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Brave words from Edinburgh

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Lorcan Dempsey and Chris Rusbridge both note with delight that Edinburgh Universitys new strategic plan states:

The mission of our University is the creation, dissemination and curation of knowledge. [Governance and Strategic Planning: Strategic Planning – Strategic Plan 08-12] (my emphasis)

Im not clear if œknowledge in this case encompasses teaching and learning materials. If it does, Id be very interested to learn if policies or guidelines are being formulated at any level within the institution to manage their creation, dissemination and curation. Can anyone from Edinburgh enlighten us?

You can’t always get what you want…?

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Dorothea Salo, self styled œone-woman institutional-repository harbinger of doom has written yet another characteristically thought provoking blog post on the role and future of repositories within our HE institutions. Although she focuses primarily on Institutional Repositories (capital I capital R), scholarly works and the uphill struggle facing repository managers (reporats) many of the issues she raises could equally apply to learning object repositories and teaching and learning materials. Ive picked out a few choice quotes which seem to be particularly pertinent:

… the real set of questions every single institution with an IR needs to be asking itself: What content do I want from this initiative, and what am I willing to do to get it? Spoiler for this post: if the full answer to the second question is œIm willing to run and market an IR! please dont start one, because that is not enough to get whatever it is that you want, and you will waste precious library resources, your people not least.

The IR is the solution! Now find me a problem! Uh, not that problem; I cant actually do anything about that problem.

We must refocus our planning away from IRs per se and toward specific content types and the resources were willing to throw at acquiring, presenting, and preserving them.

Once we focus on the stuff we want instead of the place were going to put it, we open up the questions we should have been asking all along. How does this stuff get produced, and how could we help produce it in a way that keeps it available to us? What happens to it when its done? What incentives can we offer to have it given to us, and are those sufficient to counter any opposing incentives combined with natural inertia and the actual difficulty of the task? Failing that, how do we find out about the existence of the stuff we want, and how can we then get our hands on it in the form in which we need it?

And then, at last, we can ask ourselves the elephant-in-the-room question: given the effort well have to put into getting what weve decided we want, do we still want to go after it? No, its not worth it, is a perfectly acceptable answer to that question, to my mind

I cant tell you how much I agree with those last two paragraphs. One of my hobby horses for longer than I care to remember has been that institutions need to consider the management and curation of all the myriad kinds of stuff produced during the process and as a result of scholarly and academic practice. Isnt this stuff the primary product of institutions core business after all?

“Better management and sharing of teaching and learning materials by individual teaching practitioners.”

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This was one vision articulated by participants during an interesting and productive meeting earlier in July that aimed to review the JISC Repositories Roadmap produced by Rachel Heery and Andy Powell in 2006. Following an introduction by Rachel Bruce and a discussion of alternative definitions of “repository” led by Rachel Heery the meeting split into groups to discuss the forward looking vision and tactics for three key resource types: scholarly works, teaching and learning materials and research data.

Our brief was to:

  • Note developments and achievements since the publication of the Roadmap
  • Articulate a vision of what we want to achieve and tactics for how to realise this.
  • Identify JISC interventions and priorities for activity.

The group discussing teaching and learning materials consisted of Amber Thomas, Jackie Carter, Andy Richardson, Andy Powell and myself and this post represents a summary of our discussion. I certainly cant claim the credit for all the comments and suggestions here!

Changes and Developments Since Roadmap Publication

  • Shift in focus from learning objects to learning materials.
  • Increased focus on media specific global repositories e.g. flickr, slideshare, etc.
  • Invaluable lessons learned from Jorums experience of license implementation.
  • Focus has shifted from system interaction to user / resource interaction.
  • Mashups have created many new types of content.
  • Mainstream understanding of œreuse relates to single media objects, e.g. jpeg rather than content package.
  • Much less focus on interoperability standards.
  • œContent packaging has become a bit of a dirty word.
  • Continuing growth in the use of virtual learning environments.
  • Open Educational Resources œmovement.
  • Web 2.0.

