Back to the Future – revisiting the CETIS codebashes

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As a result of a request from the Cabinet Office to contribute to a paper on the use of hackdays during the procurement process, CETIS have been revisiting the “Codebash” events that we ran between 2002 and 2007. The codebashes were a series of developer events that focused on testing the practical interoperability of implementations of a wide range of content specifications current at the time, including IMS Content Packaging, Question and Test Interoperability, Simple Sequencing (I’d forgotten that even existed!), Learning Design and Learning Resource Meta-data, IEEE LOM, Dublin Core Metadata and ADL SCORM. The term “codebash” was coined to distinguish the CETIS events from the ADL Plugfests, which tested the interoperability and conformance of SCORM implementations. Over a five year period CETIS ran four content codebashes that attracted participants from 45 companies and 8 countries. In addition to the content codebashes, CETIS also additional events focused on individual specifications such as IMS QTI, or the outputs puts of specific JISC programmes such as the Designbashes and Widgetbash facilitated by Sheila MacNeill. As there was considerable interest in the codebashes and we were frequently asked for guidance on running events of this kind, I wrote and circulated a Codebash Facilitation document. It’s years since I’ve revisited this document, but I looked it out for Scott Wilson a couple of weeks ago as potential input for the Cabinet Office paper he was in the process of drafting together with a group of independents consultants. The resulting paper Hackdays – Levelling the Playing Field can be read and downloaded here.

The CETIS codebashes have been rather eclipsed by hackdays and connectathons in recent years, however it appears that these very practical, focused events still have something to offer the community so I thought it might be worth summarising the Codebash Facilitation document here.

Codebash Aims and Objectives

The primary aim of CETIS codebashes was to test the functional interoperability of systems and applications that implemented open learning technology interoperability standards, specifications and application profiles. In reality that meant bringing together the developers of systems and applications to test whether it was possible to exchange content and data between their products.

A secondary objective of the codebashes was to identify problems, inconsistencies and ambiguities in published standards and specifications. These were then fed back to the appropriate maintenance body in order that they could be rectified in subsequent releases of the standard or specification. In this way codebashes offered developers a channel through which they could contribute to the specification development process.

A tertiary aim of these events was to identify and share common practice in the implementation of standards and specifications and to foster communities of practice where developers could discuss how and why they had taken specific implementation decisions. A subsidiary benefit of the codebashes was that they acted as useful networking events for technical developers from a wide range of backgrounds.

The CETIS codebashes were promoted as closed technical interoperability testing events, though every effort was made to accommodate all developers who wished to participate. The events were aimed specifically at technical developers and we tried to discourage companies from sending marketing or sales representatives, though I should add that we were not always scucessful! Managers who played a strategic role in overseeing the development and implementation of systems and specifications were encouraged to participate however.

Capturing the Evidence

Capturing evidence of interoperability during early codebashes proved to be extremely difficult so Wilbert Kraan developed a dedicated website built on a Zope application server to facilitate the recording process. Participants were able to register the tools applications that they were testing and to upload content or data generated by these application. Other participants could then take this content test it in their own applications, allowing “daisy chains” of interoperability to be recorded. In addition, developers had the option of making their contributions openly available to the general public or visible only to other codebash participants. All participants were encouraged to register their applications prior to the event and to identify specific bugs and issues that they hoped to address. Developers who could not attend in person were able to participate remotely via the codebash website.

IPR, Copyright and Dissemination

The IPR and copyright of all resources produced during the CETIS codebashes remained with the original authors, and developers were neither required nor expected to expose the source code of their tools and applications to other participants.

Although CETIS disseminated the outputs of all the codebashes, and identified all those that had taken part, the specific performance of individual participants was never revealed. Bug reports and technical issues were fed back to relevant standards and specifications bodies and a general overview on the levels of interoperability achieved was disseminated to the developer community. All participants were free to publishing their own reports on the codebashes, however they were strongly discouraged from publicising the performance of other vendors and potential competitors. At the time, we did not require participants to sign non-disclosure agreements, and relied entirely on developers’ sense of fair play not to reveal their competitors performance. Thankfully no problems arose in this regard, although one or two of the bigger commercial VLE developers were very protective of their code.

