[These posts should be regarded as drafts for comment until I remove this note]

In the UKOER 2 programme Strand C funded “Projects identifying, collecting and promoting collections of OER and other material around a common theme” with the aim “…to investigate how thematic and subject area presentation of OER material can make resources more discoverable by those working in these areas” (UKOER 2 call document). The projects had to create what were termed static and dynamic collections of OER. The intent of the static collection was that it could in some way act as an identity, focus, or seed for the dynamic collection. Six projects were funded: CSAP OER, Oerbital, DelOREs, Triton, EALCFO, Open Fieldwork and a range of approaches and technologies was taken to making both static and dynamic collections. The projects are all worth reading about in more detail – however, in this context there are two possible general patterns worth considering.

Technology

Overview of technical choices in UKOER 2 Strand C

The above graph shows the range of technology used in the Strand. Although a lot could (and should) be said about each project individually when their choices are viewed in aggregate the following technologies are seeing the widest use.

Graph of technologies and standards in us by 50% or more of Strand C projects

Although aspects of the call might have shaped the projects’ technical choices to some extent, a few things stand out:

• the focus on RSS/Atom feeds and tools to manipulate them
  • reflection: this matches the approach taken by many of the other  aggregators and discovery services  for OER and other learning materials as well as the built in capabilities of a number of the platforms in use [nb “syndicated via RSS/Atom” was a programme requirement]
• a relative lack of a use of OAI-PMH
  • reflection: is this indicative of how many content providers and aggregators in the learning material’s consume or output OAI-PMH?
• substantial use or investigation of wordpress and custom databases (with php frontends)
  • reflection: are repositories irrelevant here because they don’t offer easy ways to add plugins or aggregate others’ content (or are there other factors which make WordPress and a custom database more appealing)

Community

One of the critical issues for all of these projects in the creation of these collections has been the role of community; for some of the strand projects the subject community played a crucial role in developing the static collection which then fed, framed, or seeded the dynamic collection, for other projects the subject community formed the basis of contributing resources to the dynamic collection.

Although the projects had to be “closely aligned with relevant subject or thematic networks – for example Academy Subject Centres, professional bodies and national subject associations” , I find it striking that many of the projects made those defined communities an integral part of their discovery process and not just an audience or defining domain.

Reflections on community

I’m hoping someone else is able to explore the role of community in discovery services more fully (if not I’ll try to come back to this)  but I’ve been struck by the model used by some projects in which a community platform is the hook leading to resource discovery. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum to Google – to support discovery you create a place and content accessible and relevant to a specific subject domain. The place you create both hosts new content created by a specific community and serves as a starting point to point to further resources elsewhere (whether those pointers are links, learning pathways, or tweaked plugin searches run on aggregators or repositories). This pattern mirrors any number of thriving community sites (typically?) outside of academia that happily coexist in Google’s world providing specialist sources of information and community portals  (for example about knitting, cooking, boardgames).

What it doesn’t mirror is trying to entice academics to use a repository… [I like repositories and think they’re very useful for some things , but this and the examples of layering CMSs on top of repositories, increasingly makes me think that on their own they aren’t a great point of engagement for anybody…]

As the discussion around the use of Content Packaging noted ( http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/03/08/the-use-of-ims-cp-in-the-ukoer-programme/ and http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/sheilamacneill/2010/03/09/proding-around-curriculum-design-what-happened-to-content-packaging/) the perceived usability of available tools may influence the choice of packaging standard (whether the tools listed produce IMS CP, ADL SCORM, both, or something else is not noted).

