About a month ago I tweeted that we CETIS and CAPLE had a visiting scholar working with us for this semester. I’d like to take this opportunity to more comprehensively introduce Gema, some of the work she’s doing while she’s with us, and plug our survey investigate the role of academic libraries in OER efforts (you’ll remember I ran a study in this area last year).

Gema Bueno de la Fuente is a visiting scholar from the Library and Information Science Department, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain where she works as an assistant professor teaching in several Undergraduate and Graduate Programs, e.g. the Master in e-Learning Production and Management. She holds a PhD. in Library Science since 2010 with the dissertation “An Institutional Repository of Educational Content (IREC) Model: management of digital teaching and learning resources in the university library”. Her main research interests are digital teaching and learning materials, open content, digital repositories and e-learning systems, with and special focus on the library role in these topics, mainly related to metadata, vocabularies and some specific standards.

While she’s at Strathclyde she’s working on two projects, one looking at OERs and Libraries and one looking at institutional practice in managing learning materials. She’s primarily working with myself and Stuart Boon (one of the lecturers in CAPLE). The survey Gema has created and introductory email are copied below:
“The Centre for Academic Practice & Learning Enhancement (CAPLE) and Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS) at the University of Strathclyde are conducting a study about the involvement of the Library as an organizational unit, and of individual librarians and other information science specialists, in OER initiatives. OER (Open Educational Resources) are “digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research” (OECD, 2007).

This survey (http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/669964/OER-Libraries-and-librarians) is open to any institution or initiative dealing with OER and/or open content for learning and teaching in a Higher Education context. This includes the creation and release of OER, its dissemination and promotion, the implementation of learning repositories or others management and publishing systems, the aggregation of open educational content, etc. Those projects focused solely on open educational practice are out the intended scope of this survey.

The survey should be answered by an individual OER initiative team member with an overview of current activity and the team composition and profiles. The survey instrument has 15 questions and the estimated time for completion is 15-20 minutes.

No personal data will be required, but you will be able to provide some basic information about your type of organization and OER initiative purpose and objectives if you wish. Participating organisations will be listed in the study report but responses are not connected to individual participants.

The results will be published in a report through JISC CETIS Open Educational Resources web page. If you want to receive a free PDF copy of the final report, please provide your email address at the end of the survey (your email will not be published or held beyond distribution of the survey results).

The survey is open for your feedback until Friday, November 4, 2011.

Thank you in advance for participating in this study, your contribution is very valuable to us.

BEGIN THE STUDY BY GOING TO THIS LINK: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/669964/OER-Libraries-and-librarians

Please feel free to forward this survey to any interesting parties or lists.

For further information, please contact:
Gema Bueno de la Fuente (Visiting Scholar from University Carlos III, Spain) (gema.bueno@strath.ac.uk), R. John Robertson (robert.robertson@strath.ac.uk) and Stuart Boon (stuart.boon@strath.ac.uk).
Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS) / Centre for Academic Practice & Learning Enhancement (CAPLE). University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (UK).”

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

In my earlier post in this series on the collections strand (C), I presented a graph of the technical choices made just by that part of the programme looking at the issue of gathering static and dynamic collections, as part of that process I realised that, although the collections strand reflects a key aspect of the programme, and part of the direction future I hope future ukoer work is going, a consideration of the programme omitting the technical choices of strand C might be of interest.

The below graphs are also the ones which compare most directly with the work of UKOER 1 which didn’t have an strand focused on aggregation.

Platform related choices in UKOER2 excluding the collections strand

Standards related choices in UKOER2 excluding the collections strand

I’m hesitant to over-analyse these graphs and think there’s a definite need to consider the programme as a whole but will admit, that a few things about these graphs give me pause for thought.

• wordpress as a platform vanishes
• rss and oai-pmh see equal use
• the proportional of use of repositories increases a fair bit (when we consider that a number of the other platfoms are being used in conjunction with a repository)

Reflections

now in a sense, the above graphs fit exactly with the observation at the end of UKOER that projects used whatever tools they had readily available. However, compared to the earlier programme it feels like there are fewer outliers – the innovative and alternative technical approaches the projects used and which either struggled or shone.

Speculating on this it might be because institutions are seeking to engage with OER release as part of their core business and so are using tools they already have, it might be that most of the technically innovative bids ended up opting to go for strand C, or I could be underselling how much technical innovation is happening around core institutional technology (for example ALTO’s layering of a web cms on top of a repository).