Conformance and Interoperability

It’s important to note that the aim of the CETIS codebashes was to facilitate increased interoperability across the developer community, rather than to evaluate implementations or test conformance. Conformance testing can be difficult and costly to facilitate and govern and does not necessarily guarantee interoperability, particularly if applications implement different profiles of a specification or standard. Events that enable developers to establish and demonstrate practical interoperability are arguably of considerably greater value to the community.

Although CETIS codebashes had a very technical focus they were facilitated as social events and this social interaction proved to be a crucial component in encouraging participants to work closely together to achieve interoperability.

Legacy

These days the value of technical developer events in the domain of education is well established, and a wide range of specialist events have emerged as a result. Some are general in focus such as the hugely successful DevCSI hackdays, others are more specific such as the CETIS Widgetbash, the CETIS / DecCSI OER Hackday and the EDINA Wills World Hack running this week which aims to build a Shakespeare Registry of metadata of digital resources relating to Shakespeare covering anything from its work and live to modern performance, interpretation or geographical and historical contextual information. At the time however, aside from the ADL Plugfests, the CETIS codebashes were unique in offering technical developers an informal forum to test the interoperability of their tools and applications and I think it’s fair to say that they had a positive impact not just on developers and vendors but also on the specification development process and the education technology community more widely.

Links

Facilitating CETIS CodeBashes paper
Codebash 1-3 Reports, 2002 – 2005
Codebash 4, 2007
Codebash 4 blog post, 2007
Designbash, 2009
Designbash, 2010
Designbash, 2011
Widgetbash, 2011
OER Hackday, 2011
QTI Bash, 2012
Dev8eD Hackday, 2012

Bye bye Amber!

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She’s probably going to kill me for writing this but what the hell….Amber is leaving JISC at the end of the week and I can’t let her go without a send off! I’ve known Amber professionally for more years than it would be polite to mention and to be honest I can’t actually remember where she was working when I first met her, though I think it was pre-Becta. I do remember being really pleased when she joined JISC because she had a reputation for Knowing Her Stuff and for really understanding technology from a teaching and learning perspective.

I’ve collaborated with Amber on a number of JISC programmes and for the last three years we’ve worked together with CETIS colleagues Phil Barker, R. John Robertson and Martin Hawksey to provide advice and guidance on digital infrastructure to support the JISC HEA Open Educational Resource Programmes. It’s been an immensely rewarding experience. Although the UK OER Programmes are not “about” digital infrastructure development per se, they have fostered some really innovative technical developments such as the OER Visualisation Project, the CETIS OER Technical Mini Projects, the JLeRN Experiment and the OER Rapid Innovation Programme, all of which, to a greater or lesser degree, are a result of Amber’s vision and willingness to take risks.

Over the last three years Amber has also become an influential voice in the global open education debate. One of the things I have always admired about her contribution to discussions is that she has an enviable ability to ask the right questions, to synthesise complex and often conflicting issues, and represent a wide range of views without ever loosing sight of her own perspective. Some of the posts she has written for the JISC Digital Infrastructure Team blog have been important markers in the development of the UK OER Programmes.

Above and beyond her undoubted technical expertise, I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say that Amber has been a really positive role model for other women working in a domain where female colleagues are still rather under-represented. She is immensely patient and understanding, and I personally feel that I have benefitted enormously from her support and encouragement. She’s also really quite silly and is immensely good fun to work with.

The last project Amber, Phil, Martin and I worked on was a booksprint earlier this autumn. The aim of the booksprint was to synthesise the technical outputs of all three years of the UK OER Programmes and to write a book in three days. It was Amber’s idea of course and I have to confess that I really wasn’t convinced we were up to the task. I’m delighted to admit that I was proved wrong. With patient input from booksprint facilitator Adam Hyde we did manage to write our book, or most of it at least, and we actually had great fun while we were at it!

Amber Thomas*

Amber Thomas*

So now Amber is off to the University of Warwick where, among other people, she’ll be working with the lovely Jenny Delasalle who some of you might remember as Phil’s predecessor as CETIS Metadata SIG coordinator. I’m sure we’ll all miss working so closely with Amber but I have the feeling that we haven’t seen the back of her yet! So good luck with the new job Amber and I hope we can look forward to working together again at some stage in the not too distant future.

