Amplification and online identity (or wot I do and wot it looks like)

Posted on by

I don’t know if it’s just me, but do you ever dread answering the question, “so what is it you do?” To those who don’t work in education, or in a technology related field, it can take quite a while for me to explain just exactly what it is that I do. Often, I just opt for the slightly tongue in cheek “I type and go to meetings” option. However, over the last year I have found myself increasingly using the term “amplify” when describing what I do. Over the past two years blogging and twittering have become an integral part of my working life. Without actually realising it, the ins and outs of my working life have become increasingly amplified, visible and searchable through technology.

This week I’ve been reading (via a link from twitter of course) “The Future of Work Perspectives” report. This report starts with a section on the amplified individual worker of the future and outlines their four main characteristics which I (and I suspect many of my colleagues/peers) found myself identifying with.
*Social: “They use tagging software, wikis, social networks and other human intelliegence aggregators to understand what their individual contributions means in the context of the organization.” (which made me think of Adam’s presentation at the CETIS conference last year where he used our collective blog posts to illustrate connections across all the organizations areas of interest).
*Collective: “taking advantage of online collaboration software, mobile communications tools, and immersive virtual environments . . ..” (which made me reflect on how a 3G dongle has made me a true road warrior).
*Improvisational: “capable of banding together to form effective networks and infrastructures” (what would we do without “dear lazyweb” and the almost instant answers we can get from the twitterati?).
*Augmented: “they employ visualization tools, attention filters, e-displays and ambient presence systems to enhance their cognitive abilities and coordination skills, thus enabling them to quickly access and process massive amounts of information.” (I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I can see that coming too and the presentation from Adam mentioned above was I think the first time I really saw a coherent visualization of the collective intelligence of CETIS being represented through the collation of individual contributions).

The report is worth a read if a bit scary in parts. I’m not sure if I really want my laptop to be recording my biometric data and telling me to go home if I’m coughing too much. However three years ago if anyone told me I would be regularly broadcasting 140 character messages throughout the day I would have told them just where to stick their Orwellian Big Brother ideas.

I’m actually very comfortable with being an “amplifier” it has been a natural progression for me. However I have started to think more about the “amplified” student and how/if/can/should we translate these traits into students and lecturers. It has been relatively easy for me to integrate social networking into my working life. I’m pretty much desk bound – even when I’m travelling as long as I have my laptop + dongle and/or mobile phone I am pretty much always online. I don’t have teach x hours a week, and write research papers to secure my position. Using and being part of online social networks is easy and crucially, imho, relevant and useful to me. My direct professional peer network are in the same position. We’re all pretty much research as opposed to teaching focused.

Although I can see how the traits of an amplified individual equate with the kind of students we’d ideally like, I think we still have a way to go to persuade students and teachers alike of the real benefits of social networking in an educational context. There needs to be a fundamental change the recognition system for staff and assessment process for students to recognise/integrate these types of activities. I know there are many pockets of innovative work going on which are starting to address these issues and hopefully these will become more and more commonplace. It’s also up to us, the amplifiers, to continue to reach out and show how useful and relevant the use collaborative technologies can be in an educational context.

We also need to highlight the need to maintain and protect online identities as we gain more and more presence and professional recognition of them. As I’ve been musing around this post and thinking of ways of visualizing (or agumenting) some of this I came across the Personas project at MIT which analyzes your personal profile and creates a ‘DNA’ of your online character. Of course I had to have a go. I’d also just read about a new free web-based screencasting tool, screenr that links directly to twitter. So in the interests of killing two birds with one stone I signed up for screenr using my twitter username and password and recorded my online DNA being built. Halfway through I realised that I had just glibly given my twitter ID to an unknown third party without actually knowing if it was secure. Scott Wilson’s voice was in my head saying “remember oAuth, never sign in anywhere without it” or words to that effect.

My online identity is now more than ever, key to my professional identity. I should be more careful when I sign up for new toys, or should I say amplification opportunities and I should be reminding others too.

Just in case you’re curious about my online DNA here’s a picture or you can watch the screencast of it being created.

picture of Sheila MacNeill's online DNA

picture of Sheila MacNeill's online DNA

Widget meetup, London 13 October

Posted on by

Just to give some notice to a widget meetup we’re organising in conjunction with the JISC repositories team in London on 13 October. It will be a one day meetup for people who are interested in creating Widgets, sharing ideas about Widgets, and turning applications into Widget containers.

