Category Archives: Standards

UKOER 2: Dissemination protocols in use and Jorum representation

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What technical protocols are projects using to share their resource? and how are they planning on representing their resources in Jorum? This is a post in the UKOER 2 technical synthesis series.

[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

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

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)]

UKOER 2: Licences and encoding

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What licence have UKOER 2 projects used and how have they associated it with their content?  This is a post in the UKOER 2 technical synthesis series.

[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

Licenses chosen in the UKOER 2 programme

Licences chosen in the UKOER 2 programme

Encoding choice

How licences are associated with content in the UKOER 2 programme

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.

UKOER 2: Content description

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What standards did projects intend to use to describe and package their OERs? – what other standards are in use?  This is a post in the UKOER 2 technical synthesis series.

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

Descriptive choices

Descriptive metadata in use in the UKOER 2 programme

Descriptive metadata in use in the UKOER 2 programme

Dublin Core

“The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative “popularized the idea of “core metadata” for simple and generic resource descriptions” and its initial 15 descriptive elements became an international standard and a component of the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. The Dublin Core community has subsequently developed in two directions – one developing application profiles to support particular implementation communities and the other developing in a way that would make its data structures more compatible with RDF and support the uptake of Dublin Core around Linked Data (http://dublincore.org/metadata-basics/). At this time there is, therefore, a very wide spectrum of usage of Dublin Core.” (http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/03/17/the-use-of-dublin-core-metadata-in-the-ukoer-programme/)

As in the first UKOER programme Dublin Core metadata is by far the most widely used descriptive standard in the programme. As in that programme, it is not clear what version of Dublin Core metadata projects are using (many are likely to be using some form of the basic DC Metadata Element Set, some may be using the newer DC Metadata Terms structure), nor is it clear if there is any common set of metadata element choices in use (the programme’s descriptive requirements are representable in Dublin Core and this is likely to form a common set, but there are other valid ways to present this information)

As noted in commenting on the first  UKOER programme, many projects will be using Dublin Core because it is probably the most commonly implemented interoperability standard in repositories and is also a required part of the OAI-PMH protocol.

It is, however,  noteworthy that some of the projects are developing a wordpress plugin to support the creation of DC metadata based on items in blog posts rather than the blog post itself (for more details please refer to the Summary of Strand C [forthcoming]) .

IEEE LOM

““Learning Object Metadata (LOM) is a data model, usually encoded in XML, used to describe a learning object and similar digital resources used to support learning. The purpose of learning object metadata is to support the reusability of learning objects, to aid discoverability, and to facilitate their interoperability, usually in the context of online learning management systems (LMS).”http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/What_is_IEEE_LOM/IMS_LRM

The LOM standard is available from the IEEE store. There are also many Application Profiles of the LOM data model. One of which is the UK LOM CORE http://www.cetis.org.uk/profiles/uklomcore/uklomcore_v0p3_1204.doc ” ( http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/03/11/the-use-of-ieee-lom-in-the-ukoer-programme/)

The use of IEEE LOM in the second programme is quite a bit lower than in the first UKOER programme. Two possible reasons for this are: 1) fewer projects are using learning object repositories so there is less native support for LOM 2) in the first programme a number of HEA subject centres may have had significant quantities of existing content in the LOM which they released under an open licence, in the second programme projects may not have had relevant legacy content in this form. [Note: these are speculative].

exif

Exif is a standard widely used in cameras and smartphones for storing and transferring information about images, audio, and associated tags. More information is available in the Wikipedia article.
In use by the Open Fieldwork and ORBEE projects.

MeSH

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings ) is not a descriptive metadata standard as such but it is rather a controlled vocabulary used in the description of medical resources. It can be used and referenced with a number of metadata standards such as Dublin Core and IEEE LOM.
In use by the PORSCHE project.

Geo Microfromat

“geo (pronounced “gee-oh”) is a simple format for marking up WGS84 geographic coordinates (latitude; longitude), suitable for embedding in HTML or XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. geo is a 1:1 representation of the “geo” property in the vCard standard (RFC2426) in HTML, one of several open microformat” from http://microformats.org/wiki/geo.
In use by the Open Fieldwork project.

