BRUM project

DELILA

2010-09-01T14:57:00.002Z

Just after the CaRILLO event done and dusted, Jane Secker from LSE and I got confirmation that our bid for a Phase 2 HEA OER project had been accepted!

The aim of our project, DELILA (Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies
for Accreditation) is to embed digital and information literacy learning material in to HEA accredited teacher training. Here at Birmingham a central unit run our PG Cert HE course and after discussion with the director, we knew that we had a plan to embed our existing IL resources in to the course. The project steering group, made up of staff from both Birmingham and LSE, will be meeting at the end of September in London to discuss the project plan and work schedules.

I'm really excited at being involved and with the prospect of working closely with Jane and her colleagues at LSE.

I will keep the blog up to date with information about the project as we progress. There should also be some further information on the HEA website fairly soon.

CaRILLO event at Birmingham

2010-09-01T14:43:00.002Z

I've been very slack at updating the blog since last year. It's high time that I posted a few entries on what has been happening in the world of IL RLO sharing.

In August, we held the first CaRILLO (Creating and Re-using Information Literacy Learning Objects) event at the University of Birmingham. This came out of a symposium that I co-ran at LILAC in March 2009. One of the outcomes from the group discussion was that a community of practice was needed to share ideas, expertise and actual resources. Soon after I set up the IL RLO Share wiki at http://ilrloshare.wetpaint.com but also set about planning a face to face event at which librarians could meet and discuss ideas.

I contacted the speakers, who all agreed to take part. The scariest moment was putting out the advert on LIS-LINK and LIS-INFOLITERACY, not knowing if anyone would be interested. I needn't have worried as we had sold out the thirty places within five days and had about twenty more librarians wanting to attend.

The event took place on Tuesday 3rd August and the presentations from the day are now available on SlideShare at www.slideshare.net/NancyGraham.

A few of the attendees blogged about the event afterwards:

Jane Secker at http://elearning.lse.ac.uk/blogs/socialsoftware/

Paul Ayres at http://virtualtrainingsuite.blogs.ilrt.org/2010/08/04/carillo-information-literacy-and-repurposing-learning-objects/

We have been asked to organise further events, focussing on creation and sharing of learning objects, so watch this space for further events!

GLO Maker 2.1 released

2009-12-11T10:40:00.001Z

Hey, repurposing folks! The RLO CETL has just released an upgrade to its GLO Maker software. The new version includes the facility to add hyperlinks to your learning objects.

Download for free here: http://www.glomaker.org

They've also set up a wiki for users to share experiences and find out more information: http://glomaker.wetpaint.com

Staffordshire University workshop on OER, metadata and repositories

2009-10-28T18:10:00.003Z

Last week my colleague Jill Russell and I travelled to Stoke-on-Trent to run a workshop for the good folk at Staffordshire University on metadata and repositories. I had met one of their librarians, Sarah Hall, at another talk I gave at Staffordshire in April and she contacted me to see if I was interested in talking further about metadata, both as a user and as one sharing materials on the web.

The first half of the workshop focused on the importance of metadata in describing learning resources appropriately (we got the participants into small groups and asked them to come up with questions they would need to ask about a resource to find out if it would be useful for them - basically getting them to come up with the ideal metadata schema).

Jill (who is our institutional repository manager) then took them through our institutional repository, UBIRA (http://ubira.bham.ac.uk), highlighting metadata fields and how material on the repository is found by Google.

I got to bang on about how crucial rich metadata is in not only finding material but also in contextualising it for the user. It was really exciting (yes, exciting) to see the small groups come up with so many points that I also think are important to ideally include in metadata for learning resources:

who is the intended audience
are there any specific learning outcomes attached to the material
how well does the material work for the intended audience
how difficult/easy was it to create
tracking of different versions

I also got to use my pistachio/Tesco analogy (see previous post)!

I know the day was all about facilitating discussions amongst another group but I found it to be really interesting and not a little inspiring. The participants were very vocal in a positive way and really engaged with each other and the topic.

I'm now looking forward to another possible talk on designing and sharing educational resources next year (I'll have to wait to see if the abstract is accepted first) but I have come up with yet another terrible analogy that I'm just itching to use...

Google Books and bad metadata

2009-09-10T12:57:00.003Z

What was I saying earlier about the need for good metadata in order to open up free content? The Times Higher Tweeted today on the Google Books metadata fiasco and ensuing online discussion on linguist and Professor Geoffrey Nunberg's blog. At the end of August he blogged about the millions of metadata errors on Google Books. At first you almost think this is funny but then it dawns on you how much information Google holds and how much trust is invested in them by their billions of users.

One thing that's pointed out on Geoff's blog post is that a crucial thing to remember is that Google Books will likely be 'The Library' in the future. No-one else will repeat the scanning they've done, so we're stuck with Google Books as our one online source for digitised books. This means that they absolutely have to get this right and, more importantly, that they must alert their users to its ongoing limitations.

Frustration of different database platforms

2009-09-10T11:29:00.003Z

I've just come back from co-running an information skills session for GP tutors. I've run this session, along with NHS librarian/trainer Elizabeth Saunders from Worcester Trust, a few times now. Each time we seem to spend longer explaining how the different Medline platforms work than the GPs do actually get to practice using the database. I would like someone to explain to me how it benefits our users (the GPs and eventually the medical students) to develop different versions of databases. I'm assuming that it's partly down to the requirements of different networks/systems within different institutions and partly down to the data on the database being licenced for use by more than one platform provider.

This reminded me of my recent post (below) about the design of databases and how this links to being able to find information. Today, I first demonstrated how to use the Ovid Medline platform via our eLibrary. There are several versions of Medline available this way, mostly different date ranges (just to confuse users further) but the searching interface is actually fairly intuitive and the searching functionality is very powerful. It's what I'll train the medical students on so it's useful for the GP tutors to see it in action.

