Category Archives: educational content

Sharks, tombstones and timewarps at Dublin Core

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The theme for this year’s Dublin Core Conference, was œMetadata for Semantic and Social Applications. Like previous DC conferences this was a dual track event with working groups running along side peer reviewed presentations. I attended the conference primarily to participate in the working groups and I have to confess that many of the academic presentations were somewhat outwith my domain, however there were a couple that caught my attention.

Jennifer Trant of Archives & Museums Informatics gave a thought provoking keynote Access to art museums on-line: a role for social tagging and folksonomies which presented findings from Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project. Steve is:

engaged in systematic research into how social tagging can best serve the museum community and its visitors.

Jennifer began by asking if tagging could help museums answer common queries such as:

Im looking for a picture of a well dressed man standing in front of a window. Can you help me find this painting?

Museum catalogue records, or œtombstone data, are not good at answering questions such as these.

To illustrate this point Jennifer showed us a painting by Winslow Homer called œThe Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream

Copyright © 2002-2008 www.winslow-homer.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Now it’s hard to miss the sharks here but nowhere, Jennifer pointed out, does the catalogue record mention the word œshark (Personally I was stunned by the sheer tackiness of this painting but thats another story¦ ;-) The Steve project attempted to address the œmis-match between the vocabulary of the visitor and the museum by inviting the public to tag almost 2000 works in 11 museums. 86% of the tags allocated by the public were œnovel to the resource and the intersection with museum terms was primarily œgenre terms such as photograph, sculpture etc. Clearly the public found these terms useful but the project concluded that the tags also had significant value for searching and broader retrieval purposes. More importantly they were able to incorporate new points of view into museum records. The public had effectively created an alternative scholarly vocabulary.

Im not sure how many parallels we can draw between the museum sector and the teaching and learning domain, however I liked the idea that users can generate living dynamic descriptions of resources which can complement more static œtombstone data. I also whole-heartedly agreed with Jennifers concluding assertion that

we dont know enough about how people search and what they are searching for.

This is certainly something we have been aware of in the education domain for some time. Its difficult to create effective educational metadata profiles if we dont fully understand how teachers and learners search and what they are searching for. Semantic density anyone? We do need to recognise that individual teacher and learners will view and experience educational materials in very different ways and we also need to acknowledge that theres more to metadata than œdefinitive static records. In order to improve access to educational resources we need to create services that can accommodate dynamic resource descriptions from a range of sources rather than mausoleums of tombstone metadata. (Okay Ill stop pushing that metaphor now¦)

The other keynote which caught my attention was by Paul Miller of Tallis. What struck me about this presentation was that, excepting a very interesting potted history of the dotcom era, it was awfully reminiscent of a keynote I heard Tim Berners-Lee present at a World Wide Web conference in Toronto almost 10 years ago called The Challenges of the Second Decade (these slides provide only a bare outline of the presentation I remember) and Im not sure how much has changed in the intervening years. I already know that

the Semantic Web is about facilitating connections between data and unlocking value in all the data we collect and maintain

but has this happened yet? And if not, when will it? Dont get me wrong, Im very interested in the potential of semantic technologies and in particular the affordances they may offer to teaching and learning however I did rather feel like I was stuck in a bit of a time warp. I wonder if we need to wait a third decade before the Semantic Web becomes a reality?

Brave words from Edinburgh

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

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

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

You can’t always get what you want…?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our brief was to:

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

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

Changes and Developments Since Roadmap Publication

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

Vision and Tactics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Activities, Priorities and JISC Interventions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random Quotes 6 – JISC Learning Activities and Resources Conference 2008

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A few random quotes from the JISC Learning Activities and Resources Conference, January 2008