Authorware

(http://www.adobe.com/products/authorware/)
In use by:

• C-Change

Learning Object Creator

(http://www.llas.ac.uk/projects/2770)
In use by:

• Humbox

Glomaker

(http://www.glomaker.org/)
In use by:

• Evolution
• Unicycle

Reload

(http://www.reload.ac.uk/)
In use by:

• Simulation OER

eXe

(http://exelearning.org/wiki)
In use by:

• Berlin
• Evolution
• Centre for Bioscience OER
  • “ Using eXe, in part as they had significant issues with using RELOAD and in part as eXe is JorumOpen’s preferred tool”

QuestionMark

(http://www.questionmark.com/us/index.aspx)

In use by:

• brOME OERP
  • exporting materials from QuestionMark as QTI items to make more open
• Centre for Bioscience OER

Xerte

(http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/)
In use by:

• Berlin
• C-Change
• C-SAP OER – one mini project used Xerte to transform PPTs into Learning Objects

Drupal

• TRUE
• OpenSpace
  • OpenSpace created a virtual learning studio for collaborative creative script writing and storyboarding
  • Explored the integration of Kaltura with Drupal
  • the OER is not only the environment but also a example of it’s use (using a example (real) course with student work)
• Phorus

Plone

• OTTER
  • OTTER have had problems exporting metadata they had created within Plone

Websites

• numbat
  • XHTML and PHP based search

WordPress

It is worth noting in passing that many projects have extensively used blogs throughout the programme for communication, discussion and dissemination. This has provided a valuable way to engage and stay up to date with projects but that usage is a different topic entirely.

• ChemistryFM
  • WordPress used as the primary ‘repository’ for content and publishing platform. Courses broken down into into one sub-topic per post comprising of embedded videos and related supporting resources.
  • The posts are tagged with the appropriate course code – this allows the courses to be put together through the blog interface.
  • can export resources via OAI-ORE for import to other repositories
• C-Change
  • is investigating the use of wordpress as a possible local publishing tool for their members of their consortium who need (especially in the longer term) a way to publish OERs.

Within the UKOER programme there has been some use of virtual learning environments or related classroom or collaboration tools in the management and distribution of OERs (see also the list of learning object/ content-packaging creation tools in use ).

Wimba

http://www.wimba.com/

• Evolution

Blackboard

http://www.blackboard.com/

• OpenStaffs
  • Trying to decouple storage and use of educational materials. Moving resources/ course materials out of BlackBoard into Hive. Then creating references to them within BlackBoard. This allows the resources to be more open and accessible (and uses a resource management tool to manage and store (and preserve?) the resources rather than relying on the resource management capabilities of the VLE) )

Moodle

http://moodle.org/

• Fetlar
  • used by project to coordinate and manage gathering of resources and as a platform for sharing them.
• OLE Dutch History
  • direct use in teaching as well as managing resources; (afaik) used for www.dutch.ac.uk which offers access to a number of free taster courses

All the custom developments have used MySQL and all of those taking this option have been subject strand projects.

• CORE Materials
  • they have built a database for the central management of resources prior to uploading to web 2.0 sites; their own solution was required to support interaction with the APIs of web 2.0 tools.
• Medev OOER
  • they have built a database as a staging ground for preparing OERs – JorumOpen is their primary deposit. They are also considering a local repository in the longer term.
  • MySQL was chosen to be able to interact with Subject Centre website.
  • They are also looking at web2.0 api interoperability
• Open Educational Repository in Support of Computer Science
  • built a lightweight disposable solution as management and publishing tool and staging ground for Jorum deposit
  • Jorum as the primary repository and copy of record/ preservation copy.
• Phorus
  • primary cataloguing of OERs is into Intute which is then harvested via OAI-PMH into their local database
  • they then aim to harvest resources into JORUM
  • they may also move resources to host institution’s (Fedora) repository
• Simulation OER
  • developed local repository both as continuation of earlier work and as available repository options did not meet the key requirement of being able to preview simulations.

When I’m aware of a repository holding research content as well as OERs I’ve noted this: educational materials only or mixed materials.