Elizabeth then took over, demonstrated the NHS Evidence site (which I think is excellent for finding information) and then went on to demo the NHS version of Medline. This version looks very different to Ovid and kind of behaves differently too. It should be just as powerful and bring back the same results. However, this isn't always the case. Elizabeth and I did some testing last year and found that with some searches, sometimes, slightly different results came up.

There are several reasons why this is frustrating:

Having to demonstrate two versions of the same database is time consuming and confusing, especially when demonstrating just one database can be confusing enough.
If the same database (different platform) is bringing back even slightly different results then this kind of goes against the idea that you are undertaking a comprehensive literature search. If 'good enough' is okay, then fine, but users need to understand the limits of a database and if the limits are different for each version you will lose them pretty quickly.
It means that as a librarian I should be getting to know different versions before showing them to users and I don't want to have to do this. I want to get to know the best version and show my users this one.

So, how does this link to re-using learning material? Well, journal literature is learning material and if I can't demonstrate an easy(ish) way of finding relevant material to my users, then someone is doing something wrong, and it ain't me.

OER and linking up resources to users

2009-08-12T08:15:00.002Z

Reading some Tweets yesterday from David Davies and others has made me want to write at a bit more length than 140 characters about opening up resources to users. David blogged about a post by Tony Hirst on opening up library resources to searchers.

This has made me think again about how we structure collections of information, whether it be books on physical shelves or electronic articles in a bibliographic database. So much of my job in teaching students and researchers how to find information is spent describing how databases/search engines/libraries/indexes etc. are put together. Librarians like me come up with clever analogies to help demystify databases and the necessary search strategies ("imagine you're arranging a dinner party, you have to go shopping, now we need to put together a shopping list" etc.). The reason we spend so long training students how to do this is that, in many cases, databases aren't built to help people find information, they are built as repositories.

Some databases are better than others, but I think we should glean something from the success of Google and Wikipedia about usability and how users instinctively look for stuff. I don't want to turn any of my students or researchers into librarians and it can be frustrating sometimes, having to go into great detail about MeSH searching and Boolean operators when all they want is to find the perfect article.

I think that we need to concentrate on pushing content out to users, to places where we know they will be looking. At Birmingham we've configured our e-resources so that if a student is on campus or off campus and signed in to our eLibrary, then any search they do on Google Scholar will display our e-journal holdings (along with all the open web results) with a branded link. This way users are guided back to the (very expensive) resources that they are entitled to.

I go back to my shopping analogy again. In my local Tesco there are three locations where I will find pistachio nuts: the baking aisle, the wholefoods aisle and the snack aisle (all with different prices but that's another matter). What Tesco's are doing is placing the product where they know shoppers will go, rather than forcing the shopper to behave in an unnatural way. This is what we must do with information. Don't try to turn every student into an expert searcher, place the information at their point of need.

This is why I think that really thoughtful metadata can be very helpful. It's all very well having a sophisticated taxonomy with technical medical terms but if your users don't think or search in that way, they'll never be linked up with what they need. Maybe this means more emphasis on user collaboration/consultation when building databases (without it going all Homer-Simpson-designs-a-car). Or maybe the semantic web will solve all of these problems!?

I think we need to ask ourselves what we really want our databases/repositories to be: carefully structured but inpenetrable warehouses or open, usable, welcoming goldmines.

SOLSTICE event: Creating and Sharing Digital Content

2009-08-07T15:33:00.003Z

The SOLSTICE event (Edge Hill University, 16th July) was a really good day. The speakers comprised project managers from the JISC funded ReProduce programme of projects (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/reproduce) and one from the new OER programme of projects.

One of the keynote speakers was Tom Boyle, director of the RLO CETL. Tom demonstrated the GLOMaker2, a tool for creating online learning content. It looked really easy to use and the best thing is that is has a pedagogical framework underpinning every step of creation. This is especially exciting (yes, exciting!) as many of us are guilty of creating content based on what is available or possible technically rather than focussing on the pedagogy first and then using appropriate technology to create content. The new tool will be released on 21st August, for free, from the link above.

We will be testing out GLOMaker2 at Birmingham in a sort of ReJiG, part 2, where we will be demonstrating various bits of kit to support creation of learning content. We will be encouraging our librarians to use this software and evaluate in terms of use and re-purpose.

Anyway, back to SOLSTICE. The other talks were very good and highlighted many of the same problems that we found with BRUM and ReJiG and that I've pulled out in the post below (finding content, standards of content and metadata, copyright). There was a discussion session at the end of the day in which we all listed our 'must haves' for anyone looking at these issues. I'm hoping that an organisation/individual/project group will start to take these issues forward, especially in terms of IL RLOs (this is the idea for our IL RLO Share community of practice) so watch this space!

BTW - visiting Ormskirk meant a very welcome overnight stay in Liverpool and another quick peak at the Colour Chart exhibition at Tate Liverpool (that I'd visited a week before). Well worth a visit.

ReJiG talk at Birmingham eLearning event

2009-08-07T15:24:00.002Z

Sorry, it's been a while!

I gave a talk (my two project colleagues chickened out again) at an internal eLearning practitioner event at the University of Birmingham on the 23rd June. The talk was a general overview of the project and then focussed on the barriers that we came up against during the project. We had a good crowd and many of those asking questions afterwards shared the same problems that we had including:

finding appropriate online content
questions of copyright
the standards that we use (or don't use) for content and metadata

The issue of standards is one that really struck a chord with many in the audience as academics, it seems, are very concerned with the quality of the learning material that they may be expected to release to the outside world. I will be very interested to see how our Social Sciences department deals with quality assurance of their material before releasing as part of their OER project.

