[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]

OER types:

Projects in UKOER 2 have released resources at various levels of granularity from individual images  and documents through to whole courses.

A variety of mime types are used by the projects. These include: doc, pdf, spss, wiki, ppt, prezi, wmv, html5, javascript, wav, MS Office, DOM, RTF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, AVI, MPEG, DivX, QuickTime, MP3, mp4, HTML, zip, xml, qti, swf, flv.

Platform overview:

Overview of platforms in use in the UKOER 2 programme

As can be seen this graph is somewhat misleading as it aggregates the total use of web 2.0 tools giving a very large result in relation to other options, however no projects have solely used externally hosted web 2.0 platforms and  the following detailed graph shows a more useful view. The graph is much more useful in noting the comparative use of other platforms.

NB usage figures are not mutually exclusive – a good number of projects used multiple platforms

Detailed view:

Content management platforms in use in the UKOER 2 programme

• NB usage figures are not mutually exclusive – a good number of projects used multiple platforms
• Repository = repository software  platform, rather than use of another platform as a repository
• There is an strong use of SlideShare and YouTube but relatively little use of iTunes.
• There’s a diverse number of CMS used to manage content, but in aggregate their use parallels the use of repositories.
• ALTO and Tiger added a CMS layer on top of a repository to improve their user interface.
• There’s a notable interest in wordpress (especially in Strand C) as a lightweight platform to collect and aggregate OER.
• One aspect of this interest in WordPress is for SEO reasons (Scooter)
• The edshare variant of eprints is the most popular repository- interestingly a number of projects have chosen to use hosted versions of edShare. One noted key influence in this choice is the success of the UKOER 1 Humbox project in community development – at least one project (DHOER) is depositing content into Humbox.
• Plugins for wordpress to support better metadata and licensing  are being explored and developed by Triton, DelOREs, and CSAPOER [tbc])

[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.

[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

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

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

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.

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)