Now I had better go and finish writing the conclusion of our book, otherwise Amber really will kill me ;)

* Picture of Amber gratuitously pinched from Brian Kelly’s Metrics and Social Web Services Workshop report at ukwebfocus.wordpress.com

* ETA Brian has very kindly let me know that the picture above was taken by Kirsty Pitkin, @eventamplifier, or possibly by Mr@eventamplifier! Who ever took it, it’s lovely :)

The great UKOER tag debate

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After three years of innovation focused on the sustainable release of open educational resources, the JISC HEA UK OER Programme is drawing to a close and yesterday Martin and I went along to the final programme meeting in London. Phil wasn’t able to attend the meeting and instead posted the following e-mail to the oer-discuss mailing list:

Hello all, I can’t be in London today, so I’m kind of joining the end of programme discussion from afar. The last three years have been great. At one of the early planning meetings someone (Andy Powell, I think) said that one measure of whether the programme was successful could be the widespread recognition of UKOER / OER as an idea within UK F&HE and the existence of a community around it. I’m pretty sure that has happened, not just because of UKOER but we were there and helped. So well done all of us :)

But what now? The programme has always aimed at sustainable release of resources, change of culture and practice, not just a short burst of activity leading to a one-off dumping of resources. What will happen over the next few years by way of sustained release and which practices are sustainable? Also, of course, from a CETIS point of view, what technologies can help?

Happy diwali, keep the OER light shining.

Phil’s mail prompted Nick Sheppard to ask the apparently innocent question:

Possibly a silly question…but I should stop tagging new resources ukoer?!

This seemingly innocuous enquiry prompted the kind of mailing list explosion normally only seen on Friday afternoon, and it wasn’t long before the discussion had it’s own twitter tag: #oergate. I haven’t counted the number of replies but if the thread has reached double figures it wouldn’t surprise me. If you’re feeling brave, you can read the whole thread here.

Some colleagues were all in favour of continuing to use the ukoer tag, arguing that it now represents an active community which is powerful evidence to the sustainability of the funded programmes’ legacy. Others argued that continued use of the tag would muddy the waters for collection managers and make it difficult to identify resources produced through the funded phase of the programme.

Amber has now managed to capture the discussion in an excellent blog post UKOER: What’s in a tag?*. Although there is no conclusive consensus as to how to answer Nick’s original question, one thing that this discussion has clearly demonstrated is that there does appear to be a lively and active community that has grown up around the funded programmes and the ukoer tag, and that definitely has to be a good thing!

*Amber’s blog post was written with input from Sarah Currier (Jorum), David Kernohan (JISC), Martin Hawksey (CETIS), Lorna Campbell (CETIS), Jackie Carter (Jorum).

ETA It now appears that the #oergate debate borked JISCmail! It seems that the list exceeded posting limits or some such, and no further comments were posted to the list after 15.10 on Wednesday afternoon. I’m delighted to say that I got the last word in ;)

JLeRN Experiment Final Meeting

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Earlier this week I went to the final meeting of the JLeRN Experiment Project ,which CETIS has been supporting over the last year. The aim of the event was to reflect on the project and to provide project partners with an opportunity to present and discuss their engagement with JLeRN and the Learning Registry.

JLeRN project manager Sarah Currier and developer Nick Syrotiuk opened the meeting by recapping the project’s progress and some of the issues they encountered. Nick explained that setting up a Learning Registry node had been relatively straightforward and that publishing data to the node was quite easy. The project had been unable to experiment with setting up a node in the cloud due to limitations within the university’s funding and procurement structures (Amber Thomas noted that this was a common finding of other JISC funded cloud service projects), however all the JLeRN node data is synchronised with iriscouch.com, a free CouchDB service in the cloud. Although getting data into the node is simple, there was no easy way to see what was in the node so Nick built a Node Explorer tool based on the LR slice API which is now available on Github.