Scott Wilson (CETIS) will be there to talk about the Apache Wookie (Incubating) widget engine and progress on the W3C’s Widgets specifications, and to help anyone looking at integrating Wookie with other applications. Wilbert Kraan (CETIS) will also be demonstrating integration of Wookie with Google Wave.

The event will be fairly informal with lots of opportunities to share code and experiences; there will also be the opportunity to demo work in progress. If you have any suggestions for a short presentation please let me know.

The event is free to attend, and more information including a link to register is available on the CETIS wiki

OER Road trip

Posted on by

I’ve just returned from a fascinating fact-finding mission to the US on OER and online/distance learning. Spending time with colleagues from MIT, CMU, NSF and University of Maryland University College gave us an invaluable opportunity to gain insights into their experiences, attitudes and business/educational models for distance/online learning and their experiences of being involved with the OER movement. I travelled with David Kernonhan (programme manager for the current JISC OER programme) and we joined Malcolm Read ( Chief Executive of JISC) later in the week. I’m not sure if it was just a happy co-incidence, but during the week the Obama administration also announced a $50 million programme to create open resources for community colleges.

One of our first meetings was with Candace Thille of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Candace has been instrumental in setting up and managing their Open Learning Initiative (OLI). This programme has been running since 2002 and as with many other open initiatives received funding from the Hewlett Foundation. The main premise for the programme is to create new learning environments for individual/self study purposes. The overarching goal is to facilitate a “change of knowledge state” of the individual so measurable, student centred outcomes have been a key part of the design and development of the materials.

When developing the materials a rigorous design process is adhered too. Broadly speaking this encompasses a literature review the subject area, identification of available materials, and then research in the given subject area of both the expert and student views. This allows the design team (who include teachers/subject experts) to build a “big picture” view and identify the gaps between the expert view and the actual student experience. The results are then used as the basis to create materials which concentrate on the key areas of misunderstanding and provide self-paced study activities. Although originally seen as an open self study resource, the courses are increasingly being used by on-campus students and tutors alike . As students work through material feedback is automatically generated and so tutors are able to structure their f2f teaching time to better accommodate the actual learning needs of the whole class. The data is also used to refine/develop the courses as part of an iterative design process.

The “learning environments” are openly available on the web, but are not strictly speaking OERs, as you can’t download them and re-use/re-mix. The key to this programme is gathering feedback and using that to refine the materials. However they are exploring some models to allow some customisation of the materials which include a small fee to become part of their “academic community” and providing fee based assessments. Candace is also a partner with the OU here in the UK of the OLNet project which is looking at the issues surrounding community take up and use of OERs. Extending the design of the environments to include collaborative learning opportunities is also part of their development plans.

Our next meeting was with Steve Carson (External Relations Officer of the MIT OWC project and Mary Lou Forward new CEO of the OCWC. MIT is probably the most famous single OER project. However it was interesting to discover a bit more of the history of the project. MIT had been investigating the possibilities of distance learning. However after extensive investigations came to the conclusion that their wasn’t a viable business model for the MIT experience as an online experience. However the institution had publicly committed to having some kind of online experience and so the concept of allowing their materials to be openly available gained ground as a way of meeting that commitment and also resonated with the more public spirited philanthropic ethos of the institution.

Like all OER projects (and I know this is a key concern for the current JISC funded project) copyright and IPR was something that needed to be addressed at the outset. It was decided that the best model for MIT to adopt was that faculty owned their content, but they would licence it to the OCW project who could then make it open. Initially faculty members were paid a small fee to engage with the project and licence their materials to the project, but as it has grown this payment is no longer necessary.

Currency of materials is an ongoing issue, and at the moment the review period for a course is seven years – however depending on subject area this is flexible. The general ethos now is that the materials give a “snap shot” view of the course. The development team try to make the process of putting teaching materials online as easy as possible for faculty and the average minimum time spent by a faculty member is around 5 hours. Of course this is mainly to produce print based materials.