Please follow the link below to see the slides from the talk.

http://www.slideshare.net/NancyGraham/rejig-talk-at-birmingham

"These resources are OER" "Oh ER they?"*

2009-06-25T12:33:00.005Z

The JISC-funded OER programme of projects have finally been launched: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer and anyone interested in issues surround sharing learning material really should be following these projects closely.

Follow this link to see a list of the projects being funded: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elreproduce/fundedoerprojects.xls. I spoke to Sarah Hall (very briefly) about OpenStaffs at Staffordshire University and I will watch the progress of the projects with interest. The Social Sciences department here at Birmingham are running one of the projects so it will be good to see how it goes.

The outcomes of these projects will be crucial in influencing how other UK HEIs begin to open up their content and share it with others. I will post soon about a talk I gave on Tuesday at an internal eLearning event and issues around sharing (including the adoption of standards and peer review of material) cropped up again.

*Very poor Rushmore-related joke: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128445/quotes

SOLSTICE Seminar: Creating and Sharing Digital Content

2009-06-24T14:33:00.000Z

SOLSTICE Seminar Series:
Creating and Sharing Digital Content: Promises and Pitfalls
Thursday 16th July, 10am - 3.45pm
FREE EVENT!
Venue: Edge Hill University, Ormskirk
Creating the conditions for institutions to develop high quality content for use, reuse and open sharing is high on the agenda for UK Policy and funding bodies.
New institutional practices are required to support environments to mainstream and sustain use, reuse and open sharing of digital content.
Individual practitioners must also aquire new skills and strategies to realise the potential of open educational resources (OER).
This seminar will bring together who are currently working through all or some of these issues.
Melissa Highton, Head of the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University. Melissa is heading up the Open Spires Project funded under the recent JISC OER Call Open Spires focuses on supporting strategic institutional learning and encouraging cultural change.
The RLO CETL was established in 2005 and will be making all of its content freely available in the new Open Jorum.

If you require any further details please contact Amanda Boult at boulta@edgehill.ac.uk.

Good Intentions report

2009-06-18T12:31:00.003Z

I *finally* got around to finishing reading this report:

Good Intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials by Lou McGill, Sarah Currier, Charles Duncan, Peter Douglas (December 2008). Available at http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/265/

It makes very interesting, hopeful reading for those of us keen on truly sharing our learning materials, improving the quality of IL RLOs and reducing duplication of effort. The report looks at how sharing takes places and learning from the good practice that's out there in the RLO/repository community. The authors focus on different models that are particularly successful, including the subject-based sharing model and the open sharing model.

The subject-based model is of interest to us in libraries as the authors explain that disciplines with a strong professional identity (librarians) and shared curricula (we're all teaching referencing, plagiarism, evaluation of information and search strategies at least) are more successful than, say, institutional sharing models.

They conclude that evolving attitudes to IPRs (Creative Commons etc, Open Jorum) and technology (Web 2.0 sharing tools) mean that sharing is becoming more widespread. The report also includes some really useful tables and business model charts.

SUILCoP talk

2009-06-18T12:01:00.003Z

Just wanted to update everyone about a presentation that I gave at the Staffordshire University Information Literacy Community of Practice (SUILCoP) on the 29th April. My talk covered the background to BRUM, RLOs in general and, most importantly, sharing learning material. It was good to speak to an audience who were all interested in sharing IL RLOs, but don't quite know where to start. After waffling on for about 45 minutes, there was a short group discussion and many of the issues that came up at the LILAC symposium were echoed here, including:

Developing standards - by which I mean having a set of standards as to how material is first created. For example, DDA compliance was raised as an issue for one library and I'm sure this would be a universal standard.
Training/expertise - it was agreed by the participants that some of our time when developing IL training material is wasted in getting to know software or new bits of kit (e.g. Captivate, TurningPoint, Echo360) and virtually no formal training is offered in library schools (Bob Glass of MMU is keen to follow up this point in particular).
One-stop shop - many people expressed interest in the idea of a one-stop shop of shared training materials or at least a detailed listing of what's out there. I have put up a current listing of all the IL RLO sites that I'm aware of on the ILRLOShare wiki (details below).

It was a really enjoyable event and it was interesting to meet so many like-minded library folk. I've uploaded my slides to SlideShare so please take a look: http://www.slideshare.net/NancyGraham/rlo-design

IL RLO Share wiki

2009-04-28T14:07:00.002Z

In order to keep the momentum going from the LILAC symposium discussions I've set up a wiki at http://ilrloshare.wetpaint.com to host:

the discussion write-up
discussion threads on all topics discussed at LILAC
IL RLO intitiatives/project links
IL RLO events
del.icio.us links relating to IL RLOs and sharing of learning material

If you're interested in any of the above or any aspect of IL RLOs please follow the link and click on the Apply to be a Writer button.

LILAC in Cardiff

2009-04-28T13:26:00.003Z

A weekend off and Rachel and I were on our way to Cardiff to LILAC 2009.

This is an annual conference devoted to all things information literate and I was running a symposium, along with Nicola Siminson of Jorum and Rebecca Mogg from Cardiff University, on setting up an IL RLO community of practice (CoP).

This was my third time at LILAC, so it was great to catch up with so many familiar faces again. It was a really packed conference with loads of interesting parallel sessions. The symposium was due to take place on the morning of the last day and when I found out the running order I was a bit disappointed to have to wait until the last day (not least because it meant I couldn't stay out late the night before!). However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it meant that I got to sit through other sessions that focused on RLOs and get a sense of what people were talking about in these sessions.