To be honest I can’t tell if I think this trend to stable technical choices is good or not. Embedded is good but my worry is that there’s a certain inertia around institutional systems which are very focused on collecting content (or worse just collecting metadata) and which may lose sight of why we’re all so interested in in openly licensed resources (See Amber Thomas’ OER Turn and comments for a much fuller discussion of why fund content release and related issues; for reference I think open content is good in itself but is only part of what the UKOER programmes have been about).

Notes:

• the projects have been engaged in substantive innovative work in other areas, my comments are purely about techincal approaches to do with managing and sharing OER.
• when comparing these figures to UKOER graphs it’s important to remember the programmes had different numbers of projects and different foci; a direct comparison of the data would need a more careful consideration than comparing the graphs I’ve published.

well, this might be your lucky day…

If your OER is transformable into a textbook (or is already a textbook) and is entirely licensable as  CC: BY content (either already CC:BY or you’re the rights holder and are willing to licence as such), the Saylor Foundation would like to hear from you. There’s a $20000 award for any textbook they accept for their curriculum.

full details are available at: http://www.saylor.org/OTC/

key dates

• round 1 funding deadline: November 1, 2011;
• round 2 funding deadline: January 31, 2012;
• round 3 funding deadline: May 31, 2012

There have been a number of UKOER projects working in some of the areas which Saylor are looking for materials, so it’s worth a look.

There’s this whole thing about referrals but (to keep life simple) here’s the referral link which Creative Commons generated: http://www.saylor.org/otc-form/?refcode=6 .

If you use this link to submit a textbook which gets accepted those clever folk at Creative Commons get $250.

[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…]

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

Dissemination protocols

Dissemination protocols in use in the UKOER 2 programme

The chosen dissemination protocols are usually already built in the platforms in use by projects; adding or customising an RSS feed is possible but often intricate and adding an OAI-PMH feed is likely to require substantial technical development. DelOREs investigated existing OAI-PMH plugins for WordPress they could use but didn’t find anything usable within their project.

As will be discussed in more detail when considering Strand C – RSS is not only the most supported dissemination protocol, from the programme’s evidence, it is also the most used in building specialist discovery services for learning and teaching materials. The demand for an OAI-PMH interface for learning resources remains unknown. [debate!]

Jorum representation

Methods of uploading to Jorum chosen in UKOER 2 programme

• The statistics on Jorum upload method are denoted expressions of intent – projects and Jorum are still working through these options.
• Currently RSS upload to Jorum (along with all other forms of bulk upload) is set up to create a metadata record not deposit content.
• Three of the uploaders using RSS are using the edshare/eprints platform (this platform was successfully configured to deposit metadata in bulk  via RSS into Jorum in UKOER phase 1).
• Jorum uses RSS ingest as a one-time process – as I understand it it does not revisit the feed for changes or updates [TBC]
• As far as I know PORSCHE are the only project who have an arranged OAI-PMH based harvest (experimental for Jorum upload under investigation as part of an independent project – [thanks to Nick Shepherd for the update on this HEFCE-funded work: see comments and more information is available on the ACErep blog)]

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

Analytics

Analytics and tracking tools in use in the UKOER 2 programme

As part of their thinking around sustainability, it was suggested to projects that they consider how they would track and monitor the use of the open content they released.

Most projects have opted to rely on tracking functionality built into their chosen platform (were present). The tools listed in the graph above represent the content tracking or web traffic analysis tools being used in addition to any built in features of platforms.

Awstats, Webalizer and Piwik are all in (trial) use by the TIGER project.

Tools

Tools used to work with OER and OER feeds in the UKOER 2 programme

These tools are being used by projects to work with collections of OER, typically by aggregating or processing rss feeds or other sources of metadata about OER. SOme of the tools are in use for indexing or mapping, others for filtering, and others to plug collections or search interfaces into a third-party platform. The tools are mostly in use in Strand C of the programme but widgets, yahoo pipes, and feed43 have a degree of wider use.

The listing in the above graph for widgets covers a number of technologies including some use of the W3C widget specification.
The Open Fieldwork project made extensive use of coordinate and mapping tools (more about this in a subsequent post)

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

Tools to make OER

OER creation tools in use in the UKOER 2 programme

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

Although, a project’s choice of licence is not a particular concern of a technical synthesis,  how the licence is associated with the open content is a technical issue (see also Self description), and many of the available discovery services look for and only recognise particular licence types (typically Creative Commons – see Scott’s post).