There have been a number of unexpected benefits to the institution including reported improvements in teaching and learning from on-campus staff and students; increased lifelong connections between students and the institution ( the class of 2008 donated around $50,00 to the project ) and the one I found most interesting – particularly given the standing of MIT as a research institituion – is the fact that faculty members involved in OCW have reported reputational benefits from releasing their teaching materials. The team are currently involved in evaluating the programme and hope to produce an extensive evaluation report later this year.

In terms of sustainability the programme is looking at various models. In costs c.$3.3 million a year to run and will soon have to become self sustaining. Substantial cost reductions have been made through savings in technology use such as outsourcing hosting services e.g. video on youtube which can them be embedded back into the site. The model the team described as being most close to their ideal would be one similar to the public broadcasting service in the US. That is a model which would allow for major gifts, some corporate sponsorship and some advertising/underwriting etc.

The OCW infrastructure is now been seen as having considerable leverage within the institution. Nearly every grant proposal has an OCW element built into it so that material can be released. Various outreach projects such as “Highlights for High School” are based on the basic material but customised for a specific target audience. The Board is also looking at ways of generating income from additional elements to the materials such as assessment and more interactive services. However no decisions have been made and their is a commitment to making sure that any such services would be consistent with the open ethos.

In contrast to these open initiative, our final visit was to University of Maryland University College where we met Nic Allen (Provost Emeritus) and Mark Parker (Assistant Provost, Academic Affairs). The student profile of UMUC is radically different to both MIT and CMU with many of it students being part-time and also from under-represented communities. Although a part of the public university system of Maryland, UMUC receives only just over 6% of its budget from public funding. So, it is very business orientated and relies on fees to generate revenue. A “lean and mean” philosophy which has at its core leveraging technology use has proved successful. Although currently the institution is not involved in developing OERs, it does see the open movement – including open accesss journals, as having a role to play in future developments. UMUC has an extensive portfolio of online courses from high school to doctoral level and has c.100,000 students worldwide. Since its inception UMUC has also been the provider of overseas education to the US forces and families. This traditionally has involved f2f teaching however this model – particularly with regards to provision to service personnel- is changing more and more to online delivery.

UMUC has developed a “students come first” culture in respect to all aspects development and running of courses. 24/7 being support is available for all aspects of online provision – from technical, library and tutor. Since 1992, the institution has developed and used its own LMS – Tycho (the current version being webTycho). In part this decision was made as at the time there was no off the shelf product that met their requirements and also they are in control of its development. Although not an open-source product, its currently development cycle can utilise web 2 technologies and use web-services to integrate with the usual suspects of facebook, youtube etc. There was also interest in the widget development work that Scott Wilson has been spearheading. All staff undergo a 5 week training course which a focus on pedagogy before teaching “live”. There is also a network of faculty communities of practice to support staff in developing their online teaching habits.

Mike explained that a key factor to their success has been that their model of online provision has been an integral part of the institutions’ course provision and has had to be self sustaining from the outset. It has never been seen a separate division, and so faculty buy-in has been there from day one. In terms of service provision some of the lower level technical support has now been contracted out to private companies but key services will always be provided by in-house staff.

So a wide range of projects and models however there were a number of key similarities that struck me including:

Seed funding: For OER in particular, seed funding from large foundations such as Hewlett has, and continues to be key for starting initiatives. JISC is now playing a similar role in the UK and hopefully current economic circumstances aside, will be able to continue to support an ethos of openness.

Production processes: Although CMU, MIT and UMUC have very different business models they do all have a basic production process. In the main this is quite similar to a print based editorial/publishing system. However, even more importantly they all have a dedicated team of staff to “put stuff online” – it’s not just left to academics. It will be interesting to see if similar teams are developed/utilised in the JISC OER pilot projects or if viable alternatives emerge.

Evaluation:Evaluation of OER is very complex and even MIT find it hard to track who/where and how their resources are being used. Unless you take a very diagnostic approach from the outset as OLI have, it is difficult to get accurate information on how your resources are being used. This is where perhaps community based projects such as OLNet can help the community come to some consensus about best practice around use of OER and help develop common evaluation strategies. In some ways the JISC one year pilot programme is almost too short to evaluate within its lifecyle, however the fact that projects have been asked to look at tracking their resources should in itself provide some useful data.