I think what interested me the most about so many of the papers was that, to some extent, I'd seen it all before. There were so many projects, large and small, up and down the country that seem to still be focusing on creating so much content from scratch, rather than searching for existing appropriate content and re-purposing. More than once I found myself busily writing notes and then giving up half way through as I thought "...but...didn't so and so do a similar thing last year? But better? For less money? And in less time?".

This is fine as long as the IL community and wider library community are happy to accept that so much duplication of effort is still going on. If library managers are happy to set their librarians off on projects to create IL learning material without first seeing what else has been done, re-using what they can and embedding and re-branding to suit their context then that's great.

Except, I'm not sure that this is the case. I would argue that most librarians would love to go to a single point of access site with a set of links to high-quality IL material along with explicit indications of permission for re-use. I would also argue that these same librarians would like that learning material to have been created in easy to adapt formats with some information about how easy it should be to edit.

One of the most inspiring (if that's not too strong a word) papers was from Katy Wrathall on the SMILE project, in which the project team actually re-purposed existing material to create a module of IL resources on a Moodle site. I've yet to read the project report all the way through but I'm sure that some important lessons can be learned from this project.

We ran our symposium on the morning of April 1st (!) and had a healthy turn out of about thirty attendees. The group discussions gave us some very interesting talking points and it was just a shame that we didn't have longer for the open discussion. All the attendees indicated that they would like to see a continuation of the discussion and the organising of a CoP to support sharing of IL RLOs.

After the session we promised that we would keep in touch with the attendees and so I've now set up an IL RLO Share wiki. Anyone interested in joining our fledgling CoP should follow the wiki link and click on the Apply to be a Writer button. More information on the wiki to follow.

By the way, Rachel and I also managed a few runs in Cardiff, round the lovely Bute Park.

Intrallect user's conference - Edinburgh

2009-04-24T12:38:00.005Z

Rachel and I gave a paper at the Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse conference in Edinburgh, organised by Intrallect, on the 25th March. We had no expectations at all and really no idea who would be attending or presenting. It was only after we arrived at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and looked at the programme that we began to get really interested.

The two day programme was a good mix of long talks on JISC-funded projects and showcases of smaller projects from the UK and beyond. The conference kicked off with Amber Thomas from JISC outlining the Open Educational Resource programme of projects which are due to begin in April 2009. These projects will aim to encourage institutions and individuals to open up their learning material to be available to all. The projects will also track any cultural changes in how and why creators of learning material share their content.

As the morning went on the other, shorter talks focused on projects involving creation and re-use of learning material with the emphasis of making use of repositories (as the conference was sponsored and held by Intrallect) in opening up content. During these talks, metadata was an issue raised again and again (which was also an important part of our paper) so we felt at least that we would be speaking to a receptive audience.

We gave our talk, and during the questions bit at the end Catherine Bruen, from Trinity College Dublin, echoed our concerns about use of metadata to adequately give RLOs a context and to indicate how successful learning material had been in achieving learning outcomes/intentions. Catherine works as a project manager within the NDLR in Ireland and later on, over some lovely sandwiches, we discussed how important we also think metadata is for repositories for 'discoverability' (another big issue for ReJiG). There is a balance that needs to be struck between getting contributors to input detailed information about their material and with not wanting to burden them with too much work.

The following day we listened to Lou McGill give a talk about the Good Intentions report from JISC. This report focuses on gathering evidence of sharing learning material among individuals and institutions. Even though there is evidence that many creators of learning material are unwilling to share, 70% of respondents to a 2006 JISC survey said that they had re-purposed others' material.

The report includes various tables illustrating different models of sharing and indicates that subject-based reposistories and communities of practice (CoP) are very successful in encouraging sharing. This is good news if we are to build a CoP for IL RLOs.

Later on, in a break out session with Lou and Sarah Currier, there was a lively discussion on the issues surrounding sharing learning material and Lou mentioned a chapter of a book on the experience of the folk at Merlot (an educational resource repository). I've yet to read this but it will be interesting to read more about the CoP approach.

Anyway, Rachel and I really enjoyed the conference and felt that we learnt a lot about what is going on in the repository world and about what the hot topics are.

We even had time to run around the streets of Edinburgh, both in the evening when the castle etc. are lit up beautifully and in the glorious morning sunshine among the daffodils.

ReJiG at Birmingham and beyond...

2009-03-16T19:38:00.003Z

On Wednesday 4th March I gave a presentation about the ReJiG project at the University of Birmingham's 6th Annual Learning & Teaching Conference (see photo). The talk covered the background of the project, aims and objectives, what we've done so far and what we still hope to do to tie up the project. I also talked about the problems that we encountered whilst trying to achieve our objectives and our suggestions for solutions, including the problems with access to Jorum (some of which will be solved with the new JorumOpen licence); taxonomies and searching, metadata and promotion of Jorum to academics at Birmingham.

Next week, Rachel and I will be travelling to Edinburgh to give a paper at the Intrallect Conference in Edinburgh (http://www.intrallect.com/index.php/intrallect/news_events/events). Our plan is to talk about these problems and our suggested solutions to the Intrallect team, who are behind the software behind Jorum, and that they will come up with ingenious ways to fix them all.

The following week, on the 1st April (!), along with Rebecca Mogg from Cardiff University and Nicola Siminson from Jorum, I'll be running a symposium at LILAC (http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/index.html) to look at issues surrounding re-use and re-purpose of IL learning material and the possibility of setting up a community of practice in the UK, a la ISCoP in Ireland. We're all hoping that we get an audience full of enthusiastic folk who want to join us in our mission to share our IL RLOs, spread good practice and stop duplicating our efforts.

I'll post back after each of the events.