Allison Littlejohn, Glasgow Caledonian University

Knowledge sharing is akin to learning¦.actions of users¦.knowledge sharing is an essential art of academic lives¦.information sharing rather than knowledge sharing¦.learning approaches¦.learners as consumers¦.learners as contributors¦.beyond the limitations of networks¦.collective learning¦.charting¦.wisdom of the crowd¦.set goals and chart learning paths¦.sharing adapting and reusing knowledge and ideas¦.new shared knowledge¦.competencies for knowledge sharing¦.knowledge economy¦.guidance teams¦.key goals and personal priorities¦. beyond pdp¦.learning trails¦.connect with peers¦.consume resources¦.contribute resources¦.contribute to collective resources¦.connect different environments¦.they want My Space to be their space¦.tacit knowledge¦.business goals, authentic tasks¦.trusted networks¦.reflect and record practice¦.knowledge base for the collective¦. charting is a key aspect of collective learning¦.charting is learners planning their own learning paths¦.evolutionary step¦focus on personal goal.¦planning on micro as well as macro level¦.autonomy in setting learning goals¦.self regulated learning¦.autodidaxy¦.learner motivation¦.assessing current expertise¦.periodic table of expertise¦.beer mat knowledge to contributory knowledge¦.from novice to expert¦.help learners make faster transition from novice to expert¦.learning trails¦.scaffolding¦.different learning choices¦.big challenges ahead¦.novices prefer a linear step by step approach¦.experts are adept at integrating information¦.implications for the way learners connect with resources¦.rapid prototyping is essential¦.make sure community needs are met¦.lots of challenges¦.fantastic opportunities¦.transformational change in institutions.

Discussion and Comments
Design will become ever more critical¦.The Joy of E-Learning¦.disenchanted learners¦.are learners students or people who are learning?…. more casual learners¦.ideas from workbased learning¦.developing research mindedness in undergraduates¦.research – teaching linkages¦.much of what is done in workbased learning is negotiated¦.requirements of an university to control and manage accreditation¦.cultural challenges¦.need to look at the actions to know what we should support¦.emphasis on productivity¦.its about having a job and doing well in it¦.universities value system is different from workplace value systems (good point!)¦.does this mean we need to adapt assessments to a business facing pedagogy?….universities need to diversify¦.selecting universities and recruiting universities¦.what are the hallmarks of higher education?….team work is natural in industry¦.other people are a tremendous stimulus¦.there is nothing like people to make you think¦.intellectual interaction¦.

Miles Metcalf, Ravensbourne College
Students own technology and use technology¦.network, enterprise and functional IT¦.once students have their own technology they cut across this¦what are the effects fo students having technology?….once students have their own laptops they wast access to institutional systems¦..personalisation¦preferences¦choices¦investment of time¦better equipment¦better tools¦network access is a given¦dont be a mobile phone nazi¦dont be hostile to students that check your facts on wikipedia¦IMS Enterprise or microformats¦.vast infrastructure that is not accessible to the user¦data-portability http://www.dataportability.org/ ¦ invent nothing, use what si out there¦rss, foaf, opened, rdf¦.enterprise vs individual¦vles are enterprise silos¦doesnt have to be¦.silos act against users instincts¦.provide semantic sugar with what you expose, e.g. microformats, RDFa¦.syndicate what is useful¦.build the scaffolding¦if you want to integrate user owned technology dont start by banning Google and wikipedia¦find ways to enage user owned technology e.g. back-channels, mobile phone voting¦.students dont necessarily use technology for learning, use can be infantile¦their space, your tools¦.the social stack http://www.headshift.com/ ¦extra-institutional communities of practice¦.competencies recognised¦vles are moving towards one tool to rule them all¦could simplify vles to be a basic repository¦could you make an eportfolio out of the activity that takes place on extrainstitutional tools¦

Andrew Comrie, TESEP
Why bother?…high level strategic objectives that move the institution forward¦improving student experience¦growing the market¦yes, but¦.start o make change happen¦.revert to tried and tested practice¦content and resources development¦.virtual stoor¦.used by very few¦.tutor led practice¦.technology to point at¦.process of transformation¦.make lasting change¦.pedagogically driven approach to change¦.what are we setting out to do¦.play to peoples passions¦.people are passionate about teaching not about technology¦.shift control away from tutor to the learner¦changing attitudes, changing behaviours¦.underworld of technologies students are using¦.policies prohibitive to this use¦lets stop doing that¦empower learners¦.next leg of the transformation journey¦.change attitude and behaviour¦.express preferred learning and teaching model¦.work across subject disciples, FE & HE¦.build on current learning and teaching practices¦.staff going on their own transformation journeys as well¦.stop developing content, spend more time developing learning activities¦.stop thinking about vles¦.give learners tasks but offer a choice of technologies and a choice of resources¦use technologies in different ways¦critically evaluate¦if youve enjoyed it go and tell others¦.get people to reflect on their experiences¦.transformation journies¦.TESEP¦.

Random Quotes 5 – JISC CETIS Conference 2007

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Ramdon quotes form the plenary sessions of the JISC CETIS Conference 2007….