Enhancement: it may seem a bit of a “no brainer” to some of us who have been involved in online learning for a while, but the simple act of getting materials ready to put online does provide a valuable opportunity for reflection and refinement for teaching staff and so help to improve and refine the teaching and learning process. Both MIT and CMU did not realise just how much use their on-campus students would make of their open materials and the subsequent impact they would have on on-campus based teaching. As I mentioned earlier, MIT OCW now has anecdotal evidence that faculty can have unexpected increased reputational standing by being involved in the OER movement.

Sustainability: Although seed funding is key to getting things started, it can’t be relied on forever. Hewlett have already announced that they will stop funding OER projects in the near future and so sustainability needs to be considered from the outset. Perhaps a case of “an OER isn’t just for a JISC project but for life . . .” mentality is needed to be developed. Of course, JISC too should be extending the open ethos by ensuring that all outputs of its funded projects are openly available through creative commons licencing. Certainly from the experience of a successful online learning institution such as UMUC, making any online provision part of a central process and/or central to core business models and not a peripheral unit/practice would seem to be essential. Again it will be interesting to see what sustainability models/issues emerge from all three strands of the JISC pilot programme.

Design Bash 09

Posted on by

Summer is the time for festivals, and at the OU in Milton Keynes this week there was a bit of learning design festival spanning the first three days of the week. In conjunction with the LAMS European Conference on Tuesday there were a couple of fringe events. On Monday there was a pedagogical planner summit and on Wednesday a Design Bash which we (CETIS) hosted in conjunction with LAMS. After two days of fairly high level discussion and presentations, the design bash was a much more of a hands on affair giving people the chance to create and and share their designs and systems.

The design bash builds on the tradition of the CETIS codebashes and we held our first design bash as part of the JISC Design for Learning programme. This time around we had a much more open event with a much larger range of design tools – from pedagogic planners such as Phoebe, through authoring tools such as LAMS, ReCourse and Graphical Learning Modeller to sharing sites such as Cloudworks.

The day was fairly free form but we had identified 3 main areas of activity which we used initially to break into three groups:.
*System interoperability – looking at how the import and export of designs between systems can be facilitated.
*Sharing of designs – ascertaining the most effective way to export and share designs between systems.
*Describing designs – discovering the most useful representations of designs or patterns and whether they can be translated into runnable versions.

One of the main topics for discussion from the sharing group was centered around was the development of simple previewing tools so that users could easily view for example a LAMS sequence without having to log into the the LAMS environment. There was definite interest in developing easily embeddable preview widgets.

The authoring interoperability group were able to recreate a design originally developed for LAMS in the Graphical Learning Modeller (GLM) tool the export that design into the ReCourse authoring tool and preview the design. There were a few wee glitches (mainly around the resource folder export) and these are documented in the cloudworks site. We also had a live demo of creating a LAMS sequence from a high level design pattern stored in the Design Principles Database (DPB). The sequence was then added to the LAMS community site. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to recreate/import/export this design into the other systems, but both Susanne (GLM) and Dai (Recourse) have committed to do that. So we did actually manage to get a bit of daisy-chaining of designs in and out of systems. If we had had more time I’m sure we would have had more examples of this.

There was also a lot of discussion about the integration of widgets and web services in general into various design systems. Recourse and LAMS can both now integrate the wookie widget server. The Compedium LD team from the OU had some very interesting discussions about the possibilities of using widgets to extend the collaborative capabilities of their design visualisations through for example the integration of a chat widget.

Central to the day was the use of the Cloudworks site being developed by the OU LDI team. At this point I would like to give a special mention to Juliette Cluver who had just rebuilt the system and launched it on Tuesday – it worked at treat! The cloudscape for the day has links to all the sytems, designs, twitter messages and photos from the day. A great record of the day something we hope that can be maintained and extended. So, if you are interested in finding out more or adding a design/system the please go and have a look at the cloudscape for the day and add your contributions.

The changing nature of technology innovation

Posted on by

I’ve just watched Clay Shirky’s recent talk on ted.com on “how twitter can change history“. Although the content of the talk is very topical there are added nuances this week in particular with the explosion of community driven social media interactions around the Iranian election.