BRUM and ISCoP in Dublin

2008-09-30T12:37:00.004Z

On the 5th of September I travelled to Dublin to give a talk about the BRUM project at the launch of the National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) Information Skills Community of Practice (ISCoP) (http://www.ndlr.ie/iscop/). The NDLR is an Ireland wide repository of learning material funded by Ireland's Higher Education Authority. The NDLR is split into subject areas that are known as communities of practice (CoP) and each CoP is responsible for gathering and uploading learning and teaching material on to the repository.

The NDLR is based on the Intrallect software, as is Jorum, so it was interesting for me to see how they have organised the learning material. The taxonomy they use is based on their subject areas (CoPs) and a bit more straightforward to use than Jorum (for HE users anyway).

The launch day saw librarians from across Ireland come together to discuss developing and sharing information literacy (IL) learning material through ISCoP. It was a great opportunity for me to talk to other creators of IL RLOs about how best to maintain high standards when developing, sharing, re-using and re-purposing this material.

Several interesting issues arose during a group discussion including many that Ann-Marie and I had discussed as part of BRUM.

Quality Assurance (QA) - this was raised when I attended a Jorum training day but I think it is relevant to any repository of learning material. Should QA be an issue when uploading learning material and if so, who should do the checking? This should be easier when you are part of a CoP as you have a forum/framework for discussion already set up but do RLO developers want someone judging their efforts? It may be that this becomes an organic process whereby colleagues give feedback on learning objects as and when they use them. But, as ISCoP develops it may be that a QA panel could be formed to look at all new RLOs added to the site and decide on what should be kept. I have no feeling either way on what is best but that it should be something any repository manager considers.

Number of RLOs - during discussion at the ISCoP launch some community members aired the view that a large number of objects would be uploaded at once, thereby flooding the repository. Whilst this is a slight risk I think it's better to have more objects than less as it gives the community a more realistic idea of the kind of material being created and used. One option would be to form a QA panel as mentioned above to decide on what should be kept. Also, if the repository has a thorough metadata/indexing system then this should ensure that even with hundreds of objects, relevant material can still be found easily.

Audit trail of re-purposing - it is currently not possible with the Intrallect software to easily track when and how many times a learning object is downloaded or by whom or how it is subsequently re-purposed. I think that if the RLO community takes re-purposing seriously there needs to be a way of tracking re-use and re-purpose. This is crucial in understanding how others have used your material for their own teaching and only then will we get a true picture of re-purposing activity and how widespread it is.

Regular training/workshops - frequent meetings should be at the centre of the CoP as it's at these meetings that issues are raised and discussed and important decisions made. Training opportunities within a supportive environment will also be invaluable in sharing and promoting good practice.

Many of these discussion points got me thinking about some of our BRUM project aims/further areas of activity. We had planned to gather like-minded RLO developers from across the UK to discuss issues surrounding IL RLOs including the points above. However, despite initial callouts and positive noises from other developers I never got passed the stage of thinking about a meeting. Attending the ISCoP launch has inspired me to take up this idea again and to try to get IL RLO developers in the UK to meet at least once to discuss, among other things, use of Jorum in hosting IL material, quality assurance etc.

I've also tried to encourage the ISCoP team to submit a paper at next year's LILAC to inspire us here in the UK to try to organise our own community. Fingers crossed, they'll cross the Irish Sea next spring and make it to Cardiff...

ReJiG update

2008-09-30T12:28:00.002Z

First of all a little ReJiG update. Rachel and I are still working on the repurposing of the RLOs but the biggest hurdle that we are now facing is repurposing subject material. In the last posting of the blog I mentioned that I'd been liaising with two medical science academics in editing of some lab skills material. I got some feedback from one of them and it was very interesting. Even though he could see the value in the material he also said that it was too basic for first year undergraduates. In order for the material to be useful for his students it would need a good deal of editing etc.

Even if it means we don't add this learning material to our skills website, it's still very useful to know what the academics think of the material on offer on repositories like Jorum. So, whilst Rachel and I can repurpose the other more generic study skills material, subject focused material like this will be a bit trickier.

We are now in the process of appointing an assistant to repurpose material for the project and to gather qualitative feedback from academics. We will be drawing on a pool of post graduate research students across the University who put themselves forward for paid work. Once we've selected an appropriate student, we're hoping that they will collect some useful feedback from our academic colleagues on reusing and repurposing learning material.

Subject advice

2008-07-15T09:13:00.002Z

Another issue with repurposing the learning material has been the editing of subject specific content. The first learning object that I uploaded was generic (reading critically) but the two yesterday were to support students learning basic laboratory and microscopy skills.

I've contacted two of the medical sciences academics that I liaise with regularly and asked for their help and advice in repurposing the material. I'll post the outcome of this when I hear back from them.

More repurposing

2008-07-15T08:26:00.002Z

I spent yesterday uploading more learning material into our WebCT and organising the content into modules. This proved to be a hit and miss affair depending on the organisation of the files within the zip file downloaded from Jorum. Both learning modules were designed as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) packages so that you should be able to simply upload them into WebCT as they are.

However, after uploading the first SCORM package I wanted to edit the order of the files and delete a couple of them. I tried to find a way of doing this in WebCT but couldn't. I then tried to edit the original files on my computer then re-save them but this didn't work either. I've contacted one of our eLearning team so I'm hoping that they'll find a way of doing this as editing the SCORM package within WebCT would be by far the most convenient way of repurposing.

I found that most of the files were named according to the original users' needs. This didn't make further organisation very easy as I had to go into each file (about 30) and rename them with meaningful titles. Compare this with the first ever learning object that I downloaded that included a file called 'Read me' with full instructions on which order to put files etc. So, for example the first learning object that I worked on yesterday was a module made up of about 163 HTML files. These were listed as below:

page1.html
page10.html
page2.html and so on...