Vision and Tactics

Vision: Better management and sharing of teaching and learning materials by individual teaching practitioners.

Boundaries are blurred in the teaching and learning space, more so than in the domain of scholarly communication. The language and terminology of the open access debate is not directly applicable to the teaching and learning domain. Do we really want to open access to all teaching and learning materials?

Why bother to manage teaching and learning materials in the first place? Institutions are not currently accountable for the management of their teaching materials. We need a much more developed concept of œuse, never mind œre-use. There are many different levels of use and re-use and subject contextualisation is crucial.

Learning objects are just one type of teaching and learning resource. There has been too great a focus on sharing and reusing learning objects and this has arguably served to mask the much greater issue of how to effectively manage all types of resources, both digital and non digital, used in, and generated by, the process of teaching and learning.

A landscape study of what kind of content is out there and where it is stored would be useful. We make far too many sweeping generalisations and unsubstantiated assertions. It would be useful to take a representative sample of institutions across the sector and study how they are, or are not, managing teaching and learning materials. We also need to know more about policy intentions at a senior management level and resource management strategies at a personal level.

The overall aim should be for institutions manage their materials more effectively to help improve the quality and experience of teaching and learning.

At the same time as considering the role of digital repositories, institutional policy and personal resource management strategies we need to share knowledge of effective teaching and resource management practice and promote opportunities for teachers to develop and engage with new technology.

Among other benefits, better management of teaching and learning content should help to facilitate the disclosure of resources to students. De-duplication of effort should also be beneficial to teaching practitioners and to the institution as a whole.

The JISC vision should be to help individual teaching practitioners to improve the management of their teaching and learning materials and consequently improve the process and practice of teaching and the quality of the learning experience.

This is not a œdigital repository vision, this is a teaching and learning vision but we need to identify how repositories can help to make this a reality.

How can we measure if we are making any progress towards achieving such a vision?

One potential driver for change could be for JISC to work with QAA to make some kind of statement on the management of teaching and learning materials.

Activities, Priorities and JISC Interventions

  • Undertake baseline survey.
  • Identify and embed good practice at different levels within institution.
  • Work with QAA.
  • Improve awareness and practice of IPR and licensing issues among teaching staff.
  • Make better use of pilot license registry.
  • Evaluate existence and value of subject specific services for teaching and learning.
  • Open access to closed learning and teaching content collections (this could include content within vles).
  • Understand benefits and costs of services to individuals.
  • Understand and define range of relationships between repositories, vles, eportfolios and possibly also course catalogues.

Use of repositories to manage scholarly works and teaching and learning materials: Differences and similarities

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While commenting on the forthcoming JISC briefing paper œManagement of e-learning resources: why repositories can help, authored by Andrew Rothery of University of Worcester, we got drawn into a slightly tangential discussion about issues relating to different types of resources, primarily scholarly works and teaching and learning materials, which may be accommodated by institutional repositories. At the time I volunteered to collate our comments so here, rather belatedly, is a synthesis of the points raised in that discussion by Neil Jacobs (JISC), Phil Barker (CETIS), Andrew Rothery (Worcester) and I.

I should add that Im not an expert in issues relating to scholarly works so Im sure Ive oversimplified some very complex points. In addition I know next to nothing about significant issues relating to research data. I suspect research data may be more akin to teaching materials than scholarly works but I could be quite wrong. If anyone from the eresearch domain could comment Id be very grateful.

I should also add that this is just a starting point for further discussion rather than a definitive list of issues.

Format
Scholarly works generally are generally documents designed for reading and printing. Learning materials and research data are likely to encompass multiple formats and may facilitate wide range of interactions.

Version
Scholarly works tend to be discrete entities and may have a clear version history (preprint, publication, postprint). Many different versions of an individual learning resource may exist, particularly if that resource is stored in a VLE. Different versions may be used for different courses, resources may be updated from year to year.