Sarah also explained that the project had been unable to explore moving data between nodes and exploiting node networks and communities as there are currently very few Learning Registry nodes in existence. Sarah noted that while there had been considerable initial interest in both the Learning Registry and JLeRN, and quite a few projects and institutions had expressed an interest in getting involved, very few had actually engaged, apart from the JISC funded OER Rapid Innovation projects. Sarah attributed this lack of engagement to limited capacity and resources across the sector and also to the steep learning curve required to get involved. There had also been relatively little interest from the development community, beyond one or two enthusiastic and innovative individuals, such as Pat Lockley, and again Sarah attributed this to lack of skills and capacity. However she noted that although the Learning Registry is still relatively immature and remains to be tried and tested, there is still considerable interest in the technology and approaches adopted by the project to solve the problems of educational resource description and discovery.

“If we are to close the gap between the strategic enthusiasm for the potential wins of the Learning Registry, and the small-scale use case and prototype testing phase we are in, we will need a big push backed by a clear understanding that we will be walking into some of the same minefields we’ve trodden in, cyclically, for the past however many decades. And it is by no means clear yet that the will is there, in the community or at the strategic level.”

In order to gauge the appetite for further work in this area, JLeRN have commissioned a short report from David Kay of Sero Consulting to explore the potential affordances of JLeRN and the Learning Registry architecture and conceptual approach, within the broader information environment.

Following Sarah and Nick’s introduction Phil Barker presented an update on the status and future of the Learning Registry initiative in the US, which I’ll leave him to blog about :) The rest of the meeting was taken up with presentations from a range of projects and individuals that had engaged with JLeRN and the Learning Registry. I’m not even going to attempt to summarise the afternoon’s discussions which were lively and wide ranging and covered everything from triple stores to Tin Can API to chocolate coloured mini dresses and back again! You can read about some of these projects on the JLeRN blog here:

It’s worth highlighting a few points though…

Pat Lockley’s Pgogy tools gave a glimpse of the kind of innovative Learning Registry tools that can be built by a creative developer with a commitment to openness. Pat also gave a thought provoking presentation on how the nature of the learning registry offers a greater role for developers that most current repository ecosystems as the scope of the services that can be built is considerably richer. In his own blog post on the meeting Pat suggested:

“Also, perhaps, it is a developer’s repository as it is more “open”, and sharing and openness are now a more explicit part of developer culture than they are with repositories?”

Reflecting on the experience of the Sharing Paradata Across Widget Stores (SPAWS) project Scott Wilson reported that using the LR node had worked well for them. SPAWS had a fairly straightforward remit – build a system for syndicating data between widget stores. In this particular usecase the data in question was relatively simple and standardised. The project team liked that fact that the node was designed for high volume use, though they did foresee longer term issues with up scaling and download size, the APIs were fairly good, and the Activity Streams approach was a good fit for the project. Scott acknowledged that there were other solutions that the project could have adopted but that they would have been more time consuming and costly, after all “What’s not to like about a free archival database?!” Scott also added that the Learning Registry could have potential application to sharing data between software forges.

Another area where the Learning Registry approach is likely to be of particular benefit is the medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine domains where curricula and learning outcomes are clearly mapped. Susanne Hardy and James Outterside from the University of Newcastle presented a comprehensive use case from the RIDLR project which built on the work of the Dynamic Learning Maps and FavOERites projects. Suzanne noted that there is huge appetite in the medical education sector for the idea of JLeRN type services.

Owen Stephens made a valuable contribution to discussions throughout the day by asking particularly insightful and incisive question about what projects had really gained by working with the Learning Registry rather than adopting other approaches such as those employed in the wider information management sector. I’m not sure how effectively we managed to answer Owen’s questions but there was a general feeling that the Learning Registry’s open approach to dealing with messy educational data somehow fitted better with the ethos of the teaching and learning sector.

One issue that surfaced repeatedly throughout the day was the fact that Learning Registry nodes are still rather thin on the ground, although there are several development nodes in existence, of which JLeRN is one, there is still only one single production node maintained by the Learning Registry development team in the US. As a result it has not been possible to test the capabilities and affordance of networked nodes and the potential network scale benefits of the Learning Registry approach remain unproven.