Unfortunately these pages weren't in the order of the module and many of the files included were images (figues and tables within other HTML files) and so weren't necessarily needed to be listed in the module in WebCT.

The compatibility of SCORM with WebCT has big implications for academics, librarians and other learning technologists to be able to repurpose material easily. Having said this, thoughtful organisation and naming of files would also have saved me alot of time and hassle. In our end of project report I'll be compiling all of our usability feedback and contacting Jorum with it. It would be great if when repurposing content new users give tips on how they have either improved the organisation or metadata of the original material and/or highlighted the challenges they faced. If this knowledge could be added to the metadate in Jorum this could improve the process for any further users. Just a thought.

First one done!

2008-06-19T15:23:00.003Z

I spent this morning uploading and playing around with one of the LOs from Jorum. The title is Reading Critically and is an introduction to detecting bias in a piece of written work from the University of Edinburgh Settlement (http://www.sett.ed.ac.uk/). The LO itself is a series of HTML pages containing a piece of text and asking students to answer various questions about bias, so it's got a good level of interactivity. There are also tutor answers and the option to print out the material.

Uploading the zip file and extracting all subsequent files into WebCT was very straightforward. There was a very useful file entitled 'Read me' which held all the instructions about which HTML file to link to in order for the others to work. I set up a folder in WebCT and followed the instructions and all seems fine.

I then had a tinker with the text within the original HTML source page and edited a few sections. This was very easy too and I think that with not much effort an academic/learning technologist could easily repurpose into a subject specific LO.

It may be that for some LOs the hard part will be the pedagogical issues as I spent some time over whether to edit the content to suit a higher level of student, make it more interactive etc. whilst the actual editing was very quick. As with creating learning material from scratch it's all about the planning - who is it aimed at and what do you want them to learn from it?

I think we will need to include a section on aims, learning objectives and other pedagogical aspects in any workflow documents.

More next week when I tackle the rest...!

Project web page and update

2008-06-17T08:33:00.002Z

Rachel has now added a section to the GEL web site for the ReJiG project. You can find it at http://www.gel.bham.ac.uk/ReJIG.shtml. We will add any links and updates to this page as well as to the blog and this is where we will put links to some or all of the learning objects (LOs).

Update
An audit of Jorum was undertaken and we identified 11 LOs that are appropriate for repurposing. Using our information retrieval skills (!) we drew up a list of keywords and terms to search for learning material and also made use of the different taxonomies on Jorum to find stuff. This stage took a long time and I think a systematic search of Jorum may put some people off. The different taxonomies (MeSH, JACS etc.) won't mean much to many of our academics so I think a review of these would be useful.

Once I found what looked like useful material I checked the metadata to view a full description and to check things like file type and size. So, we ended up with 11 LOs in subject areas ranging from critical reading, using statistical data right through to basic laboratory skills. Some are simple Microsoft Word documents whilst others are a bit more complex.

We have now begun the repurposing phase of the project. I'll be working on 6 LOs, Rachel will be working on 5 and we have so far uploaded them into our institutional virtual learning environment (VLE) WebCT. We will store them there whilst we 'play around' with repurposing and develop our workflow documents.

I will add more to the blog at the end of this week as we are really into the nuts and bolts of the project now and discovering much about this process every day.

ReJiG: BRUM part two?

2008-06-06T08:13:00.003Z

Even though the BRUM project was completed last year, we're still receiving requests to share our experience of developing RLOs for information literacy from interested practitioners and I have started another project which is almost a BRUM part two: Return of the Killer BRUM!

ReJiG (Repurposing from Jorum into GEL) is an internally funded project with money from our generous alumni through the University of Birmingham Fund scheme. Along with a colleague from our Learning Development Unit, Rachel Wood, this project aims to repurpose learning material from Jorum to fill gaps in our Guide to Effective Learning (GEL) web site. The GEL site contains a host of study skills material, most of which is available to anyone accessing the site.

One of the reasons behind the project, and this is where it partly follows on from BRUM, is to further engage academics and support staff in reusing and repurposing learning materials. We're hoping that along with lots of repurposed content we will also develop a flowchart/checklist/process map for anyone wanting to reuse material from Jorum. We have tried to encourage use of Jorum (and the wealth of guidance provided on the site) within our institution but most of the academics that we've spoken to would like a bit more direction and reassurance about the process of repurposing.

So far we have audited the GEL site and identified gaps in provision. So, we now know we need to focus on material for numeracy, critical and analytical thinking and research skills. I recently undertook an audit of the Jorum repository to find appropriate materials and came up with a long list of possibles.

Rachel and I will now look to identify about 10 learning objects from my initial list to repurpose for use on the GEL site and spend the next month or so getting our hands dirty and repurposing the material.

I'll post further information as the project progresses but if anyone out there is undertaking anything similar please do get in touch.

Librarians without frontiers

2007-09-25T07:28:00.000Z

I travelled to Lesbos last week for the 7th Libraries Without Walls conference. I gave a paper about BRUM on the practicalities of creating RLOs for information literacy covering the technical and design aspects, liaison and issues for the future. Keynote speaker Christine Borgman asked a pertinent question about sustainability, which I hadn't addressed in the talk. Ann-Marie and I did look at the issues surrounding sustainability including using repositories such as Jorum and collaborating further with external colleagues on exploring ownership of RLOs and reusability of learning objects with obsolete software etc.

Later in the conference I got talking to Susan Eales who used to work at JISC and helped to set up Jorum and we had a discussion about the copyright issues attached to learning objects being put back in to Jorum once they've been re-purposed.

As part of our recommendations from the project we will be following up these issues with external colleagues such as JISC and other RLO creators such as Rebecca Mogg at Cardiff.