One of the key premises of the presentation it that the nature of technological innovation is changing; primarily due to the most participatory and social nature of collaborative web 2.0 technologies. He goes so far as to say technologies “don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring”. And once they become socially interesting the impact they have can be profound. (Clay references China in the talk but there are obvious parallels with the current situation in Iran). The real power is at not the “shiny” developer end but at the point where technologies become ubiquitous and can be harnessed by communities in ways not realised by developers.

This really got me thinking about the nature of an innovation centre such as CETIS. Traditionally we have been right at the “shiny edge” of things; playing with all the new things then leaving them behind once they become close to mainstream and moving on the the next glittering thing on the horizon. But are we missing a trick? Maybe we should be sticking around a bit longer with certain technologies to see how and if ubiquity fosters innovation in education.

In some ways I think we are starting to be more engaged at the socially innovative end of things. Undoubtedly for those of us who twitter it has provided us with an added communication dimension both with our direct work colleagues and our wider community. I’ve been on it for about 2 years now and still can’t see anything at the moment that is going to replace it.

In our outward facing service role, activities such as the widget working group are allowing us to be more engaged with teaching practitioners. From the outset we realised that there would be two distinct phases of this work, beginning with the technical infrastructure and then moving on to the user creation and use stage. I really hope that we can continue in this vein and that our own use of social technology can help us become more a part of the everyday experience for educators and not just the geek ship on the horizon.

ICOPER Widget workshop

Posted on by

Earlier this week Scott Wilson and I attended an ICOPER widget workshop in Vienna. We were invited to the workshop to give an overview of the CETIS widget workgroup and in particular the work Scott has been doing on the Wookie widget server.

The purpose of the workshop was to clarify the concept of widgets in the ICOPER context, particularly how to link widgets to competencies. One of the main drivers of the project is to build best practice around the use of digital technologies, so it was useful for the project partners to have an opportunity to discuss just what their expectations/understandings of widgets are before deciding on a collective way forward.

The morning was taken up by a number of presentations giving an overview of some developments in this area and some potential areas for development. Scott started the day and emphasized the need for interoperability for widgets so that they can be deployed across multiple platforms and aren’t subject to vendor lock-in. This is one of the reasons the CETIS working group has initially focused on infrastructure issues as previously reported. The work he has been doing for the Ten Competence project has been focussing on utilizing widget technology to add extra capability (for both teachers and learners) quickly without having to modify an institutional VLE.

As the day progressed it become increasingly clear that interoperability is key for the successful development and use of widgets in an educational context. A number of presentations illustrated use of page aggregators such as netvibes. In one way these are great ways to quickly and easily start building personal spaces (or personal learning environments – but I use that term with caution). However the business model of any of these services could change overnight and how would that affect use – particularly in an educational context? Would you pay for your netvibes page? More importantly how/where would you recreate that page – could you export your “widgets” elsewhere? I’ve already been burnt by this kind of changing business model my love affair with the Sprout Builder widget application came to an abrupt end when they monetized their business model. I really liked their widget building wizard, but for my needs, it just isn’t really viable to pay their monthly subscription. Maybe one thing the ICOPER community could look at would be building a free, open-source widget editor.

One of the key things about widgets that seems to have a general agreement, is that they are small applications that generally do one thing, but do that one thing very well. I was slightly concerned when discussions came around to developing an e-portfolio widget. However I think what was actually being proposed was exploring how/if widget technology could provide different views into a portfolio, which actually might be useful. You may only want to show/share a small part of your portfolio any one set of users. I was more taken with the work being done by the OUNL with open content where they are developing widgets to aid reflective learning. They described there work as developing “learning dashboards” where information such as how long you had spent on a course compared with the average user study time is available. This information is easily available in most VLEs but very rarely shared with students – only a tutor should be able to monitor student progress :-) But this is exactly the kind of information that can help to build relationships and ownership between a learner and content. Obviously this kind of relationship can be even more critical to developing successful learning strategies when using open content without any direct supervision.

Overall I found the day very thought provoking. I was glad to see that a consensus did seem to be emerging that widgets are not some kind of new answer to the age old problem of how we can provide more effective learning opportunities/environments but that they can help with teaching and learning if used appropriately; and if we can all work towards greater interoperability of the basic technology. In this way we can start to provide ways for teachers and learners to access a pic’n’mix of additional, discrete functionality to whichever learning environment they are using be that VLE, webpage, mobile phone etc.