KML

Keyhole Markup Language: “KML is an XML language focused on geographic visualization, including annotation of maps and images. Geographic visualization includes not only the presentation of graphical data on the globe, but also the control of the user’s navigation in the sense of where to go and where to look.” The major implementation of this standard is in Google Earth and Google Maps.
In use by the Open Fieldwork project.

paradata

Paradata is a rapidly evolving specification to describe activity and review data for digital assets. The initial specification was developed by the NSDL) in connection with the US Learning Registry initiative.
In conjunction with SRI International the Oerbital project developed an experimental template to generate paradata from mediaiwki pages at the OER Hackday.

Packaging choices

Packaging formats in use in the UKOER 2 programme

Packaging formats in use in the UKOER 2 programme

IMS CP

“IMS Content Packaging “describes data structures that can be used to exchange data between systems that wish to import, export, aggregate, and disaggregate packages of content.”http://www.imsglobal.org/content/packaging/ .” (http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/03/08/the-use-of-ims-cp-in-the-ukoer-programme/)

ADL SCORM

““The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) integrates a set of related technical standards, specifications, and guidelines designed to meet SCORM’s high-level requirements—accessible, interoperable, durable, and reusable content and systems. SCORM content can be delivered to your learners via any SCORM-compliant Learning Management System (LMS) using the same version of SCORM.” (http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/default.aspx )” (http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/04/01/the-use-of-adl-scorm-in-the-ukoer-programme/)

Two  projects are using both IMS Content Packaging and ADL SCORM – EALFCO and ALTO. ALTO’s use may relate to the capabilities of the tools they have chosen to use.

OAI-ORE

““Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources.” (http://www.openarchives.org/ore/)””

OAI-ORE – a number of projects mentioned this standard. For three of the four projects the standard is supported out of the box by the repository platform they were using  and it is there is no indication of actual or intended use. Part of the OSTRICH project team (the partners at University of Bath) were investigating the possible use of OAI-ORE with their repository.

Other content related standards in use

Other assorted standards in use in the UKOER 2 programme

Other assorted standards in use in the UKOER 2 programme

The other standards graph is a miscellanea of other standards which projects are using which are distinctive but don’t easily fit into other categories.

IMS LD

The IMS Learning Design specification provides a flexible markup language to encode pedagogies  (http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/)

The ALTO project is usingconcepts and structures from IMS-Learning Design to inform their work but they are NOT implementing the specification

IMS QTI

“IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification http://www.imsglobal.org/question/ is a standard used to support the interoperability and exchange of digital assessment items (questions, answers, and data).” (http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/johnr/2010/03/03/the-use-of-ims-qti-in-the-ukoer-programme/)

IMS QTI, one of the content types whose release surprised us in the first UKOER programme, has again been released by a number of projects (De-Stress, OER Cafe, Ripple).

HTML5

HTML5 is a work in progress of the latest update to HTML the defining specification of the world wide web.
The De-Stress project used this specification.

epub

“EPUB is a distribution and interchange format standard for digital publications and documents.” http://idpf.org/epub

Although mobile delivery and etextbooks were not an explicit part of the call both DHOER and Triton are experimenting with the epub format to explore these options.

OPML

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) http://www.opml.org/spec is being used in the progamme by the Triton project to support exchanging lists of RSS feeds.

iCalendar

the iCalendar specification is an exchange format for calendar information which can be used to record diary information or request meetings.
The EALFCO project was investigating the use of this specification.

considering OAI-PMH

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OAI-PMH is a odd thing:

  • a protocol almost universally implemented in repositories and consequently (usually) publishing metadata about repository contents to the world
  • a protocol frequently reviled by anyone trying to aggregate feeds from different repositories and build discovery tools and services on top of that aggregate.

I’m not going to repeat OAI-PMH’s problems in detail (PERX, the experience of the NSDL with metadata quality, Andy Powell, Jim Downing and many others have done that), suffice to say their are issues about how protocol was implemented by software, how it is used by metadata creators, and how not web-friendly it is and niche it remains.

However,  I realised recently that I’d begun to think that it must be better by now – surely the teething problems are done with – implementations more mature, record quality better, and aggregation more stable. This is, in part, because it remains the standard for sharing repository metadata and because in a number of settings it works well – there are plenty of communities using it to establish and provide services either by creating ‘closed’ controlled conditions through communally enforced ways of recording information and application profiles, guidelines and ‘political’ agreements in additional to the protocol or by creating tools that simply hack their way around whatever data they get and offer good enough services.