Fedora

http://www.fedora-commons.org/

• Phorus
  • may harvest their MySQL based solution into their host institution’s repository (outwith project- presumably mixed materials).
• Skills for Scientists
  • will move all resources into host institutional repository for preservation/ long term access.
  • not all content suitable for Jorum e.g. Scottish ~CC licensed stuff. (mixed materials)

Intralibrary

http://www.intrallect.com/index.php/intrallect/products

• Unicycle
  • mixed materials

Equella

http://www.thelearningedge.com.au/products.php

• Berlin
  • educational materials only
  • OpenCourseWare branded
• OCEP
  • mixed materials

Harvest Road Hive

http://www.giuntilabs.com/HarvestRoad_Hive/index.php

• OpenStaffs
  • unknown  from context probably educational materials only

ePrints

http://www.eprints.org/

• ADM OER partner
  • unknown collection composition
• HumBox
  • educational  materials only
• ChemistryFM
  • will be using institutional ePrints as preservation store
  • mixed materials

DSpace

http://www.dspace.org/

• Open Exeter
  • developed support for Content Packages and a LOM mapping
  • educational materials
• C-Change
  • local DSpace repository was considered but rejected in favour of Jorum only approach (counter-use)

Note:
I’ll be blogging shortly about the other approaches taken for managing and sharing OERs, I’ll comment on the patterns at that point – but feel free to add any suggestions or comments about repositories here.

More details about the technical and descriptive affordances of the various Web 2.0 platforms are available
http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Distribution_platforms_for_UKOER_resources the descriptions of tools included below have been drawn from this work (these have been primarily created by my colleague Phil Barker with input from the community)

Scribd

(http://www.scribd.com/)

“Scribd allows the sharing of documents, including short reports, posters, presentation slides, magazines, sheet music or full-length books. Typical use is for static text-and-image documents but spreadsheets are also handled. …Documents are viewable on the Scribd website and embeddable in webpages elsewhere in the iPaper format (which requires a Flash reader). Files on Scribd can be distributed either freely and openly, for fee, or privately.” (http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Scribd_for_UKOER_resources)

Scribd is being used by:

• OERP (Engineering)
• CORE Materials
• C-SAP OER

Projects in which academics are uploading to Scribd

• OERP (Engineering) – central team to begin with moving to individuals for sustainability

Projects using the Scribd API

• CORE Materials

Slideshare

(http://www.slideshare.net/)

“SlideShare’s core service is as a host for presentations, e.g. PowerPoint slides. These can be simple slide stacks, or can be slidecasts or videocasts which include audio or video commentary to accompany the slides. Recently SlideShare has added support for more general text and graphics “documents”.” (http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/SlideShare_for_UKOER_resources).”

Slideshare is being used by:

• OTTER
• OLE Dutch History
• OERP (Engineering)
• CORE Materials
• Skills for Scientists
• C-SAP OER

Projects using Slideshare as well as another form of repository [not including JORUM]

• CORE Materials (central database)

Projects using the Slideshare API

• CORE Materials

Projects in which academics are uploading to Slideshare

• OTTER – individuals uploading
• OERP (Engineering) – central team uploading to begin with which is moving to individuals for sustainability
• C-SAP OER – central team uploading

Projects exploring (but not yet committed to using) Slideshare

• OLE Dutch History
• Skills for Scientists

iTunes(U)

(http://www.apple.com/itunes/)

iTunes is a music and video distribution platform created and run by Apple. It offers a mediated marketplace for content and along with Apple’s hardware has been instrumental in the popularisation of digital delivery of audio and video including podcasts. iTunesU is a developed section of this service allowing institutions to showcase podcasts and video – typically lectures or other audio.

iTunesU being used by:

• OCEP
• Berlin
• OpenSpires
• OTTER
• mmtv

Projects for whom iTunes has actively determined their approach to the description and delivery (RSS support) of their content

• OpenSpires
• OTTER

Projects negotiating with their institutions about how their OER content relates to the institutional channel

• mmtv

Flickr

(http://www.flickr.com/)

“Most of the resources on Flickr are photographs and many of the features of the platform are tailored to this (e.g. the automatic extraction of EXIF metadata to show, for example, camera type, aperture setting and shutter speed), though it is also used for diagrams and other forms of still image. Flickr also supports short (<90s) videos and other types of moving image. Flickr has comprehensive capabilities for metadata tagging, aggregation, syndication through RSS/ATOM.” (http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Flickr_for_UKOER_resources)

Projects using Flickr:

• OTTER
• OLE Dutch History (considering using it)
• OERP
• CORE Materials
• C-Change (embedding into ppts)

Using the api to upload materials

• CORE Materials

Using Flickr as a primary store

• OERP

Youtube

(http://www.youtube.com/)

“YouTube is the pre-eminent video sharing website. While many of the videos are entertainment (home-shot or otherwise) it is widely used for more serious material and has a YouTube EDU branding for degree-level material. Access to view video is unlimited and any registered user may upload and share videos; the collection of videos provided by a user is known as their channel which also includes user-profile information. Registered users may also create playlists (collections of videos from other users) and comment on videos.” (http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/YouTube_for_UKOER_resources)

Projects using Youtube

• Berlin
• OTTER
• OCEP
• mmtv
• OpenSpace
• ChemistryFM
• OLE Dutch History
• True
• OERP
• C-Change (embedding into PPTs/ contextualising)
• Humbox
• Core Materials
• Skills for Scientists (some partners exploring)

Project specifically using YouTubeEdu

• Berlin

Projects cataloguing resources academics have put on YouTube

• OTTER

Using Youtube as a primary repository

• mmtv
• ChemistryFM

Using YouTube instead of local streaming

• True (local copies hidden (for preservation) but youtube for access/ embedding)
• OERP (local copies hidden but youtube for access/ embedding)
• CORE Materials – considering this

Vimeo

(http://vimeo.com/)

“Vimeo is a social web site for video sharing, with a reputation for supporting higher (technical) quality, longer videos than YouTube. The emphasis is on sharing videos created by individual users rather than commercial videos. Socially, vimeo supports user profiles, commenting on video, individual contacts, and subscriptions to channels and membership of groups. ” (http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Vimeo_for_UKOER_resources)

Projects using vimeo

• mmtv
• OERP

Zoho

(http://www.zoho.com/)

Zoho is a suite of collaborative cloud based tools including tools for writing, presenting, using spreadsheets, and sharing resources.

Projects using Zoho.

• OERP (considering using it to share spreadsheets if required)

Delicious

(http://delicious.com/)

Delicious is an online tool for managing and sharing bookmarks.

Projects using Delicious:

• OOER
• OERP
• C-SAP OER – (using for project info management – this becomes a resource in itself also using Cite-u-Like in same way)

We’ve very little direct information about other uses of Delicious were mentioned.

• http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/2009/11/03/part-1-of-2-report-on-depost-deposit-tool-show-tell-meeting-2009-12-10/
• http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/2009/11/03/part-2-of-2-evaluation-of-the-deposit-tool-show-and-tell-features-and-flows-of-deposit/

In the midst of the afternoon sessions there where a few of us with an interest in learning materials (and particularly Open Educational Resources) who had a think about what might be different about a tool for depositing learning materials in a repository (Rory McNichol, Richard Davies, Julian Tenney, Pat Lockley, Phil Barker, J.M.Gray, Antony Corfield and myself). In our discussions we didn’t talk that much about mechanisms but focused more on the features that such a tool might require. [Subsequently Phil has blogged an inital view on the possible deposit/ harvest mechanisms http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/philb/2009/10/28/feed-deposit/ – his post is about the questions we need to address now; this post and our discussions on the day looked at the what next question]

Our short list of possible differences centered, not on technical diferences as much on the importance of context. In particular the context of the use of the learning material. We thought that future developements should look not only at the deposit of a learning material but also consider the ongoing ‘deposit’ of usage information in some form- allowing the repository to gather feedback about the resource. From this point, it’s fair to say that our conception of a deposit veered somewhat towards including elements of a repository interface (tool or otherwise) that would allow discovery and ongoing data excahnge about a learning material. As such the following isn’t so much of a requirements specification as a trying to pin down information from the user or other systems that would help improve how learning materials are managed and accessed.

