and are using a very open ideas development model which means we’ll be able to learn from and with them.
Over the coming months I’ll be looking at how best to draw together the ideas and activities in this area, and I’m keen to hear from you about what you most want to know or share. Please email me, a.thomas @ jisc.ac.uk , contact me on skype amber_thomas , or talk to me on twitter @ambrouk .
Amber
RSS feed and twitter account for new JISC projects
There is a new, experimental RSS feed which will bring news of JISC innovation projects as they are funded:
http://www.softmuse.co.uk/pimsrss/latestprojects.asp
This feed has also been used to create a twitter account that will tweet every new innovation project
http://twitter.com/jiscprojects
These have been produced by my colleague Steve Wilton (@StephenCWilton) who has been working with PIMS, the database JISC uses to record details of all the projects we fund.
The feed and the twitter account are experimental so you may experience problems with the service and the data. Steve is working towards a more polished final product but we thought these would still be useful to people in their current state.
If you have any suggestions for improvements, please leave them in the comments.
JISC and Open Access
We’ve just published an account of Open Access and JISC’s contributions to it over the years:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2010/openaccessmainbrochure.aspx
It covers how OA meets institutional and sector demands for sustainable efficiency and effectiveness in scholarly communication, how work in the UK fits into a wider international picture, and how it works for stakeholders including researchers, institutions and publishers. It also includes case studies and a list of relevant JISC and related reports.
We are working with others this year to coordinate OA developments at a UK strategic level, and so it’s timely that this review of JISC’s work is available, showing the work done both at that level, but also by helping institutions implement practice and systems that make OA a reality, something JISC’s been in a unique position to do.
Sitting in a Workshop about Software Preservation
Neil Chue Hong from the Software Sustainability Institute is talking about the five purposes of software preservation.
Legal compliance
Create heritage value
Enable continued access to data
Encourage software reuse
Manage systems and services
I’m learning things here, which is not surprising given that I’m not a software developer. I’m hopeful that the outputs of the project that is responsible for this workshop – ‘Software Preservation’ (see their blog) should be of interest to a wider variety of people than just software developer teams. I think anyone who is interested in understanding what investing in software and development processes actually really means, and what the value of it is, and how that investment might be managed better … should get something out of the reports and recommendations that will be available at the very end of October 2010.
Thanks to Matt Shreeve from Curtis & Cartwright, and Neil Chue-Hong and the folks from the Software Sustainability Institute (http://www.software.ac.uk/) for putting this workshop together. And of course all the lovely people who have come along to engage with these issues.
Gaining business intelligence from user activity data
Business intelligence resulting from ‘user activity data’ could help universities to manage resources more efficiently, budget more effectively, make smarter purchasing decisions, improve their services and demonstrate impact. The likes of Amazon and Tesco use activity data to make business decisions and to also provide recommender services on top of this data. They know a lot about thier customers’ purchasing habits. How does this translate to the academic environment? Are we able to utilise this use data for our benefit? This is a very timely and exciting area of investigation for the sector.
We invite you to attend a workshop exploring the potential of this data which is derived from services such as library systems, virtual learning environments and student registries.
As well as informing people of the potential of this data, we are looking to generate ideas and use cases to help plan for future work in this area. So please come ready to participate – I promise it will be an interesting day!
This workshop is suitable for senior managers and practitioners working in libraries, teaching and research. It will be chaired by Professor David Baker, Deputy Chair of JISC, with contributions from practitioners who have practical experience of using user activity data in higher education.
Date: 14 July 2010
Venue: The Hatton, 51-53 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8HN
For more information and registration go to: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2010/07/businessintelligence.aspx
Why you should know more about SWORD
Have you heard about SWORD but are unsure of why or how you should use it?
Members of the SWORD team will be running a free hands-on workshop at OR2010 that will provide an introduction to SWORD, some examples of how it can be used, and if you have a laptop you can try out some SWORD clients and have a go at making your own using an online SWORD client creation toolkit!
THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR EVERYONE! – Metadata librarian, repository manager, developers… come one, come all!
By the end of the workshop you’ll understand what SWORD is, how and where you should use it, and the new potential deposit avenues that it could open up for your repository.
Full details are at:
- http://or2010.fecyt.es/Publico/WorkShop/index.aspx#b3
It will run from 2:15 until 4:30 on Friday 9th July.
Please email us at swordapp@gmail.com to book a place on the workshop.