So it was with interest that I picked up on a discussion on twitter about what’s wrong with OAI-PMH and an upcoming paper on using Atom .[edit: I’m updating this list with fragments of conversation about OAI-PMH if I see them, and the odd link or two] It’s not the first time I’ve caught fragments of conversations on the use of feeds – for example the earlier RSS and repositories discussion.

There are a slew of issues around trying to standardise feed types (as we discovered in the discussions organised around RSS as a possible metadata deposit mechanism). See for example Feed Deposit , OER, RSS, and JorumOpen , and the two later review articles (1 , 2) as well as the email list discussions ). Given the increasing use of RSS or Atom in some of the OER discovery tools, the work listed above, and the wider promotion of it in the UKOER pilot projects, why am I so interested in this discussion about OAI-PMH and about another effort to use Atom/ RSS?

I’m happy to see this debate crop up again in the wider (library) repository community for two reasons:

1) perhaps obviously it reaffirms the issues with OAI-PMH, that they haven’t changed, and the possibilities RSS/Atom offers,

2) more importantly it’s bringing the discussion about the feeds produced by repositories into the library/ scholarly works communities. Like it or not those are the communities who are most using repositories and the communities who can to some degree shape the development of repository software and specifications. Few repository platforms natively support much customisation of the feeds they produce and until the wider repository community wants that type of functionality or control and begins to think how update or move beyond OAI-PMH* there’s little reason for repository developers to work on the problem.

Without those changes anyone wanting to manage learning materials in a repository still has to hack their own fixes, build their own repository – or not use repositories (but that’s another question).

*I should note: I like OAI-PMH – I can play with in a browser, repository explorer is a good tool, and using OAI-PMH I can get and interact with someone else’s ‘raw’ metadata. – I’m just no longer convinced it’s the right tool to share metadata – in part by how few successful discovery services there are which use it.

Overview paper: Technology and descriptive choices in UKOER

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Technology and descriptive choices in the JISC and HEA Open Educational Resources programme.

A position paper for the ADL Learning Content Registries and Repositories Summit by R. John Robertson, Lorna Campbell, Phil Barker

Theme: ‘State of the practice in learning content repositories’ and ‘Systemic Initiatives’  License: CC: BY

JISC and the Higher Education Academy are collaborating on the Open Educational Resources Programme. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has provided an initial £5.7 million of funding for 29 pilot projects, plus associated support activities, (April 2009 to March 2010) which will explore how to expand the open availability and use of free, high quality online educational resources. (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer).

CETIS (the Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards), a JISC innovation support centre, is providing strategic and technical support for UKOER at both programme and project level. Technical guidance and synthesis is disseminated primarily through the CETIS blogs which are aggregated onto the CETIS website (http://www.cetis.org.uk/).

A different approach

Unlike many previous development programmes, UKOER has not specified a particular technical architecture or mandated a specific approach to metadata and resource description, beyond the requirement that a few key pieces of information are recorded in some way.

The required information is:

  • Programme tag
  • Title
  • Author / owner / contributor
  • Date
  • URL
  • Technical info – file format, name & size.

Some additional information has also been recommended:

  • Language
  • Subject classifications
  • Keywords
  • Tags
  • Comments
  • Descriptions

(http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/lmc/2009/02/03/oer-programme-technical-requirements/)

It is still too early to present a synthesis of how this information has been recorded but it is possible to provide an overview of the platforms, tools, metadata standards and packaging formats that projects have adopted.

Packaging formats in use

Packaging formats in use

Communication protocols in use

Communication protocols in use

Descriptive metadata standards

Descriptive metadata standards

Types of tools used to manage OERs

Types of tools used to manage OERs

Details of the types of tools in use in UKOER

Details of the types of tools in use in UKOER

Notes

  • projects may occur more than once in any given graph.
  • the graphs record the number of platforms that support a given format, protocol or standard (rather than use per se)
  • the recorded use of Zip is probably unrepresentative

Reflections

  1. At this stage CETIS technical synthesis of UKOER is still very much a work in progress but some preliminary trends are emerging:
  2. Unsurprisingly projects have gravitated to technologies they are familiar with and already had in place.
  3. Projects have used a mixture of elearning platforms, repositories, and innovative approaches
  4. The standards used are often embedded in applications and their use is dependant on the application chosen.
  5. The feasibility of aggregating distributed heterogeneous resource descriptions is still unproven.
  6. The pilot programme points to ways forward to use both web2 applications and digital repositories and to exchange information between them.
  7. Projects have chosen multiple platforms to support different functions such as preservation, streaming and dissemination, marketing and advocacy.
  8. Projects’ technical choices primarily reflect resource management and distribution requirements – as opposed to course delivery requirements.