Licence choice

Licences chosen in the UKOER 2 programme

Encoding choice

How licences are associated with content in the UKOER 2 programme

Notes

• A few projects use multiple options for licences, but on the whole each of these choices represents a single project.
• A few projects hadn’t chosen at the time of the review calls.
• Some projects use multiple methods to associate their licence with their content.
• Licence encoding options are: entry in a formal descriptive metadata record, encoding in file structure (eg in Word file) or page markup (eg wiki or html), creation of human readable licence information as part of content (eg cover page)
• Consent Commons is a initiative by the Medev subject centre to develop a licence to support the recording of patient and practitioner consent around the use of their personal data. It is beign developed in the style of a Creative Commons licences to offer a simple statement of types of use which are permitted without further permission being sought (i.e. providing consent for some use in a non-transactional licence).
• many of the Strand C collection projects are working with materials under a variety of licences – consequently a number of them don’t have a particular licence choice and aren’t represented here.

Comments

• Although the use of the CC: nd clause works against usage some projects have found it necessary in light of 3rd party or patient rights
• Projects had a strong steer to use a cc: by license, but it seems only a few have been able to do this – it is noteworthy that more projects opted to use the open but restrictive cc: by sa option. For example the Triton project has chosen CC:BY SA for the blog posts which form its ‘static’ collection. As a result any pictures which use in those posts need to have either a CC: BY or CC: BY SA licence. They discuss this in more detail on p5-6 &24 of  Triton final report , as well as Appendix 3
• CC: BY NC SA remains the most popular option
• One project developed software artefacts and used the GNU GPL.

The is the first post in a short series offering a technical summary of the 23 projects in the  UKOER 2 programme. It is based on interviews with the projects, the data and information summarised here is all available in PROD.

The JISC site describes the programme as follows:

“Phase 2 of the HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme is managed jointly by the Higher Education Academy(Academy) and JISC. Running between August 2010 and August 2011, it will build on and expand the work of the pilot phase around the release of OER material, and commence research and technical work examining the discovery and use of OER – specifically by academics.“.

The technical requirements provided to projects are outlined in OER 2 Technical Requirements.

Subsequent posts in this series look at:

• Content description
• Licences and encoding
• Content management platforms
• OER creation tools used
• Analytics and tools to manipulate OER
• Dissemination protocols in use and Jorum representation
• A closer look at Strand C of the programme [forthcoming]
• Synthesis and [hopefully] comparing UKOER and UKOER 2 [forthcoming]

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

Notes

data collection:

as before this data is a snapshot of a project’s choices at a point in time during the programme –  it sometimes talks about active intent or choices being explored and so it may not reflect final options. As in the UKOER prod summary it should be noted that selection of a choice (i.e. using X) is not exclusive. For example, projects may often use platforms from online providers (such as YouTube) alongside organisationally provided options (such as a repository).

strand C:

This strand of the programme focused on creating both a static and dynamic collection of OER and generally explored issues around aggregation in more detail – as such these six projects and their tech choices are worth reviewing in greater detail. The data from their interviews has, however, also been included in the general summary when appropriate.

MIA:

for a variety of reasons one project is not in this data so the displayed information is out of 22 projects (and as noted the categories may not always be relevant to all of the Strand C projects)

Andy Powell makes the key point: “@tore open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open, open – no need to mention ‘e’ or ‘r’ #nordlet” RE http://bit.ly/nwgIYE

But if I was writing a manifesto on OER it would start with/ cover some of this:

1. openness is a way of working / state of mind not a legal distinction
2. openness needs to be integrated into your way of working retrofitting is too expensive
3. value of open is potentially greater than the value of closed
4. open content affords new forms of scholarship and enterprise
5. stop having to ask permission: remove barriers with open licensing
6. use a common open license or don’t bother (lawyers read licences, users and machines don’t)
7. you need a good reason to keep publicly funded work closed
8. open content should allow you to build commercial services if you want
9. open content shifts the $ focus onto what is really valuable: expertise, support, and ‘accreditation’ [for various dftns]
10. open content has the potential to improve access to education (and consequently benefit society)

I’d also want to say something about

1. openness does have costs – budget for them [edit (for clarity): costs here are not just £$ costs]
2. you don’t have to be open all the time with everything – mixed economies may be practical
3. the transition to openness is unsettling
4. the (re)development of new business models, organisations, and practices challenges existing business models, organisations, and practices

The above is written without appropriate sources and without consulting existing manifestos but as an exercise in trying to quickly capture what I’ve absorbed and thought working in the OER community. If I’ve reproduced your work without realising it please comment  Doubtless a more considered version would look a bit different but as a discussion point in this amount of time that’s what I’d throw into the ring.