Regardless of these reservations, it was clear from the breadth and depth of the discussions at the meeting that there is indeed a will in some sectors of the HE community to continue exploring the Learning Registry and the technical approaches it has adopted. Personally, while I can see the real benefit of the Learning Registry to the US schools sector, I am unsure how much traction it is likely to gain in the UK F/HE domain at this point in time. Having said that, I think the technical approaches developed by the Learning Registry will have considerable impact on our thinking and approach to the messy problem of learning resource description and management.

For further thinky thoughts on the Learning Registry and the JLeRN experiment, I can highly recommend Amber Thomas blog post: Applying a new approach to an old problem.

ALT Scotland Special Interest Group

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Earlier this week Martin Hawksey and I went along to the first meeting of the new ALT Scotland SIG Steering Group. The meeting was chaired by Prof Linda Creanor of Glasgow Caledonian University and members of CETIS, RSC Scotland (Celeste McLaughlin) and SQA (Joe Wilson) attended, with apologies from Dr Lesley Diack of Robert Gordon University.

ALT Scotland is a national SIG for practitioners and researchers in learning technology based in Scotland and its remit is to provide a forum to –

  • Further the aims of ALT in Scotland.
  • Promote the technology agenda in all sectors of Scottish education.
  • Encourage sharing of expertise, resources, and best practice in learning technology within the context of Scottish education.
  • Influence relevant policy and strategy.
  • Develop constructive relationships with related organisations and committees.

The meeting focused on identifying actions to support these aims and objectives, with policy and strategy advisory being highlighted as a priority area, particularly with regards to furthering the development of policy to support open educational practises and open educational resources in Scotland.

The actions that the ALT Scotland SIG plans to take forward over the next twelve month period include:

The SIG would welcome participation from ALT members across Scotland and the UK. To get involved, and to keep up to date with SIG activities, please sign up for the ALT Scotland SIG mailing list here: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ALT-SCOTLAND

OER Technology Into the Wild – Call for Comments

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The OER technology directions book that Amber, Phil, Martin and I drafted during a book sprint at the end of August is now almost complete. We even have a title!

Technology for Open Educational Resources – Into The Wild. Reflections on three years of the UK OER Programmes

We’ve spent the last few weeks, polishing, editing and amending the text and we would now like to invite colleagues who have an interest in technology and digital infrastructure for open educational resources to review and comment on the open draft.

We’re looking for short commentaries and feedback, either on the whole book, or on individual chapters. These commentaries will form the final chapter of the book. We want to know what rings true and what doesn’t. Have we missed any important technical directions that you think should be included? What do you think the future technical directions are for OER?

Note that the focus of this book is as much on real world current practice as on recommended or best practice. This book is not intended as a beginners guide or a technical manual, instead it is a synthesis of the key technical issues arising from three years of the UK OER Programmes. It is intended for people working with technology to support the creation, management, dissemination and tracking of open educational resources, and particularly those who design digital infrastructure and services at institutional and national level.

The chapters cover:

UK OER projects from all phases of the Programme are encouraged to comment, and we would particularly welcome feedback from colleagues that are grounded in experience of designing and running OER services.

There are three ways to comment on the book:

  1. Email your comments either to Lorna at lmc@strath.ac.uk or Amber at a.thomas@jisc.ac.uk
  2. Create a booki.cc account here, and then add your comments directly to the “Contributed Comments and Feedback” chapter here www.booki.cc/oer-tech/contributed-comments-and-feedback/
  3. Post your comments to you own blog and send a link to Amber or I, or add it to the chapter page above.

Please note your name and affiliation, clearly with a url to your blog or online profile if possible. All feedback and commentaries will be credited to the original authors. The deadline for comments and feedback is the 31st October.

We currently have a designer working on the text and once we have received and collated the commentaries we will publish the book as a free to download ebook under CC BY licence. There will also be an option to purchase a print-on-demand hard copy of the book.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild

If you are interested on commenting or providing feedback, but would like further information, please don’t hesitate to contact Lorna at lmc@strath.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Social Media and the School Sector

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Yesterday I went along to one of the Social Media Week events that are taking place all over Glasgow this week. So while Sheila was on one side of the city presenting at the Education Online “Mini MOOC”
session, I was on the other side listening to Ollie Bray talking about Social Media and New Technology in Education. In this instance the education domain in question was the school sector and, although I have very little experience of this domain, it was interesting hearing about the affordances and challenges offered to schools by social networks and media.