Oleg Liber, JISC CETIS

Institutions dont realise how much theyre going to be challenged¦transformative nature of technology¦the content is out there¦one node in the global learning environment¦we always need new content¦need to invest in the process of content creation¦useful, valuable, true¦do we need universities at all?¦meaningful and responsible deeds of fully awake people¦universities validate a persons learning¦hard to see the journey youre on when you take small steps¦reflect on the last step, think about the next step¦JISC is doing lots of interesting things at the moment¦open content call is a real pointer to the future¦

Sarah Porter, JISC

Innovation, transformation and change¦key word is useful¦respond to changing needs of users¦increasingly fast changing external environment¦students of the future¦student as customer¦do things in different ways¦close the loop between learning and teaching and research¦policy drivers form government¦changing social situation¦top down drivers¦.innovation and transformation models¦technology uptake model¦buying seed corn¦were talking about people¦MIT 90s model¦the revolutionary end of things¦.why arent we seeing more change?¦be realistic about the complexity¦increasing diversity¦universities are slow and difficult to innovate as a single system¦led by practice and experimentation¦why does JISC exist¦people services¦several hundred projects¦get the holistic word in a few times¦allow for failure or less success as well as success¦learners dont see technology as anything special, just another tool to support their learning¦relationship between pedagogy and technology¦innovate for the student¦learning design, design for learning¦reload¦technology and tools to enhance the use of standards¦open content¦content can really be shared¦holistic change¦scale up holistic model to whole institution¦CETIS SIGs support networking and increase take up¦environment working together¦social networks¦senior management and other uninitiated people¦camel project¦cost saving and resource efficiency¦pull those stories out and put them across to people in a language they understand¦xcri¦very tangible problems¦what problem should we be trying to solve¦top down revolutionary innovation¦e-framework¦should be bottom up approach¦ also high level mapping of education domain¦tension between standards and innovation¦change is driven by a model that involves technology, policy and people¦JISC is owned by the community¦.secret agents for change¦increasingly competitive environment¦

Iain Stinson, UCISA

We have grown up a little¦view form a different part of the universities¦resources for IT¦IT strategy and planning¦e-learning¦architected IT and infrastructure¦governance¦information management¦disaster recovery¦services availability¦identity management¦24/7 support¦key issue is funding¦commodity computing¦Moores law does not apply to people¦efficiency gains targets¦resources dont just mean money¦space¦talk the language of those giving out the money¦outsource¦commodity systems like e-mail¦sla¦2 or 3 day interruptions¦shared services¦vat rules¦we dont have the sandboxes that we used to have where we can play safely¦IT strategy has to be subservient to institutional strategy¦IS and IT¦poor quality clip art¦ very cost effective¦concerned about e-learning¦costs a fortune¦core to what we deliver¦real digital natives in 2 years time¦how do we sustain e-learning systems¦how are academics sustaining e-learning content¦need an innovative environment with real students¦business systems¦on Wednesday afternoons the computers were turned off¦.change of patterns of working¦even JANET can fail¦business continuity¦we in computing cant do the business continuity¦governance¦where does the buck stop¦how do we govern computing in universities¦Oxford¦emerging issues¦green computing¦chain of resource¦carbon footprints for universities¦.government legislation¦important¦mobile computing¦

Discussion
shrinking service offer¦conservative group¦divisive to not provide computer facilities at this point of time¦some students can not cope with commercial ISPs as they dont have a formal address¦

Mark Stiles, University of Staffordshire
Collaboration, communcation, confusion¦.holistic, inclusive¦alienate those we seek to help¦my last year of ranting¦too many men with beards¦.strategy and tactics¦vles stuffed full of powerpoints¦obsessed with interoperating everything with vles¦new orthodoxy¦encouraging the mundane¦.tying us down for the future¦strap a module into our corporate vle¦the big fat frog (again)¦control things even more subtly¦regulation to the solution to all problems¦fiddling around with learning technologies¦see them in a lecture, see them in a tutorial, see them in a corridor, see them in a bar¦watched measured monitored¦LSCs audit process for distance learning¦does it track what everyone does¦does it help students or annoy them¦bypass our efforts to monitor and control¦sorry youre all old¦relating to needs of old people because were old¦how many young people are there in SL?¦. were obviously quite sad¦banging away with things like Facebook¦workbased learners¦addressing generational needs¦have educational practices become controlling¦regulation and satisfying the regulators¦conflicting internal structures¦freedom versus control¦loosen chains¦sustain innovation and run the business¦what is a university selling¦we dont sell content¦we sell accreditation and access to expertise¦nature of university promotes regulation and control¦conservative academic culture¦professional bureaucracy¦revolution, satalinism, glasnost¦policy used to control rather than enable¦its not yours and youre frightened of getting arrested¦wide range of collaborative tools¦everything they wanted to use was not allowed in the college¦drive the learning process outside the institution¦ownership, things put in it¦Facebook¦license to do anything they want with anything you put on it¦levels of control¦control, manage, facilitate, enable, recognise¦see where you think things belong¦is it enough we do nothing about it¦is that appropriate?¦clarity about IPR¦policy around conduct and behaviour¦process owned by course members¦desperately trying not to call it an e-learning strategy¦make appropriate use of e-learning technology¦whats expected¦all turns to mush¦on to Facebook, ironically¦daft, or possibly daft¦

