Category Archives: cetis-systems

UKOER 2: Collections, technology, and community

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What technology is being used to aggregate open educational resources? What role can the subject community play in resources discovery? This is a post in the UKOER 2 technical synthesis series.

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

In the UKOER 2 programme Strand C funded “Projects identifying, collecting and promoting collections of OER and other material around a common theme” with the aim “…to investigate how thematic and subject area presentation of OER material can make resources more discoverable by those working in these areas” (UKOER 2 call document). The projects had to create what were termed static and dynamic collections of OER. The intent of the static collection was that it could in some way act as an identity, focus, or seed for the dynamic collection. Six projects were funded: CSAP OER, Oerbital, DelOREs, Triton, EALCFO, Open Fieldwork and a range of approaches and technologies was taken to making both static and dynamic collections. The projects are all worth reading about in more detail – however, in this context there are two possible general patterns worth considering.


Technology

Overview of technical choices in UKOER 2 Strand C

Overview of technical choices in UKOER 2 Strand C

The above graph shows the range of technology used in the Strand. Although a lot could (and should) be said about each project individually when their choices are viewed in aggregate the following technologies are seeing the widest use.

Graph of technologies and standards in us by 50% or more of Strand C projects

Graph of technologies and standards in us by 50% or more of Strand C projects

Although aspects of the call might have shaped the projects’ technical choices to some extent, a few things stand out:

  • the focus on RSS/Atom feeds and tools to manipulate them
    • reflection: this matches the approach taken by many of the other  aggregators and discovery services  for OER and other learning materials as well as the built in capabilities of a number of the platforms in use [nb "syndicated via RSS/Atom" was a programme requirement]
  • a relative lack of a use of OAI-PMH
    • reflection: is this indicative of how many content providers and aggregators in the learning material’s consume or output OAI-PMH?
  • substantial use or investigation of wordpress and custom databases (with php frontends)
    • reflection: are repositories irrelevant here because they don’t offer easy ways to add plugins or aggregate others’ content (or are there other factors which make WordPress and a custom database more appealing)

Community

One of the critical issues for all of these projects in the creation of these collections has been the role of community; for some of the strand projects the subject community played a crucial role in developing the static collection which then fed, framed, or seeded the dynamic collection, for other projects the subject community formed the basis of contributing resources to the dynamic collection.

Although the projects had to be “closely aligned with relevant subject or thematic networks – for example Academy Subject Centres, professional bodies and national subject associations” , I find it striking that many of the projects made those defined communities an integral part of their discovery process and not just an audience or defining domain.

Reflections on community

I’m hoping someone else is able to explore the role of community in discovery services more fully (if not I’ll try to come back to this)  but I’ve been struck by the model used by some projects in which a community platform is the hook leading to resource discovery. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum to Google – to support discovery you create a place and content accessible and relevant to a specific subject domain. The place you create both hosts new content created by a specific community and serves as a starting point to point to further resources elsewhere (whether those pointers are links, learning pathways, or tweaked plugin searches run on aggregators or repositories). This pattern mirrors any number of thriving community sites (typically?) outside of academia that happily coexist in Google’s world providing specialist sources of information and community portals  (for example about knitting, cooking, boardgames).

What it doesn’t mirror is trying to entice academics to use a repository… [I like repositories and think they're very useful for some things , but this and the examples of layering CMSs on top of repositories, increasingly makes me think that on their own they aren't a great point of engagement for anybody...]

The ICT Dilemma facing Senior Management in FE

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Earlier this week I was invited into a Further Education College to participate in a Technology Strategy working Group. I’m really very pleased to be invited to these kinds of discussions as I see them as crucial in informing both my work for JISC CETIS and the IEC Department in Bolton. Perhaps on the down side it is a often a (much needed) harsh reality check on the challenges faced by institutions in applying technologies and technology policy across their enterprise, not just in the teaching and Learning domain.

I have previously “blogged” about, what I see as, often poorly informed and quite “Draconian” policies regarding internet usage within FE colleges including, for example the wholesale blocking of students’ internet access to social networking sites. It’s easy and too simplistic to suggest that this is resolved solely by increased knowledge amongst administrators, education, or by a more sophisticated understanding of ICT by those responsible for policy. There are major issues at the policy level, which Colleges are obliged to deal with.

There is some discussion as to what level of technical understanding should senior Management in institutions have. Lawrie Phipps, JISC programme Manager “blogged” about this very subject earlier this week. And he raises some important issues and questions.