Ollie began by suggesting that the aim of education strategy should be to make young people resilient and agile to change, and that this is of ever greater importance as technology is increasingly driving the pace of change. The way children use and respond to technology, even the language they use, is changing rapidly. Take for example different interpretations of the word “friend”. To most adults a friend is a person they know and trust and interact with in the real world on a personal level, to many young people a friend is a more casual online acquaintance. (Tbh I think the distinctions are much more nuanced than that, but the point that technology is driving language change stands.)

There is a tendency for school to ignore the impact of technology on youth culture and to underestimate the ability of technology and social networks to enhance and facilitate learning. Many schools block social networks, such as twitter, facebook and YouTube and ban children from taking mobile phones into the classroom. Ollie argued that rather than clamping down on pupils’ use of network technology, schools should be making greater use of social media as it is socially and culturally relevant to pupils and to society. He then went on to highlight some innovative examples of the use of technology and social media to enhance children’s learning experiences, through real time collaboration and formative feedback. I particularly liked the kids in the classroom in their pyjamas, skyping pupils in Australia to learn about time zones.

At several points, Ollie came back to the value of social networks for showcasing and disseminate children’s school work which, particularly in secondary schools, tends to remain in the classroom in jotters that no one ever sees. Children can use social media to share their school work with people they care about in their lives, and who may have little chance of connecting with their education.

Unfortunately many education authorities are afraid of opening up social networks within schools and, as a result, are depriving children of rich digital media experiences and learning opportunities. Control needs to be devolved to enable individual head teachers to decide on the level of access that can be allowed within their schools.

As is so often the case, many of the reasons given for not allowing children to engage with network technology, have more to do with social and cultural factors than with the technology itself. Ollie noted that the most common reason given for banning mobile phones in the classroom is that teachers say they do not want pupils taking pictures of them. However this is a problem that relates more to class room management than to technology per se. Similarly, while teachers and parents have legitimate concerns about their children’s safety online, surely the best way to teach pupils to manage their privacy and identity online is to open up social media sites within school and teach them how to mange their privacy settings in a safe and supportive environment.

It struck me that much of what Ollie was talking about was media and digital literacy, although he did not use these terms. While to some extent I can understand the sector’s fear of social media and open networks, I also believe that schools have a responsibility to teach children how to safely interact and engage with the myriad new communication channels and the all pervasive influence of network technology on their lives.

I have very little experience of working in the school sector, however my limited engagement with my daughter’s primary school in Glasgow really did highlight for me just how divorced some schools can be from the potential of social media. I tend not to get involved in PTA activities, but I did attend one school strategy planning meeting earlier this year. The school’s website is sparse to say the least, and those involved in running the site argued that they simply didn’t have the time or resource to be able to update it regularly. I suggested that rather than asking for volunteers to write regular news updates for the school website, why not have a school blog that teachers, parents and children could all contribute to. The guy running the discussion looked at me aghast before asking “But who would control it? The kids could write anything!”

Although I found Ollie’s talk interesting and engaging, and admirably focused on the pedagogic value of technology and social media, I would like to have heard more about practical steps that schools, teachers, parents and pupils could take to start changing the attitudes and policies of education authorities who block access to social media and who regard social networks as a distraction at best and a threat at worst.

I did tweet from the event but unfortunately the presentation had an improbably long hash tag. The organisers did apologise for the hashtag’s impracticality but unfortunately it was only onscreen for seconds and I didn’t have time to catch it. I just used the general #smwgla tag instead.

OER Booksprint Reflections

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Earlier this week Amber Thomas, Phil Barker, Martin Hawksey and I had the interesting and rewarding experience of participating in an OER booksprint. A booksprint is essentially an accelerated facilitated writing retreat, and in this case our facilitator was the endlessly patient and encouraging Adam Hyde of booksprints.net and Sourcefabric’s Booktype team. Adam has previously facilitated booksprints for a diverse range of initiatives including FLOSS Manuals and Google Summer of Code.