Our shortlist of key features was:

• richer user profiles both for depositors and users
• resources to include a link to the source/ master object
• import asset plus usage info (such as which courses it’s used for) from VLE
• import asset plus usage info (such as comments and tags) from Web 2 tools
• need support for instituional management and release of assets

Having written this I’m very aware that SWORD works because it’s so simple. Partly this is because putting papers into repositories is, mostly, a one directional technical process [it is of course a much more interactive social/ political / administrative process] and SWORD has been very careful to limit in what it is trying to do. Consequently any work in this area looking to expand the scope of deposit tool/ repository interface functionality should be very cautious in adding mandatory extras. However, feedback and usage information are becoming increasingly important for scholarly communciations and data sets are likely to prove to be much more interactive resources (in a similar way to learning materials) as how they’re being used is key information). In a similar way institutions (as well as authors) are increasingly becoming the creators and/or distributors of resources so the ‘corporate’ deposit interface is likely to become more prominent.

Our discussion created more questions than answers in my mind, but it’s clear that, however deposit tools develop, we’d like them to be able to capture more context, but that this has to be done in lightweight ways that reuse rather than recreate information – we’ve had complex standards that ask for this type of information for a while but we have always asked users to input it.

Our full discussion is pictured below.

Notes about features of a repository deposit tool for learning materials

Talking to DC [Washington] (Adam Bosworth, Adam Bosworth’s Weblog)

In a post based on his experiences with standards development, Adam outlines seven guidelines for good standards development
http://adambosworth.net/2009/10/29/talking-to-dc/

1. Keep the standard as simple and stupid as possible.
2. The data being exchanged should be human readable and easy to understand.
3. Standards work best when they are focused.
4. Standards should have precise encodings.
5. Always have real implementations that are actually being used as part of design of any standard.
6. Put in hysteresis for the unexpected.
7. Make the spec itself free, public on the web, and include lots of simple examples on the web site.

Making Standards that Work (Dorothea Salo, The Book of Trogool)

http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2009/11/making_standards_that_work.php
Relfecting on Adam’s post, Dorothea relates some of those principles to her own experience and view of standards development in particular commenting on OAI-PMH.
OAI-PMH is an interesting example because it’s so widely used and, as Dorothea says, so simple. When it works, it works well (even if we might now like to change some of it to be more web friendly). However, metadata sharing works best in defined communities. When OAI-PMH doesn’t work, it’s a mess as frequently it’s the data harvesters who notice but who are dependent on the data providers (and potentially also their technical support) to change anything. Interestingly the OAI-PMH Static repository specification pushed some of the emphasis back onto the data provider – as their base information in xml had to be valid xml before it would be mediated by a gateway (but SRs are a whole other story with lots of potential but their own problems.)

The Sordid History of Learning Object Repositories or, a chat with Brian Lamb (Jim Groom, bavatuesdays)

One of the interesting things about the UKOER programme is how much freedom projects have to choose how they are going to store, describe, manage, and share their resources. They are using a wide variety of approaches, which include repositories, content management systems, and web pages of rss feeds. They’re also using a wide variety of ways to descibe stuff. All of the approaches though are some way from the sort of educational world which the original learning object repositories envisaged and which Brian Lamb reflects on here:
http://bavatuesdays.com/the-sordid-history-of-learning-object-repositories-or-a-chat-with-brian-lamb/. I still think repositories have a lot to offer the management of learning materials but they’re not the only option, are better as part of a wider suite of tools, are really hope they aren’t going to ask users about semantic density. To my mind Brian’s relfections highlight a number of reasons why the UKOER programme is implementation nuetral.

I’ve also realised that I’ve not yet pointed to a related resource from CC Talks about OERs A chat with Stephen Downes on OER http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17860 I was also going to talk about Pete Johnston’s latest installment about Simple Dublin Core but that’ll have to wait for another day (http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2009/11/simple-dc-revisited.html)

Fedora

(in the process of writing I’ve noted that indepth coverage of most of the Fedora items can be found on the fedora Hatcheck newsletter blog: http://www.fedora-commons.org/resources/newsletter.php )