Discussion
High degree of desire to communicate outwith hearing of tutor¦tutor ruins group dynamics¦.a better learning environment than the one in the institution¦.all students want more direct contact with lecturers¦more subtle control might be a good things¦my gut answer is no¦dont really recognise the problem exists¦acknowledge we come form different positions¦were all being juvenalised¦revolutionary communist party¦INTERnational socialist¦ rules of engagement¦.principals that guided how to behave when doing e-learning¦policy aligned with job contracts¦enabling culture of sharing¦it isnt nice but it is enabling¦more contact on their terms¦

“The Semantic Web hasn’t failed, it just hasn’t succeeded enough”

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– A summary of position papers for the Semantic Technologies for Teaching and Learning Session of the JISC CETIS Conference 2007.

Earlier in August when Phil and I decided to plan a session on Semantic Technologies for Teaching and Learning for this years JISC CETIS Conference we had no real idea how much interest there would be in this topic. Since then weve been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response that this session has generated. We have 35 registered participants and 7 international speakers lined up. In order to make the most of the limited time available to us each speaker will present a short position statement which will summarise the main points of a longer position paper that they have prepared for this event. These position papers are now available from the Conference wiki at:
http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/Semantic_Structures_for_Teaching_and_Learning#Position_Papers

Tore Hoel, University College Olso, begins by musing on why we have had a relatively slow uptake of semantic technologies in the domain of learning, education and training and why we have failed to exploit the ability of these technologies to œtake the learning technology project to a new level as predicted by Mikael Nilsson in a report on the CETIS website in 2001. Tore suggests that this is because; a) we lack convincing tools and demonstrators, b) the Trust at the top of Tim Berners Lees Semantic Web Stack is hard to negotiate and c) semantic technologies communicate more effectively with machines than with educators and decision makers. Tore calls for a semantic infrastructure for learning, education and training and, speaking from Norway œthe stronghold of Topic Maps, goes on to present a case study of the uptake of Topic Map technologies in the Norwegian educational sector.

Echoing one of Tores points David Davies, University of Warwick, agrees that while semantic technologies remain exclusively in the hands of technologists, they will have little impact on the world of the online learner. He goes on to suggest that œbetter understanding of the needs of teachers and learners will result in better semantic technologies, more attuned to the needs of non-technical users and those that would rather pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. David also argues that we need greater use of metadata that facilitates the discovery and use of content rather than metadata that œseems a millstone around the neck.

David Millard, University of Southampton, presents an up beat summary of developments in his paper œWhy the Semantic Web hasn’t failed, and how we shouldn’t fix it. In his view œthe Semantic Web hasn’t failed, it just hasn’t succeeded enough. David points out that œwhile the upper layers of the Semantic Web Stack have attracted a lot of academic interest, it is the bottom layers that have seen the most success. Like David D, David M suggests that we should focus on promoting well-formed metadata to increase the inter-relatedness of e-learning standards, encouraging interoperability and enabling reasoning. Interestingly, David also identifies the œrise of a New Web Literacy, a preparedness amongst the new generation of students to share, trust and co-operate online, and to take ownership of their digital identity and environment. He concludes that semantic technologies must demonstrate real advantages without real sacrifices, particularly in respect to the informality of users.

Mikael Nilsson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, also refers back to his 2001 article mentioned by Tore and acknowledges that œthe educational technology field is still not very mature when it comes to semantic technology applications. He suggests this is due to a lack of semantics in the base standards, dependence on vertical silo-type applications such as LMSs and scepticism and towards anything looks even vaguely like an intelligent tutoring system. Mikaels personal approach has been to focus on the base standards and he presents a œPlan for Semantic Interoperability in Educational Technology Specifications. This 5 step plan begins by ensuring that all Dublin Core specifications are RDF compliant, progresses through the semanticisation of other existing metadata specifications and ends with the question: which other specifications should semantics spread to?