The aim of a booksprint is to produce a book from scratch in five intensive days. That may sound challenging enough, however we only had two and a half days to produce our book and, just to add to the challenge, the Scottish Legal system conspired against us to haul Martin off to do his civic duty by citing him for jury service. Luckily Martin didn’t get selected for the jury, which is just as well, as we wouldn’t have been able to complete our book without him.

The task we set for our sprint was to draw together some of the significant technical outputs of the three JISC / HEA Open Educational Resources Programmes, reflect on issues that arose and identify future directions. I think its fair to say that we all approached the task with some trepidation and perhaps even a little scepticism. Could we really write a book in two and a half days? Right from the outset Adam was realistic about what we could reasonably achieve. Given our small team and the shorter then normal timescale, he suggested that a 15,000 work booklet would be an achievable goal. We rather surprised ourselves by exceeding these expectations with a final count of 21,000 words.

We used a combination of high and lo tech to facilitate the writing process, i.e. collaborative authoring software and post-it notes :}

We began with a brain storming session to identify the audience for the book, scope the content, construct the table of contents and discuss individual chapters. Although separate authors were allocated to each individual chapter, the content of each chapter was scoped by the whole group. Phil proved to be particularly adept at managing this process. As Adam explained on his blog:

To structure these (chapters) we are working on a nice big wooden table in the lounge and writing ideas onto post-it notes. Everyone can participate with contributions on what should be in the chapter, and the person taking responsibility for starting the chapter writes these ideas down on post-it notes and orders them according to the structure we created yesterday.

It’s a great process and very good for getting the wide range of knowledge available on a subject into the chapter, and its easy to see how this content can fit together as a readable structure.

Structuring chapters
In order to structure and manage the collaborative writing process we used Booktype’s booki collaborative authoring software which stood up to the task very well.

booki

Booki also includes some interesting analytics tools that allow users to visualise the writing process.

Booki analytics

Once a chapter was completed it was passed on to another member of the group for editing, with the aim that by the end of the sprint each chapter would have been reviewed and edited twice. As we had written considerably more than we originally envisaged we were slightly pushed for time when it came to the editing stage. So we have a considerably longer book than we expected but it still needs a little polishing.

On reflection I think it’s fair to say that we all found the book sprint to be a challenging, but very positive and productive experience. Phil commented that he found it interesting to “flip” our normal process of collaborating. As we all work remotely and tend to only come together and meet face to face when we are scoping and planning a piece of work. We then go back to our respective institutions to get on with our tasks, using tools such as Skype, Google docs, email and twitter to facilitate remote collaboration. This time however we did all the planning and orchestration remotely, and used the face time to do the collaborative work. It was certainly a different, and very productive, way for us to work. In fact Phil went so far as to comment that this was the closest he had ever come to an enjoyable writing experience! Adam also kept a blog of progress and reflections, which you can read here .

The next stage of the process is to tie up some loose ends and then invite other members of the OER community to comment on the text. Hopefully these commentaries will be incorporated into the books as concluding reflections. In the meantime the draft of our book is openly available here, so feel free to read and comment.

NPG adopts Creative Commons licence

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Last month the National Portrait Gallery changed their image licencing policy to allow free downloads for non-commercial and academic purposes.

Writing in Museums Journal today Rebecca Atkinson explained that:

The change means that more than 53,000 low-resolution images are now available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard Creative Commons licence.

Atkinson quotes Tom Morgan, head of rights and reproductions at the NPG saying”

“Obviously this is quite complex – on one hand, if people are making money from a museum’s content then it’s right the museum should share that profit but we also want to support academic and education activity. So we took the opportunity to look at the way in which we could deliver this service and automate it.”

A new automated interface on all the NPG’s collection item pages now leads users to a “Use this image page” with links to request three different licences. Each license is accompanied by clear and concise information on how the image can be used:

Professional licence: can be used in books, films, TV, merchandise, commercial and promotional activities, display and exhibition.

Academic licence: can be used in your research paper, classroom or scholarly publication.

Creative Commons licence: can be used in non-commercial, amateur projects (e.g. blogs, local societies and family history).

In order to apply for a Professional or Academic licence users must register to use the NPG’s lightbox and then apply for the appropriate license. For print works, the academic license covers images for non-commercial publications with a print run of less than 4000, images must also be used inside the publication.