Questions for discussion

  1. How do these figures fit with your expectations of approaches to sharing learning content?
  2. Can the applications you are using interact with multiple different platforms and applications for different purposes?
  3. If relevant, can your content move between different types of platforms? Can your metadata?

A fuller version of this position paper will be presented at the OCWC Conference in May 2010.

The use of ADL SCORM in the UKOER programme

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“The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) integrates a set of related technical standards, specifications, and guidelines designed to meet SCORM’s high-level requirements—accessible, interoperable, durable, and reusable content and systems. SCORM content can be delivered to your learners via any SCORM-compliant Learning Management System (LMS) using the same version of SCORM.” (http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/default.aspx )

In the context of the OER programme SCORM has mostly been interacted with as  a profile of IMS CP (though it utilises and profiles other standards as well).

SCORM is supported by:

  • Unicycle
  • OCEP
  • BERLiN
  • mmtv (under consideration)
  • Evolution
  • OLE Dutch History
  • FETLAR

comparing this to the list of those using IMS CP (link); those using SCORM and not using Content Packaging are:

  • OCEP
  • BERLiN
  • Evolution
  • mmtv

Support for SCORM is an out of the box function for

  • OCEP
  • BERLiN
  • Unicycle
  • Evolution

it may also be for the Moodle users (I’m not sure):

  • OLE Dutch HIstory
  • FETLAR

I’m not (yet) sure if mmtv decided to pursue the creation of SCORM packages, and am not clear, at this stage, if anyone is actively using SCORM or if projects are only supporting it.

The use of OAI-PMH and OAI-ORE in the UKOER programme

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OAI-PMH

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH ; http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html ) “provides an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting.” The protocol is widely used by repository software to make metadata about the resources they store available. In its use the repository acts as a data provider which is then able to be harvested by a data harvester. Two issues of note:

  1. although most repositories can function as data providers the data harvesting aspect of the protocol often requires separate software and is much less widely implemented.
  2. OAI-PMH specifies a minimal base metadata set of OAI_DC (~ the simple DC element set) therefore any implementation of it should be able to provide this as a minimum. Other metadata standards such as DC Terms or IEEE LOM can also be made available for harvesting.

Although OAI-PMH is a well established standard which is widely used, at this point it’s use for open educational resources is somewhat limited. OAI-PMH is not currently in use by Jorum for metadata harvesting and, as far as I know, there are not many OAI-PMH based harvesters offering aggregated search services for educational materials (outside of those within particular closed/ or semi-closed communities). DiscoverEd from Creative Commons does offer an OAI-PMH based harvest but prefers RSS/Atom based approaches (Enhanced Search for Educational Resources – A Perspective and a Prototype from CCLearn (2009) http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/discovered-paper-17-july-2009.pdf , p12). UPDATE: Please see comment from Jenny Gray below.

OAI-PMH is being used or is supported by:

  • ChemistryFM (option once content is in backup ePrints repository)
  • Phorus
  • Unicycle
  • OCEP
  • Open Exeter
  • OpenStaffs
  • OERP (use unknown)
  • Humbox

OAI-PMH is in active use by (as opposed to out of the box support):

  • Phorus (harvesting catalogued resources from Intute.)
  • TRUE (using a Drupal plug in?)
  • ADM OER
  • ChemistryFM (option once content is in backup ePrints repository)

OAI-ORE

“Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources.” (http://www.openarchives.org/ore/)

As a standard for describing aggregated or compound resources ORE has the potential to be highly relevant to some types of education materials made up of distributed web resources; its use, however, with educational materials has thus far been somewhat limited. It has however been used as an exchange mechanism for moving repository contents from one system to another.

Projects using OAI-ORE:

  • ChemistryFM (export function from WordPress – will use to backup content to repository)
  • ADMOER (export function from ePrints)
  • HumBox (export function from ePrints)

The use of Dublin Core metadata in the UKOER programme

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The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative “popularized the idea of “core metadata” for simple and generic resource descriptions” and its initial 15 descriptive elements became an international standard and a component of the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. The Dublin Core community has subsequently developed in two directions – one developing application profiles to support particular implementation communities and the other developing in a way that would make its data structures more compatible with RDF and support the uptake of Dublin Core around Linked Data (http://dublincore.org/metadata-basics/). At this time there is, therefore, a very wide spectrum of usage of Dublin Core.