OCWC Global 2009

Posted on by

Swine flu wasn’t the only thing happening last week in Mexcio. Along with about 150 others, I attended the OCWC (Open Course Ware Consortium) Global conference in Monterrey (OCWCglobal2009).

I travelled there as part of the OLNet project (many thanks to Patrick McAndrew and colleagues for providing the opportunity) and during the conference help to set up and use the OU’s Cloudworks system to help amplify and share conference sessions and discussions. This was my first time attending an OCWC event, and I have to say that overall I found it a really interesting, diverse and open conference with a truly global range of participants.

During the opening session, the Board shared their vision for the three main aims of the consortium, namely to:

*increase number of members and diversity of high quality courses
*enhance value of OCW courses to all types of users
*build and nurture a vibrant, culturally diverse OCW community that is connected to the OER movement

The consortium has been supported since its inception by the Hewlett Foundation and the Board were able to confirm continued funding from the foundation for the next three years which will allow the board time to fully develop its overall strategic plan and post foundation funding business model. Currently the consortium has 194 members who have contributed approximately 8557 published open courses (the numbers are increasing almost daily). During the week there was discussion about membership, subscription rates etc. It looks likely that a nominal membership fee will be introduced (c 500 dollars per institution) as well as the development of structures for affiliate membership. A UK affiliation is something that may well have some traction and is something that CETIS and the OU UK will be discussing further.

Over the course of the week a number of common areas appeared during most of the sessions I attended including: search and discovery of open course ware, use of RSS and what metadata and content to include in feeds, and of course copyright and licencing. Another underlying theme was granularity of content. The OCWC mainly deals with complete courses, however it was acknowledged that many people don’t really want to search or use a whole course rather just parts of it. So how can they easily find the piece of content that they really want? What is the best format to offer content in? The OpenLearn project is one which is leading the way technically here by offering content in multiple formats including print, RSS, moodle packages, IMC CP and CC. There was considerable interest in the content transcoder project CETIS and KI have been working on.

So a raft of common issues for the just starting JISC OER programme and hopefully as the programme develops we will be able to share our experiences with this wider community.

Another view of my conference “story” is available here.

Ada Lovelace day

Posted on by

A while ago I pledged to write a blog post for Ada Lovelace day. The whole point of the day is to celebrate the role of women in technology. I was quite surprised by the reaction of some of my colleagues to the idea. Some people seemed to think it was patronizing – but I really do think that this is a great idea as we do still need to take every opportunity to celebrate female role models, particularly in technology there is still a male bias. I was listening to the Guardian’s tech weekly podcast the other week, and Suw Charman-Anderson (organiser of the day) was talking about the what her motivations were for organising the day. I think she summed it all up by saying “women don’t pimp their sh*t ” in the same way as men. So I’m going to indulge in a bit of pimping now.

I am very fortunate as I get to work with some really talented, inspirational people (women and men) everyday. I do really believe that the small JISC world I inhabit is a great model for equality. However, there are still more male developers than female and I’d really love to see a few more proper geek girls. So today, instead of just choosing one person to write about I’d just like to take a few minutes to celebrate all the great women I work with, read about and admire in the field of educational technology – too many to mention but you all know who you are – the extended sisters of CETIS. To all of us who have been the only, or one of the few females in meetings (particularly at standard bodies meetings), let’s keep going and hope that more females come onboard. Of course I do have to make one exception and say a big thank you to Lorna Campbell for being a mentor, role model and all round great gal pal :-)

Let’s celebrate today and hope that celebrating the lives and work of women like Ada Lovelace will help inspire us all (women and men) and the next generation too.

SCORM 2.0 and beyond LETSI seminar

Posted on by

Last Wednesday along with 190 others I joined the “SCORM 2.0 and Beyond” webinar hosted by LETSI. This was the first in a series of community events LETSI are hoping to organise to promote its activities.

Charles Allan started the session with an overview of developments with SCORM and the relationship between LETSI and the ADL. Orginally it was envisaged that ADL would hand over governance/stewardship of SCORM to “the community” i.e. LETSI. However, there have been some developments and the current state of play is that ADL are continuing to steward SCORM and may (or may not) release new versions. LETSI is working on developing SCORM 2.0 which is not as close to the existing SCORM specification as originally thought. So in effect they are starting with a blank sheet and are looking at wider context of data interoperability than the original SCORM model which was primarily content driven. SCORM 2.0 developments will be focused on the different types of data which need to be shared including: learning activities; resources, people, competency frameworks there was also a nod to webservices and mashups.