Survive or Thrive Conference
On the 8th and 9th June JISC and UKOLN hosted the Survive or Thrive conference in Manchester. This event hadn’t been without its challenges in the planning stages but it came together brilliantly over the two days (give or take the occasional AV problem) with an agenda full of interesting talks and an engaged and knowledgeable audience eager to debate the issues.
I’m not going to report on the event here but rather point to the quite incredible live blog that Owen Stephens produced during the event (I swear sometimes he had published his posts before the audience had finished clapping the speaker!).
You can also check out an analysis of the Twitter tag on the Eduserv Labs Summarizr site (a bit of a disclaimer here is that we did end up clashing tags with a Spanish fishing event of all things but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference to the analysis!) .
We also videoed all the talks and have started to make them available on the Survive or Thrive site.
If you attended the event I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and if not I do urge you to check out the videos.
Why you should enter the OR10 repository challenge
Are you headed to Open Repositories 10 this year? You are? Excellent. I’ve got a couple of questions for you:
When you look at a record page from your repository (this is the kind of page I mean) can you think of links to other content that could be added to this page that would be useful to someone who happened across this record?
Can you think of a source for the other content that a clever developer could use to automatically add links to the record page?
If you answered yes to both these questions then you are well on the way to entering a competition that could win you a juicy prize and the recognition of your peers and could benefit the rest of us by improving repository interfaces.
Of course, an idea isn’t enough, here is what you do next:
- Step 1: Read more about the challenge
- Step 2: Write down your idea at the repository challenge forum
- Step 3: Form a team consisting of at least one developer and one repository manager/administrator/user. Missing a team member? You could advertise for someone to join your team on the challenge forum.
- Step 4: Develop your prototype.
- Step 5: Advertise it widely to get comments for improvement and support
- Step 6: Prepare a presentation for the event
- Step 7: Victory, fame, fortune, a better world. (Maybe)
I’m really excited about this challenge because it should combine the talents and outlooks of repository users and developers to create practical and immediately useful interface improvements for repositories that can be picked up and used or improved upon by other repositories. I’m going to be one of the judges for the challenge and I can’t wait to be impressed by your ingenuity.
Repositories and Research Information Management
On the 7th of May the Welsh Repository Network Enhancement Project put on an event focusing on examining the links between institutional repositories and research information management systems.
The event focused on bringing repository managers and research managers together to discuss shared issues and overall institutional responses to the issue of managing research.
There was a good range of presentations in the morning of the event which gave a variety of perspectives on the area:
- a high level overview of the area from both a repository perspective (by me) and a research management perspective by Simon Kerridge;
- a great introduction to CERIF and the work at St Andrews by Anna Clements, video available;
- a case study of the practical embedding approach that Glasgow have taken byWilliam Nixon and Valerie McCutcheon, video available;
- and a useful overview of good practice and lessons learned from people who have been working in this area by Jackie Knowles, video available.
The afternoon was focused on discussions around a number of key themes. I facilitated the Drivers theme and it turned out to be a rich and productive discussion as we not only identified the drivers for implementing research management systems in universities but also identified some of the ways the drivers can be addressed and a rough action plan for dealing with this area. Write ups from the Drivers session and from the other sessions are available from the Welsh Repository Network blog:
Overall I was really impressed with the atmosphere of the event, there was a lot of interesting discussion and everyone seemed really positive and enthusiastic over the approach their institutions were taking to research management and how the research system was or could be linked to the repository. The approaches taken were often very different which wasn’t a surprise considering the range of institutions represented. My colleagues at JISC have put together an excellent introduction to the area of research information management which includes all the projects we have currently funded in this area. Judging from the interesting things these projects are up to and from the enthusiasm at the event, this is an area worth keeping an eye on.
Congratulations to Jackie, Hannah and Anthony for putting on a really useful event.
OER and the IE
The original Open Educational Resources Pilot Programme has recently ended. The involvement of the Information Environment team has been in managing the technical support of the project.
This has been mainly been two strands of work; communicating with the team at JISC-CETIS who are helping steer additional activity in more technical areas that have been raised by the project teams and supporting the launch and uptake of JorumOpen.