There are a number of projects in the UKOER programme which have identified themselves as using Dublin Core, they are:

Projects using Dublin Core at least in part because they’re using OAI-PMH
(I’ve made the assumption those using OAI-PMH are implementing it according to the protocol and thus creating OAI_DC)

  • Unicycle
  • Open Content Employability Project
  • OpenStaffs
  • ChemistryFM
  • ADOME
  • TRUE
  • Phorus
  • Humbox

Projects creating a mapping to DC to promote interoperability
(this mapping may go beyond OAI_DC)

  • Unicycle
  • Berlin (investigating mapping to DC)
  • Open Educational Resources Pilot (investigating mapping to DC)

Projects implementing the latest version of Dublin Core: DC Terms

  • OpenExeter
  • UK Centre for Bioscience OER Project (considering)

Projects for whom Dublin Core is not their primary standard

  • Unicycle
  • Open Content Employability Project
  • OpenStaffs
  • Berlin
  • TRUE
  • ChemistryFM (not sure – using WordPress (with OAI-ORE plugin) and institutional repository)

Reflections

  • Projects will be creating Dublin Core metadata as a side effect of their deposit into JorumOpen – but this isn’t a choice to use DC in the programme as such.
  • I think there is a definite tension between the ongoing use of OAI-DC as part of OAI-PMH and the uptake and use of DC Terms.
  • This overview of the use of does not comment on the element / term choices used as part of the use of Dublin Core.

The use of IMS CP in the UKOER programme

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IMS Content Packaging “describes data structures that can be used to exchange data between systems that wish to import, export, aggregate, and disaggregate packages of content.” http://www.imsglobal.org/content/packaging/ .
There are a number of projects in the programme which have identified themselves as using IMS Content Packaging, they are:

Some of the projects use Content Packaging in so far as the software they are using to manage OERs uses it or offers it as an export option. These projects are:

  • Unicycle
  • OpenStaffs
  • OLE Dutch History
  • FETLAR
  • Simulation-OER

Some projects using IMS_CP as a mechanism to deposit content into Jorum

  • Unicycle
  • OpenExeter [tbc conversation about CP use occured early in project]

Some projects are mediating but not creating resources which are Content Packages

  • OERP
  • OOER

Observations

Although some projects have chosen to use CP, it should be observed that many projects are either submitting single resources or simply using zip to aggregate or bundle resources. There are a number of reasons CP may not have featured as much as usual, which include:

  • different tools in use
    • In comparison to many e-learning development projects few projects in the UKEOR programme are using elearning specific technology (more on this in a future post) and as a result out-of-the-box support for CP is not prevalent in the programme. There is also only limited use of VLEs in the programme.
  • detailed structuring seen as superfluous?
    • Another possible reason for the relative underuse of CP may be that the functionality and features it offers to support or store structured content was not considered necessary by projects.
  • “Not using content packaging for repository- end users unlikely to use Reload so using  a more straightforward Zip based approach” Humbox project

The use of IMS QTI in the UKOER programme

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IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification http://www.imsglobal.org/question/ is a standard used to support the interoperability and exchange of digital assessment items (questions, answers, and data). Based on the technical conversations we’ve been having with projects, here’s a brief overview of the use of IMS QTI in the UKOER programme based on the data we have.
Eight projects identified themselves as using QTI in some form.

The use of QTI in these projects does not however follow a single pattern, there are three rough groups of the occurrence of QTI in the Open Educational Resources being released in the programme.
Some projects have acquired OERs which already use QTI and they are managing and passing them on as they are. These projects are:

  • Skills for Scientists
  • CORE-Materials
  • Evolution

Some projects are using tools which support the export of QTI, and they could export items they have in that manner. These projects are:

  • TRUE
  • Open Educational Repository in Support of Computer Science
  • OLE Dutch History

Some projects are explicitly creating or releasing OERs which are QTI assessment items. These projects are:

  • FETLAR (particular focus on Math related items and using some Math-specific tools )
  • brome OERP (are taking items they have been given in in QuestionMark and exporting as QTI to make more open before sharing)

FETLAR’s work builds on cutting edge development on how to use QTI with Math items.