Audience
The audience for scholarly works is generally other academic staff and researchers. The audience for teaching and learning materials is students in addition to other academic staff.

Reuse and Citation
Reuse of scholarly works is common within agreed parameters. Papers may be referenced, quoted and cited. Reuse of learning materials is much more haphazard and there is no agreed framework for reuse. Practitioners are often unsure if they can reuse or repurpose an existing learning resource.

Incentives and Motivation Publication
Authors are usually motivated to publish scholarly works and there are clear incentives for them to do so e.g. the RAE, academic reputation, peer standing. There are few if any incentives for academics to publish their teaching materials and many may be extremely reticent to do so.

(Note: What does publish really mean in this context?)

Peer Review
Scholarly works are subject to peer review or some other form of quality assessment. Teaching materials are not usually peer reviewed although some learning objects repositories such as merlot do provide a peer review facility. There is some debate as to the validity of peer reviewing discrete chunks of learning materials that may be used in many different contexts. Teachers are generally more interested in knowing how a resource has been used and by whom rather than whether it has been peer reviewed.

Open Access
There are clear arguments and considerable advocacy for open access to scholarly publications, however the case for open access to teaching and learning materials (and research data ?) is less well developed.

Uptake and Engagement
It seems to be easier to encourage academic staff to contribute to and use repositories of scholarly works rather than teaching and learning materials.

Retention, Preservation and Archiving
There is little awareness of issues relating to the retention, preservation and archiving of teaching and learning materials. An extreme example of this lack of awareness is the argument that there is no valid reason for retaining any teaching and learning materials. There is much greater awareness and understanding of the need to preserve and archive scholarly works.

Workflow
There are quite different workflows associated with the creation, publication and deposit of scholarly works and teaching and learning materials. Repositories must address and accommodate these different workflows.

Metadata
Although it may be possible to identify some common metadata elements the characteristics of teaching and learning materials requiring description to facilitate resource discovery and selection are different from those of scholarly works. Different metadata schemes or strategies must be developed accordingly.

IPR and Copyright
Academic staff tend to have greater awareness of IPR and copyright restrictions relating to scholarly works than teaching and learning materials.

Resource Management
All institutional resources, including scholarly works, research data and teaching and learning materials require appropriate management policies and strategies.

Random Quotes 4 – SFC Repositories Seminar

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Heriot Watt University, 31st October 2007

Repositories and the learning experience
 – Mark Stiles

Reuse and repurposing…you will share your content…enforce or encourage…moving an institutional quantity of content from one vle to another…vle use has become less innovative and more mundane…the new orthodoxy…bolt on repositories…a big fat frog…web 2-ey things…immense problems in terms of policy…duh…policy issue that stops you dead in your tracks…the vle is not quite dead yet…students will turn up with toolsets they want to use…tutors or cowboys…lots of little frogs…focus on software integration rather than creation…freeing content from Blackboard…integration with vle…HarvestRoad HIVE…suck content out of vle and serve it back to vle so users wont notice…deployment and development process…the big suck…copyright agreement…agility and flexibility…serving back dynamically to live systems…promote diversification, reuse and repurposing¦mentors¦employer engagement¦ materials produced for use not reuse¦working capital¦reasonable expectation on creators of content¦