To access the lower resolution Creative Common’s licensed image, users are not required to register, but they must submit a valid e-mail address before they can download the image in the form of zip file. The images themselves do not appear to carry any embedded license information or watermarks, but they are accompanied by the following text file

Please find, attached, a copy of the image, which I am happy to supply to you with permission to use solely according to your licence, detailed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

It is essential that you ensure images are captioned and credited as they are on the Gallery’s own website (search/find each item by NPG number at http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/advanced-search.php).

This has been supplied to you free of charge. I would be grateful if you would please consider making a donation at http://www.npg.org.uk/support/donation/general-donation.php in support of our work and the service we provide.

Now I should probably point out that I have a personal interest in this change of policy as I recently contacted the NPG to request permission to use some of their images in an academic publication. I was delighted when they pointed me to the new automated licence interface and confirmed that the images in question could be used free of charge. What really struck me at the time though was what a valuable resource this could prove to be for open education, as the NPG has effectively released 53,000 free and clearly licensed potential open educational resources into the public domain. The CC license chosen by the gallery may be on the restrictive side, but it certainly demonstrates a growing and very welcome commitment to openness from the cultural heritage sector that could be of direct benefit to education.

Supporting OER Policy in Scotland

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Last week I attended an interesting ALT Scotland meeting, hosted by the Centre for Learning Enhancement and Academic Development at Glasgow Caledonian University which, among other things, focused on the potential role of ALT in shaping OER policy in Scotland.

The discussion was led by Joe Wilson, SQA’s Head of New Ventures, in response to UNESCO’s OER draft declaration consultation. This consultation had previously been the focus of Sir John Daniel’s keynote “Fostering Governmental Support for OER Internationally” at the OER12 / OCWC Conference in Cambridge earlier this year. At the time the UK government had not responded to the UNESCO consultation, which appears to have been sent only to Westminster*. This prompted Joe to suggest that it might be useful to seek a response from the Scottish Government, with ALT potentially being an appropriate body to support this cause and to assemble Scotland wide responses on international initiatives in the area.

There certainly seemed to be considerable appetite among those present at last week’s well attended meeting to help articulate Scottish policy in the area of openness in general and open educational resources in particular.

Several participants noted that as a relatively small community, there is already a strong ethos and culture of sharing across the Scottish educational sectors, which could be harnessed for the greater good. However, although there may be enthusiasm at the grass roots level, there was also agreement that there is little awareness of the open agenda at the institutional level.

Furthermore, in terms of policy, it was suggested that there is some disparity between the UK and Scottish governments in terms of commitment to open strategy, open education and open educational resources.

David Beards of the Scottish Funding Council pointed out that the Scottish Government are already committed to promoting openness through the 2004 Scottish Declaration on Open Access which states:

“We believe that the interests of Scotland will be best served by the rapid adoption of open access to scientific and research literature.”

While this is unquestionably an admirable goal, the declaration does focus squarely on open access to scholarly research outputs. There is no mention of opening access to educational resources, or indeed to research and other data, and I can not help but be reminded of the late Rachel Heery’s astute observation to the final meeting of JISC Repositories and Preservation Advisory Group that teaching and learning resources have not been served well by scholarly works Open Access agenda as their workflows are very different.

In order to raise awareness of the open agenda at the policy level it was suggested that ALT Scotland should take positive steps to bring together institutions and non departmental public bodies to work together to ensure that open educational resources feature in Scotland’s national ICT strategy. As a first step towards this goal, the group agreed to formally establish ALT Scotland as an ALT Special Interest Group. If you’re interested in participating in these developments, or just keeping up to date, you can joint the ALT Scotland mailing list here alt-scotland@jiscmail.ac.uk.

One last thing, in an admirable example of practising what they preach, ALT have opened access to their journal Research in Learning Technology. The journal aims to:

Raise the profile of research in learning technology, encouraging research that informs good practice and contributes to the development of policy.

All journal content is freely available here: www.researchinlearningtechnology.net

* David Kernohan of JISC has helpfully pointed out that the UK government has now formally responded to the UNESCO consultation. Thanks David!