What has prompted my current thinking on this situation are recent guidelines produced by Ofsted in structuring grades for College Assessment within the Leadership and Management effectiveness. Two of the criteria “Safeguarding” and “Equality and Diversity” are what are termed as Limiting grades; which in effect means should a college receive an “ineffective” grade on one of these criteria it is unlikely that overall effectiveness of the college would be assessed as anything but “inadequate” which in turn triggers a series of requirements of the college.

Whilst these two criteria are clearly extremely important the emphasis of college’s maybe, understandably, concentrated on these criteria. Quality of provision, which falls within the teaching, learning, and Assessment criteria, could be compromised. Whilst Ofsted recognizes the need to equip students with the skills necessary to navigate the digital space safely; the balance is precarious.

Clearly any college that blocks access to all sensitive sites and social networking sites is “effective” with its safeguarding policy but would, in my view, be quite inadequate with its teaching, Learning and assessment provision. The former however carries much greater weight.

I’m sure there is good practice in dealing with this in the FE sector but it does present a real challenge to senior Management

Report from the XCRI Mini Projects Start Up Meeting, 30 March 2007

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Here is the XCRI meeting delegate list (word doc).

Introductory Presentations

Vashti Zarach, XCRI Support Project: Introduction to the day (ppt)

Sarah Davis, JISC Programme Manager: Project Deliverables (ppt)

Short Presentations from the 6 Mini Projects

Chris Frost & John Hughes, University of Bolton: BoXCRIP (ppt)

Mark Stubbs, Manchester Metropolitan University: XCRI@MMU (ppt)

There is more info about XCRI@MMU at the JISC XCRI@MMU web page.

Trish Judson, MOVE: MOVE-XCRI (ppt)

Alan Paull, APS: OCCAM (Open University) (ppt)

Keith Lewis, University of Oxford: OXCRI (ppt)

There is more information about OXCRI at the JISC OXCRI web page and the Oxford University OXCRI website.

Peter Moss, Staffordshire University: StaffsXCRI (ppt)

There is more info about StaffsXCRI at the JISC StaffsXCRI web page.

Other Presentations

Ben Ryan, XCRI Support Project: XCRI Validator (ppt)

Scott Wilson & Vashti Zarach, XCRI Support Project: XCRI website (ppt)

Scott also demonstrated the XCRI Aggregator (website link)

Enterprise related funding opportunities in the JISC Capital Programme Call

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JISC are putting out a new call for project proposals as part of the Capital Programme.

There will be a briefing day for those interested in submitting proposals in Birmingham on May 9th.

Details of the calls online.

There are a few project calls of possible interest to Enterprise SIG members, 2 in the April call:

1. The e-Learning Call for projects exploring cross institutional use of e-learning to support lifelong learners (“Regional and collaborative projects to pilot the use of e-learning to support lifelong learning, including the support of progression and workplace learning, and the provision of flexible delivery and personalised learning experiences.”)

2. The Cross Programme call for institutional exemplars (“Projects to develop exemplar technology and practice solutions to large-scale institutional problems in the areas of administration for teaching and learning and for digital repositories.”)

And 1 in the forthcoming July call:

1. The e_Learning call for Institutional Business Process Review (“Projects of up to a year in duration which will describe the administrative processes across an institution or consortium, whether manual or technology-enabled, which support key aspects of learning, teaching and student support.”)

Full Agenda for Friday’s Enterprise SIG Meeting

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The next meeting of the JISC CETIS Enterprise SIG will be held this Friday (20th April 2007). The meeting is being hosted at the University of Nottingham by Sandra Kingston. We have a busy agenda, with a variety of updates, project presentations and interesting topics for discussion.