Jorum
– Peter O’Hare & Peter Burnhill

Build a community of sharing¦vle plugin type people¦.standard workflow process¦its all free¦a lot of people taking stuff out and fewer putting stuff in¦delivering services not creating software or standards¦objects that are dressed well in terms of metadata¦.vle-able¦initial degree of risk aversion from funding councils¦conservative set of licensing schemes¦now an open agenda¦big push on open educational resources side¦rethink Jorum¦whats the new agenda?¦keepsake¦ time to open up¦JorumOpen¦radically different from where we are at the moment¦whats the moral community of sharing¦JorumPrivilege+¦rights value is not intrinsic to the learning object, it is often intrinsic to the asset¦must be able to take material that authors want to be open¦vanity motive of open educational content¦when you go open you really have to do scale¦assertions and take down policy need to be there¦some institutions will not go near creative commons¦dealing with adults that can make responsible assertions¦we are in the business of adding value to objects therefore we are in the publishing business¦data services are willing to take risks but under law must act reasonably¦ helping the institution to own the problem¦ offload the risk by pointing to a space such as myspace, youtube, etc¦all repositories have to learn how to work with the other¦institutions have to be able to gather resources together to enable their people to act¦database of boundaries¦

The COLEG Repository
– Mary MacDonald and John Edmonstone

Seeking a user friendly repository¦workflow and QA processes¦rendering qti¦batch uploading¦version control¦reports¦peer reviewing…rss feeds¦it would be great to have a toaster in the backseat of your car but will you ever use it¦need to use a system in anger to find out what you really want it to do¦need a repository that will be a bit of a tart for you¦the coleg repository is a place to put your ugly children as well as your good looking children¦the groups that people are initially willing to share with are quite small¦people will only share their ugly babies with close relatives at first¦do the jorum figures indicate success?…

After the Deluge: practical approaches to managing DR in digital repositories
– John Casey

The fundamental problem is confusion¦.there are no technical panaceas for DRM¦automated DRM solutions are only suitable for simple and frequent transactions these are not the sort of characteristics of a learning object reuse lifecycle¦policy is the expression of the underlying teaching and business model¦we need to be able to articulate these models more clearly¦the donkey and the ostrich are very representative¦if you are an institution then legally you are a publisher¦dont leave it to the commercialisation office or the techies¦be realistic about the monetary value of the materials¦the value is in what you do with the materials not the materials themselves¦be generous to your staff to get buy in¦use the TrustDR development pack¦ what is the underlying business model of e-learning?…what is senior management for?…institutional intellectual capital¦ with out the involvement of senior managers we cant have policy¦teaching and library staff cant sort this out on their own¦the key phrase is œinstitutional¦without serious work on institutional policy everything is going to come of the rails, particularly in terms of web 2 stuff¦step one is getting senior managers to realise that its a policy problem¦.the law can be useful for a kind of reality fix¦teaching still generates the largest portion of income for all institutions¦teaching is the core business of the institution and this needs to be articulated in policy¦e-learning is not sustainable as it is not integrated into the structure of of institutions¦senior managers need to be involved¦suggest using the CAMEL model¦if policies are fit for purpose then they will have considerable longevity¦stuck out bottom lips when it went through the committees¦Staffordshire have an e-learning policy¦Trust DR development pack explores open business strategies e.g. MIT, OU¦

Images Application Profile Project Meeting

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London, October 2007

Following introductions the meeting began with a presentation by Pete J and Julie on the Dublin Core Abstract Model and the Scholarly works Application Profile.

DCMI Abstract Model and Application Profiles
– Pete Johnston, Eduserv Foundation

The Dublin Core element set published in 1995.

A resource is anything that can be identified by a URI. Resources have property value pairs associated with them

DCAM defines the DC description set and is composed of

  • Resource model
  • Description set model
  • Vocabulary model

DCAM does not describe how to represent description sets in concrete terms and doesn not specify a fixed set of terms.

Descriptions sets are composed or one of more descriptions which may have a resource URI. Each description is composed of one or more statements. Each statement must have a property URI and literal or non literal value surrogates.

The DCMI Description Set Profile is a way of describing structural constraints on a description set “ this is not part of DCAM. Mikael Nilssen is developing a model and XML syntax for DSP and Fredrik Enoksson is developing wiki syntax for DSP.