Charles explained that LETSI is not a standards development body or a trade association. It sees itself rooted within the implementation community. LETSI will work with existing bodies to help shorten adoption lifecycles through filling a gap in the current standards community. Specifically by helping to build communities and developing agile software development processes which should speed up consistency of implementation approaches. LETSI will not build a spec if there is an existing one which is fit for purpose and they are currently reviewing a number of standards as part of the SCORM 2.0 scoping work. LETSI hopes to enable a move towards a more agile, iterative standards development process.

Four technical working groups have been formed (more info on the LETSI website) and they hope to produce a technical roadmap later this year. Over the coming months there will be a series of webinars on candiate technologies, continued development of potential software architecture solutions as well as continuing liasion with formal standards bodies. Future developments will include investigation of orchestration of content/activities and compentency frameworks amongst others and they are actively looking for working group participation. The working groups are open to anyone to join, however to have voting rights you need to pay a (nominal, I think $100 was mentioned) membership fee.

It will be interesting to see how developments progress this year and if an organisation like LETSI can actually effectively work with existing standards agencies and speed up the specification development and release process. I hope they don’t get bogged down in the same bureaucratic processes which have made the formal standards process so drawn out.

EC SIG OER Meeting 27 February

Posted on by

Last Friday the EC SIG met at the OU, Milton Keynes for a really interesting day of presentations and discussion around OER. The meeting was in part timed to to coincide with the JISC OER call and to give an overview of some current developments in OER from a range of perspectives from the institutional to the individual.

Andy Lane and Patrick McAndrew started the day with an overview of institutional impact of the OpenLearn project. One of the key institutional barriers was (unsurprisingly) trying get over the assumption that providing open content wasn’t “giving away the family silver” and the fear of not being able to control what others might do with your content. OpenLearn has fundamentally been about de-bunking these perceptions and illustrating how making content open can actually bring about a range of benefits to the institution. The ethos of the OpenLearn project has been to enhance the student experience and the student, not the institution has central to all developments. In terms of institutional benefit, perhaps the most significant one is that there is now a clear trail showing that a significant number of openlearn students do actually go on to register for a fee paying course.

Sarah Darnley, from the University of Derby gave an overview of the POCKET project which is using OpenLearn materials and repurposing/repackaging then for their institutional VLE. They are also creating new materials and putting them into openlearn. Russell Stannard, University of Westminster rounded off the morning’s presentations with his fascinating presentation of his multimedia training videos. To quote Patrick McAndrew Russell is a bit of a ‘teacherpreneur’. During teaching of his multimedia course Russell saw that it would easier for him to create short training videos of various software packages which students could access at anytime thus freeing up actual class time. Russell explained how the fact that his site was high in google rankings has led a huge number of visits and again increased interest in the MSc he teaches on. Although not conceived as an OER project, this is a great example of how just “putting stuff out-there” can increase motivation/resources for existing students and bring in more. However I do wonder as Russell starts producing more teaching resources to go with his videos and his institution get more involved how open he will be able to keep things.

The afternoon session started with Liam Earney of the CASPER project sharing the experiences of the RePRODUCE programme. CASPER has recently surveyed to projects to find out their experiences dealing with copyright and IPR issues when repurposing material. A key finding is that the within the HE sector there is generally an absence of rights statements and only 14% of the projects found it easy to clear copyright. Ambiguity abounds within institutions about who/where/what and how of content can be reused. Of course this is a key area for the the upcoming JISC OER call.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in discussion around the call. Four of the programme managers involved were at the meeting and we able to answer questions relating to it. It is important to note the the JISC call is a pilot and is not a means to an end. It will not, and is not trying to solve all the issues around OER, however what it will do is allow the community to continue to explore and move forward with the various technical and IPR/copyright issues in the context of previous experience.

Copies of the presentations from the day are available from the CETIS wiki, and also a great summary of the day is available via Cloudworks ( a big thanks to Patrick McAndrew for pulling this together).