All of the other papers at the conference were really interesting and varied and after I've got through autumn term and seeing hundreds of new medical students I'll write up a conference report and put any relevant RLO-related points on the blog.

In the mean time enjoy some photos from Lesbos. I've yet to ask conference delegates permissions for their images so they're photos of the scenery.

Post conference

2007-07-06T14:06:00.000Z

We gave a paper on 'Engaging the iPod generation' at the Higher Education Academy's annual conference yesterday. It was a great experience and it really highlighted to us that we, librarians, need to engage with academics at these type of events much more. They are our customers and we need to know what they're talking to each other about and, more importantly, we need to tell them what we're doing in our community of practice as this can often have a really positive impact on their work.

Photos include Nancy standing by the poster and Ann-Marie and Dr Maxine Lintern (Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at the University of Birmingham) standing outside the famous Betty's tea room in Harrogate.

BRUM on YouTube

2007-07-04T11:04:00.000Z

I forgot to mention in the last post how we did manage to upload two of our BRUM RLOs on to YouTube. I think one of them did have or is still having problems with sound and visuals matching up but it was really just to see if it could be done at all. Last time I checked we had about 700 hits for one of them and 60 for the other. We have no idea who is looking at them or why or, more likely, people have stumbled on them by mistake.

I'm also in the process of contributing 5 of the RLOs to Jorum. I'll test them out first and then unleash them!

To see the BRUM RLOs on YouTube please follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brumproject&search=Search

Happy viewing - feedback welcome!

Post project update

2007-07-04T10:49:00.000Z

We've both been busy with BRUM related activities in the past couple of months. After LILAC we were asked to write an article about the project for the next issue of ALISS journal. This will be published in August. The article focuses on our issues surrounding the project including independent learning and new forms of communication technologies. Please send us any feedback from the article.

We are giving a paper at the HEA annual conference in Harrogate tomorrow on engaging the iPod generation. I'm really looking forward to this presentation as it gives us a chance to engage with academics as well as learning support staff to discuss the pedagogical issues around information literacy and how we engage with students. We're both looking forward to meeting new people and our first visit to Harrogate.

I'm off to another HEA event next week in Loughborough called Delivering Information Skills. It's being held at the EngCetl and I was asked to produce a poster for the event. It will be a great chance to catch up with some familiar IL faces and to discuss our project with other information professionals who deliver training.

Throughout preparation for our talk at the HEA annual conference Ann-Marie and I have been mulling over lots of different issues including student feedback. We both feel as if there is a dichotomy between being obsessed with gathering feedback and statistics and the response to the results of that feedback. Should we just respond without delving further into the answers students give or do we need to engage students in more qualitative feedback?

Last academic year two colleagues and I ran an information skills module on the University's Personal Skills Award. Our assessment for the students was a learning journal describing how their information skills had progressed throughout the course. The journals made for interesting reading as we realised we asked them for 2000 words of qualitative feedback on IL training! The overall feedback was very positive with students explaining how the IL training that we had given them had improved their academic performance.

I think that we need to do more to engage students in our planning of training and services or at least do more to understand their point of view and expectations.

BRUM at LILAC

2007-03-29T15:45:00.000Z

Just got back from another excellent LILAC (Information Literacy) conference, at which we presented the findings of our BRUM project. Around 50 people attended and there was a lot of interest in whether academics had re-purposed our RLOs, how easy it is to repurpose things like Captivate demos, and the relation of RLOs vis-à-vis other information literacy activities. We will also be looking into whether our digital recordings can be put on to You Tube. Watch this space!

I’ll post some more about the conference and our findings soon; and am inspired to develop my interest in Web 2.0 further - I've even set up a new blog: Web 2 at BU

Teaching and Learning Conference

2007-03-05T15:06:00.000Z

We're coming to the end of the project now. We'll be speaking at LILAC at the end of March but as a warm up we gave a session at our internal Teaching and Learning Conference last Wednesday. We were given the grave yard slot (4.30-5pm) but we were pleasantly surprised at how many people stayed to listen to us. We had some really positive feedback and discussed our RLOs with many like minded colleagues. There were also some other interesting projects across the university that we got to know about, such as the WM-Share project which the University of Birmingham were involved in.

We also had our prize draw for the two iPod shuffles that we gave away to students that had filled in our questionnaires. They've now been contacted so we should be handing over their goodies soon. We'll post a photo of the exciting moment.

Turning Point?

2007-02-09T12:23:00.000Z

We used our last RLO today – the range of resources interactive quiz, in which students interact in ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ style, by using handsets to answer questions during a lecture.

It was great fun, and very well-received, and certainly seems like a useful way to engage students and to get them to think about the sources they use.
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/

We’ll certainly be pursuing this further and perhaps this is a true Turning Point in Birmingham’s use of technology – who knows?; the lecturer was impressed and suggested using the technology for inductions to draw students into their own learning experience from the start of their course.

Sadly I couldn’t get a picture of the RLO in action, as I was too busy being Chris Tarrant – but this is me, back in my office.

Blow your trumpets!

2007-02-08T14:58:00.000Z

I attended an excellent workshop on Teaching Information Skills yesterday at Northampton. Many IL 'names' were there including Chris Powis, Jo Webb, Ruth Stubbings and Moira Bent (whose blog I subscribe to!). I spent most of the day scribbling down inspirational ideas for taking IL forward at UoB and I'm still in the process of writing up my notes.

However, I did want to put up the InfoTeach wiki URL http://www.infoteach.org asap to encourage people to add to it and to edit what's already there. During discussion it became clear that many librarians still feel shy about blowing their own trumpet. But, paraphrasing the immortal words of Blackadder, we need to know that they've at least got a trumpet!