A DCAM compatible application profile consists of

  • Functional requirements
  • Domain model
  • Description Set Profile
  • Two other components

Methodology for Images Application Profile
– Mick Eadie, AHDS Visual Arts

Have looked at a range of existing application profiles including SWAP and Jorum and have drafted attributes, a model, usecases and functional requirements which are available form the project wiki.

The primary objective of the project is to develop a working application profile along the lines of SWAP (this was prioritised by members of the panel) and the team intend to follow the SWAP development model.

Getting the profile implemented and used will be the most challenging aspect of the project. The project team hope to engage with repository vendors and developers asap and are meeting with the ePrints team to discuss their potential involvement. (ePrints (Tim Brody) and Fedora (Richard Green, Chris Awre) people are represented on the panel.)

Models the project will look at in more detail

May be beneficial for JISC to fund some kind of synthesis or over arching project that could map the relationship between the various application profile creation projects.

Breakout Session

  • Need to be careful if you state you want rich metadata “ why do you want it?
  • Users need to be able to find images about or of a particular thing., the content of the image is crucial
  • Is this about metadata exchange or resource discovery? Its about exchange to support resource discovery.
  • The images and time based media profile projects must work together.
  • The context of use is crucial so provenance needs to be recorded.
  • The national repositories section of the usecases document really refers to aggregator services.
  • Will the profile accommodate 3d models that can be manipulated e.g. molecular models?
  • The draft model scoped by the project is too simple and needs revision.
  • The concept of the master image is problematic and ambiguous. The underlying model must be as neutral as possible and should be based on relationships. œMaster should be regarded as a class of relationship rather than a class of artefact.
  • Many images are composite objects so the whole – part relationship needs to be considered.
  • FRBR is designed with textual resources in mind so the model may not fit visual images. In FRBR the work is always an abstract thing. In the case of images there may be no work e.g. in the case of a photograph of a giraffe, the giraffe can not be considered as œwork

Feedback

  • In order to describe images relationships are key. The profile must make provision for be bi-directional relationships and relationships to identifiers elsewhere.
  • User generated tags can be accommodated by the œhas annotation field.
  • The simplest approach may be to identify metadata that is about the image and its creation and metadata that is about the content of the image. These two will overlap and the relationship between them is crucial. (Grant Young, TASI)
  • Dimensionality of images is very important. Images have other dimensions than x and y.
  • The model should stop short of describing the work.
  • Colour space, coverage and encoding (i.e. what does a pixel encode – colour, temperature, etc) should be included as attributes.
  • The relationship between images and time based media needs to be clarified
  • œWhy not just define a core element set that could have extensions built on to it (!!)

Community Acceptance

  • The team will start drafting an Ariadne article as it was generally agreed that this was highly beneficial to the SWAP project.
  • Project should consider presenting at Open Repositories Conference in Southampton in April 2008 as the SWAP profile was presented at the 2007 conference.
  • Project needs to work very closely with Intute and the time based media application profile project. It will also be important to work with the cultural heritage sector.
  • Acceptance should be at an international level.
  • Acceptance takes a long time as software is developed in long cycles.
  • Need an exemplar that demonstrates key benefits to the community.
  • Need to be aware that many people are simply storing their images in Flickr. This is the world the profile must work in.
  • Need to demonstrate advantages from depositor and repository point of view.

A few thoughts¦

Julie and co have made the creation of SWAP look awfully easy :-}

It was notable, and a little worrying, that that there was very little discussion of tagging (raised once by Pete), use of sites like Flickr (raised once by me) or Web 2.0 technologies and approaches in general. However there was significant discussion of semantic web technologies and approaches.

It also became clear that its debatable how far the FRBR model can be stretched before it breaks. FRBR worked well for SWAP, but will it work equally well for images, learning materials etc?

It was also painfully clear that metadata creation is still a serious problem and that it is not always easy to distinguish between issues that relate to a profile and issues that relate to implementations of that profile.

As Father Jack would say œThat would be an implementation issue¦.