Like Mikael, Alistair Miles, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, is also focuses on standards and specifications, in this case SKOS and RDFa. SKOS is a lightweight language for representing intuitive, semi-formal conceptual structures and RDFa is a language for embedding richly structured data and metadata in Web pages. The particular value of these standards is that they œprovide an interface between the formal underpinnings of the Semantic Web, and the more informal, intuitive ways in which people naturally express and organise knowledge. Alistair concludes by discussing the potentially interesting consequences that these standards have for leveraging the Web as a platform for delivering learning and elearning technology.

In response to the call for more user friendly tools Michael Gardner, University of Essex, and Simon Buckingham Shum, Open University, present a series of case studies of applications and systems that build on these semantic technologies. Michael provides three exemplars:

  • DELTA – a system which allows distributed resources to be submitted, searched and retrieved, based on standardized meta-data.
  • ResourceBrowser “ which integrates the DELTA and eProfile (social networking) toolkits into a single user-interface to allow users to view and search their social-networks.
  • AUTODISCOVER – trawls a users PC automatically constructing meta-data for the documents on that desktop and enables the user to manually review and modify the resulting concept-map and meta-data descriptions.

The Open Universitys Knowledge Media Institutes Hypermedia Discourse research programme aims to œdevelop intellectual tools for structuring information that are usable without having to be an ontology engineer or information scientist. These tools include:

  • Compendium “ a mature platform with a growing community of practice. Compendium supports real time knowledge construction in meetings and can also be used for personal information management and reflection.
  • Cohere – a visual environment for making meaningful connections between ideas, and optionally tagging those ideas with websites.

The ultimate aim of these developments is to facilitate œnew ways of reading and writing ideas: a new literacy.

All these position papers provide significant food for thought and no doubt will provoke lively discussion and debate. Condensing summarising this session into a single slide to present at the Conference Plenary Session will no doubt be a huge challenge!

Random Quotes 4 – SFC Repositories Seminar

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Heriot Watt University, 31st October 2007

Repositories and the learning experience
 – Mark Stiles

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

Jorum
– Peter O’Hare & Peter Burnhill

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

The COLEG Repository
– Mary MacDonald and John Edmonstone

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

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

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

Semantic technologies for teaching and learning?

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As part of this years forthcoming JISC CETIS conference Phil and I are proposing to run a half day “brainstorm session on semantic technologies and their use, or not, in the teaching and learning space. I should add that I know very little about semantic technology developments and this is one reason Im keen for the session to go ahead. I have a persistent lurking suspicion that theres lots of really interesting work going on out there somewhere but I dont know what, I dont know where and I dont know whether its likely to be of use to teachers and learners. Im inclined to think that the answer to the last of these questions is a resounding yes.

In the course of fleshing out a brief description of the planned session I couldnt help noticing that most of the references to semantic technologies, including those turned up by Google and Wikipedia, date from 2003 and 2004. Clearly the semantic web has been supplanted by Web 2.0.

So whats been going on in the meantime? Have semantic technologies failed to deliver? Are they now restricted to interesting but niche research projects? Or have they been quietly successful to the extent that they are now so ubiquitous that we no longer notice them? RSS anyone?

I was still wondering if there were lots of really interesting educational applications of semantic teachnologies out there but a rather cursory search didnt turn up anything new. I did get very excited when I discovered the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group. However I was a bit disappointed to discover that rather than reaching out to the educational community the group aims to:

œincrease awareness among the Web community of the need and benefit for the Semantic Web, and educate the Web community regarding related solutions and technologies.

Still, its a noble aim and the group does provide a lot of very interesting and relevant information.

Another interesting resources I came across on more than a few blogs is the Semantic Technology Primer. This includes a run down of those sectors implementing semantic technologies: government, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, transport and communications, energy, health and life sciences, media, and business services. No education. The Primer also includes a detailed schematic of œApplications Today, again no education.

I know that there are semantic technologies that are widely use on the domain of education such as FOAF, RSS, Atom, etc but its arguable whether they have made a significant impact in the teaching and learning space, as opposed to the enterprise and identity management end of things. Its possible that there are piles of semantic technology developers out there who would say that this is all rubbish and that these technologies are already happening. If so thats great, you can come along to the conference and tell us all about it!