Currently JISC-CETIS are undertaking an additional three pieces of work beyond their initial commitment to the programme. These are taken from the CETIS proposal;
Feed Deposit
“There is a need for repository services related to the Academy/JISC OER Pilot Programme (notably Jorum Open) to provide a mechanism for depositors to upload multiple resources at a time with minimal human intervention per resource. One possible way to meet this requirement that has already identified by some projects is ‘feed deposit’. This approach is inspired by the way in which metadata and content is loaded onto user devices and applications in podcasting. The idea has been outlined and discussed in a CETIS blog post: in short, RSS and ATOM feeds are capable, in principle, of delivering the metadata required for deposit into a repository and in addition can provide either a pointer to the content or that content itself may be embedded into the feed.”
Aggregation of OERs
“There is interest in facilitating the provision of aggregations of resources representing the whole or a subset of the UKOER programme output (possibly along with resources from other sources). There have been some developments that implement partial solutions: Ensemble and Xpert, provide proof of concept for facilitating a search service based on aggregating RSS feeds; the UKOLN tagometer measures the number of resources on various sites that are tagged as relevant to the UKOER programme. Other approaches are possible, for example: (a) a Google custom search of sites known to be relevant; (b) querying relevant services and aggregation of the results through Yahoo pipes; and (c) querying relevant services through their APIs.”
Tracking and analysis of OER use
“Monitoring the release of resources through various channels, how those resources are used and reused and the comments and ratings associated with them, through technical means is highly relevant to evaluating the uptake of OERs. This type of monitoring is especially valuable where it can be related to the understanding and formative evaluation of business processes related to OERs or the desired outcome of a particular OER project.”
JISC-CETIS have also performed an audit of the technical tools and standards that the OER Pilot projects have used. These can be found on John Robertson’s blog. This audit gives a very useful picture of the technical landscape in the current UKOER community – it particularly demonstrates how diverse that landscape is and the fact there is far from any set approach to the creation, dissemination or preservation of OERs at the moment.
A unique element of the UKOER programme was the manner in which it encouraged that the resources were let loose in the wilds of the wider web as well as the security of JorumOpen. A number of projects embraced this while others were more comfortable with a combination of Institutional managementcombined with JorumOpen. What this does seem to have identified (though there is no work yet in this area) is that more advanced deposit tools will be required for OERs than currently exist. The ability to process an item once and for it to be deposited in multiple locations (i.e. to JorumOpen, Scribd and local ePrints server) would appear to be crucial if this distributed dissemination is to continue and be successful. Alongside the ongoing work around ‘Feed Deposit’ and the general, wider need for graceful bulk deposit it shows that tools for deposit in this area are likely to need further consideration.
A big focus of OERs is, not surprisingly, making them findable. After all it is all well and good releasing all this content but if noone can find it then it is not much use. That said Resource Discovery in this area is still very immature – the work JISC-CETIS are undertaking around both Aggregation and Tracking is a first step and there is some work being done elsewhere (particularly the the US) but none of it provides the depth of coverage to have a real impact yet. There is an opportunity for more work in this area (particularly aggregation around subjects/topics) in the OER Phase II call just released but there is much to do in this area and it would likely benefit from the knowledge and experience that the Information Environment could could bring to the problems. I am particularly interested in the DiscoverEd project from Creative Commons and its use of RDFa.
Despite the insistence on use of Creative Commons, licensing has remained a thorny issue throughout the programme. The ongoing lack of clarity around the exact definition of ‘Non-Commercial’ licensing and the multitude of CC options now available has meant a wide spread of licenses used plus consistent concerns about IPR issues. This does not seem to be an issue that will go away although a stronger steer from JISC to use the most open license possible (my preference would be CC Zero but I would imagine CC by Attribution would be most likely) would help clarify things.
There is also a possible role for Librarians in this space (as again outlined by John Robertson) in clearing IPR for resources – a role many are already well versed in due to the demands of Research focused repositories etc. Library staff do not seem to have engaged with the OER movement as much as one might expect at this point but there does seem to be a real role for their skillsets beyond managing IPR – particularly again around resource discovery.
JorumOpen launched to a great deal of positive feedback in January this year and despite a slow start is now showing good take-up (not surprisingly as it was a mandated condition of funding for UKOER projects!). It is based on a highly customised version of DSpace (and is beginning the process of contributing back to that community) and takes a lightweight view of mandatory metadata in an effort to encourage deposit. As mentioned earlier there has been some experimenting with ‘feed deposit’ in an effort to resolve the lack of a bulk deposit solution which has not been 100% successful but is starting to pat dividends and there have also been some identified usability issues (very well documented here ) but the Jorum team have been engaged in an open dialogue with the UKOER community around these issues and have been working with them to resolve them.