Recent/current development

• A new version of the rest api has been developed by the Fedora community
• An updated Muradora front end.
  “The Muradora project aims to develop a web front-end for Fedora repository and to re-factor Fedora authentication and authorization into pluggable middleware components.” Some of this security work is likely to become part of fedora proper
  https://fedora-commons.org/confluence/display/MURADORA/Muradora
• Islandora – new drupal based front end
  http://www.fedora-commons.org/confluence/display/ISLANDORA/Islandora
• An update of the fedora GSearch service plugin ( full text indexing) http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/hatcheck/2008/02/27/fedora-gsearch-20-release-takes-advantage-of-lucene/
• Plug-ins for popular applications are under development (wikis, zotero, MSWord)

Developments (preOR09)

• improve out of box administrative gui – move towards a web-based gui
• improved api for backend storage (akubra api)
• This is linked to discussions with DSPACE, ePrints on a common storage abstraction to develop a
• Pluggable storage sub-system integration.
• Support for SWORD 1.3

Longer term developments

• Work on webdav – to lower ingest barriers by supporting drap and drop
• More enhanced content models
• Active Fedora (based on/ similar to active record in Ruby
• Hydra – working towards an out of the box Fedora to support faculty create/store object directly; longer term support for more complex arrays of digital objects. http://www.fedora-commons.org/confluence/display/hydra/The+Hydra+Project

duraspace: DSpace and Fedora collaboration

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/hatcheck/2008/11/11/dspace-foundation-and-fedora-commons-receive-grant-from-the-mellon-foundation-for-duraspace/
Moving to sharable module development – the initial project will be the development of storage module. The investigation of possible durable storage service layer (broker) offering: pluggable storage, ‘Cloud’ storage, ‘interCloud’- university offered storage services

DSpace

Jim Downing presenting an update on DSpace at Dev8D but (afaik) most of what he presented either realted to the work on duraspace mentioned above or is now part of the new 1.5.2 DSpace release. The details of this release have been summarized by Stuart Lewis’s blog post http://blog.stuartlewis.com/2009/04/15/dspace-152-whats-
in-it-for-me/. A few of the new things from his highlights are:

• Support for SWORD 1.3
• “Shibboleth support has been added.”
• More refined ldap integration options
• support for uketd_dc and exposing it via OAI-PMH (out of the box)
• export tools have been improved

ePrints

ePrints is now around 10 yrs old and despite close ties to the Open Access movement, ePrints is also developing support for the gamut of institutional processes. In particular, it’s developing greater support for statistics, research management, and better desktop integration.

ePrints are planning to have beta version of ePrints 3.2 by or09 . Key updates planned for this release:

• metadata values can now be resolvable references not just literals.
• extendable data types – will support CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) out of the box.
• integration of work of IrStats project – stats and citations improvements to system.
• Support for a tiered storage layer plugin. http://repositoryman.blogspot.com/2009/02/cloud-researcher-and-repository.html

Edit: a fuller list of updates in this release is available http://wiki.eprints.org/w/New_Features_Proposed_for_EPrints_3.2

Microsoft

Microsoft Research’s team working on repositories and scholarly communications have produced a number of free tools based on Microsoft products (http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/tc/scholarly_communication.mspx). I’ve talked about the Creative Commons plugin before but they’ve also developed beta versions of an ejournal service, a document conversion service, an onotlogy plugin for word, a research information centre (with the British Library), they’ve worked with the ePrints to develop a windows-based version of ePrints, and a research repository.

Version 1 of the research repository is going to be formally released at workshop at OR2009 (https://or09.library.gatech.edu/workshops.php). Work on related tools for the desktop and mobile devices is planned after this launch.

The debate about free / somewhat open tools built on commercial products is a separate issue but it’s worth remembering that most insititutions are going to have and support all the required comercial software anyway – irrespective of what the repository software they consider (I’ll come back to this in another post).

Microsoft also have released some of their development tools to education. In an initiative called dreamspark users can download full versions of Microsoft development software under an academic license. Computer Science departments have had this sort of deal for a while but the two good things about this are: it’s open to any student/ academic and it’s no longer a ‘mediated’ rather it uses shibboleth and your own institutional login to verify status.