Register at: http://jisc.cetis.org.uk/events/register.php?id=36

Agenda: http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Enterprise_Meeting_16_Agenda

And the agenda is also here:

Agenda

INTRO & UPDATES HOUR

10.45 – 11.00 Vashti Zarach, JISC CETIS Enterprise SIG Coordinator
Introduction & Results from a JISC Systems Integration Survey

11.00 – 11.15 Scott Wilson, JISC CETIS / XCRI Support Project
Update on XCRI and the XCRI CAP (Course Advertising Profile) Mini Projects

11.15 – 11.45 Adam Cooper, JISC CETIS
Work in Progress in IMS: Enterprise Services v2.0 / Tools Interoperability v2.0

11.45 – 12.00 Teabreak

PROJECT UPDATES HOUR

12.00 – 12.30 Sandra Kingston, Centre for International ePortfolio Development, University of Nottingham
ADoM & DELIA: two new e-admissions projects

12.30 – 1.00 Garfield Southall, University of Chester
The SOLVS Project (Supporting Ongoing Learning in Vocational Settings)

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch

AFTERNOON: IDENTITY & COMPETENCIES

2.00 – 2.30 Simon Grant, JISC CETIS Portfolio SIG
Identity: Personal, Learner, Institutional, etc

2.30 – 2.45
Discussion time: Identity

2.45 – 3.15 Chris Kew, CETIS
The Tencompetence Project and the Personal Competence Manager

3.15 – 3.45 Roger Clark, Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance (ioNW2)
Adding A Competency Dimension into XCRI

3.45 – 4.00 End / Teas and Coffees

16th Enterprise SIG Meeting to be held on Fri 20th April

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The next Enterprise SIG Meeting will be held at the University of Nottingham, on Friday 20th April 2007. The agenda is currently being planned, sessions so far include:

Register online at: http://jisc.cetis.org.uk/events/register.php?id=33.

ENTSIG now 5 days a week and very busy!

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I haven’t written in my workblog much lately as I’ve just been so busy! It was always much the same when I kept diaries, when life was quiet there were endless long diary entries as I lay around drinking tea and talking to the cat, but when life was a whirl of parties and pirates, nothing got written down.

The main news is that I am now working 5 days a week, for the first time since doing the Enterprise SIG, which started all of 4 years ago back in Jan 2003. When I started the SIG, I was also teaching English GCSE 5 hours a week, so I took the SIG on at 4 days a week. When the year of GCSE teaching finished, I began a part time Heritage MA, so stayed at 4 days a week. When I finished the taught part of the MA, I was so tired from all the working and learning I stayed at 4 days! However, my workload has been getting bigger and bigger, and I’ve just taken on a day a week as part of the XCRI Support Project, so I’m now on a 5 day working week.

XCRI is the eXchanging Course Information project that emerged out of the Enterprise SIG members collectively noticing a lack of a standardised approach to formatting and exchanging course information. The project has been gathering momentum like a small but persistent wave as various institutions implement the XCRI schema, and the JISC has just funded 6 mini projects to implement the XCRI Course Advertising Profile, which will be supported by the XCRI Team of Mark Stubbs, Ben Ryan, Scott Wilson and myself. I just looked online for a cool team of 4 consisting of 3 men and a woman and found these:  http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/f/fabfour.htm. I’m obviously Polly, so I have a human mind inhabiting an android body, can fly and also generate a superstrong polyfilament fibre to bind opponents, which should be very useful whilst running the support project. XCRI website: http://www.elframework.org/projects/xcri.

The Fab Four met for the first XCRI Support Team meeting in Manchester on 23rd Feb, and laid out our strategy for world domination, I mean, supporting the XCRI mini projects. We also met with some nice people from GMSA (Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance: http://www.gmsa.ac.uk/) who are interested in XCRI, and Richard Hartley, Head of Information and Communications at MMU, who is from an excellent library background (Librarians Rule, see:  http://librarianavengers.org/?page_id=3).

On Thursday 1st March, I went up to Bolton to meet Scott, Mark Power and Sam Easterby-Smith to discuss the new XCRI website, and plan user scenarios for people using the website. This was a great task for a would-be novelist like myself, sadly Scott only let me name two of the hypothetical users (mind you, Mark did invent a great name), and I had to stop short at planning their entire back stories, and focus on brainstorming their likely requirements from the new XCRI site.

We are planning an XCRI mini projects start up meeting on March 30th (which will probably be in Oxford) and an XCRI showcase in September, when the 6 month mini projects finish. We also intend to present and demo XCRI at a couple of conferences.

And Enterprise SIG? I’m currently planning the next meeting, which Sandra Kingston has kindly offered to host in Nottingham, in either April or May. As usual, contact me at V.R.Zarach@bolton.ac.uk if you want to present, or request any particular topics to focus on. I’ve also been involved in the beginning stages of hunting for a location for the next JISC CETIS Conference (sadly they won’t do Disneyland Paris).

 So, enough blogging, and back to the grindstone!