I'll be forwarding on the URL to my librarian colleagues here at Birmingham and we'll see if there's much interest. As one attendee yesterday said, it's sometimes a matter of shifting your mind set to contribute to wikis and not worry about it not being perfect. Well, we've got a pretty good example of Wikipedia to show us that it takes collaboration and passion for a topic to really get a wiki off the ground. I don't know about you but the librarians I know are passionate about teaching and are very good at collaborating, so I see no excuse - get trumpeting!

Students like the RLOs (and cake!)

2007-02-05T16:00:00.000Z

“I’ve been thinking for ages about how to get the best out of elibrary and now I’ve seen these RLOs, I’ve learnt loads.”

Last Wednesday, 31 Jan 2007, we ran a student focus group to get feedback on the BRUM project, and RLOs and information skills in general. Persuaded to attend by a ludicrous amount of mini-muffins and mini-danishes (and a small financial incentive), 10 students from a range of subject contributed to the session.
It was great to watch everybody using the materials, and feedback was extremely positive.
Specific comments about the RLOs:

- Podcasts: easy to follow, “I’ve learnt something new!” (shock, horror!) and suggestions for improvement included: slowing them down, and improving the audio quality
- Turning Point Quizzes – “these would make lectures more interesting”
- Captivate demoes – liked the idea of pausing and watching bits again. Interestingly, one respondent had already seen one of the captivates but noted “I only learnt something after watching for the 2nd time”. Also suggested making the text boxes bigger.
- CYOA powerpoints – “makes searching more efficient”
- Digital Recordings – “you can use it to teach yourself”
This was extremely encouraging and provides useful information for us to plan for the further development of some of the RLOs before next academic year. The clear message coming out of the group was “these need more promotion” as one student noted:

“if it wasn’t for this meeting today I would never have found these, and wouldn’t have even imagined that this type of thing existed.”

The 2nd half of the focus group explored self-directed learning channels and information skills more generally – will post details shortly.

'Learning is a conversation, not merely a lecture'

2007-01-24T15:44:00.000Z

We've started the new year very well by having a short paper accepted at this year's LILAC in March. This will be a great opportunity to meet so many people that we've been in contact with about our project and to talk about possible future collaborations. It will also be a great chance to get some instant peer feedback about our project. We hope to meet many like minded librarians and to see what everyone else has been up to in the IL field nationally.

We're coming towards the end of the project now, with just a student focus group and an informal discussion with the academics involved to get through. We've also started writing up our project report, which will be finished by the end of February, so we'll have March to perfect our presentation!

Closer to home and all students at Birmingham received a welcome email from the University on their return after Christmas. This email highlights the importance of becoming 'enquiry-led learn(ers)' and goes on to describe attributes of an enquiry-led learner, including 'happily seek(ing) out your own resources, above and beyond those recommended by your tutors' and 'think(ing) critically about what you hear and read, weighing up the facts to come to your own conclusions'.

As information professionals we must tap into this university ideal of the enquiry-led learner with our embedded information skills training and generic training across the disciplines, focusing on self-directed study and using a problem based approach. We can help students achieve this ideal by supporting them to become information literate. We can also link at a higher position with the university's aims for independent learning by getting involved at the policy and committee stages and showing that we have an expertise that is invaluable at a strategic as well as practical level.

Enough excitement for now - we'll report back on the focus group....

PRINCE

2007-01-08T12:47:00.000Z

Picture: Main Library, University of Birmingham

In order to manage the BRUM project, we’ve used the full Prince 2 project management methodology. I initially thought this was over the top for a small-scale project, but in fact this has proved exceptionally useful in a number of ways:

Milestones – As part of our Project initiation document we set clear milestones, and have to report monthly against these. This ensures a real focus on what needs to be done.

Communications plan – We all think we publicise our projects and developments, but are we communicating to the right people at the right time? This clear communications plan, ensures that we communicate to all stakeholders in a systematic manner.

Issue, Risk and Assumption Log – Extremely useful for articulating what might go wrong and planning contingenices.

Information Services (University of Birmingham) now use PRINCE 2 and PRINCE Lite to manage all of their projects (currently over 100). A Project Office has been set up to oversee this, and have been extremely supportive and helpful - thanks especially to Rea Shahein and Vicky Holmes

End of year blog

2006-12-21T12:55:00.000Z

We thought that as it's nearing the end of 2006 and the beginning of the New Year we'd have a mini review of what we've acheived so far with our project. We met with staff in our Project Support Office yesterday so that got us thinking about certain aspects of our project.

Creation of RLOs vs. liaison
I think we both started off with the idea that the creation of the RLOs would be the most time consuming section of the project. However, we now realise that it's the liaison, advocacy and promotion which has taken up most of our time and is the aspect least in our control. Even when we used new software and came across technical barriers we managed to create our RLOs on time and to a basic specification.

The difficulty came when trying to get academics on board and stay on board. This was partly due to the time of year that we chose to begin our project. The autumn term is busy enough without project work but trying to juggle usign BRUM RLOs with delivery of their curriculum proved too much for some of our academics. We would recommend anybody attempting something similar spend the spring/summer term heavily promoting and getting staff on board and then by the time the new academic year starts RLOs can already be embedded.

External response
We were really surprised and pleased to receive some great responses to an email we posted on the LIS-INFOLITERACY mailing list. I'm drafting an email to send out to respondees with suggestions for future collaboration and the possibility of arranging a mini-conference/symposium at which we can all discuss RLO issues and future projects.

Project management network
Internally we also discussed the possibility of an annual meeting of all project managers within the university. We feel as if we're on a steep learning curve and that we've already learned so much that we'd like to pass on or share with others. It would be really useful to get together with other project managers to get ideas about what's worked and what hasn't in their projects.

Looking ahead
We've thoroughly enjoyed the project so far and we're now looking to 2007 with focus groups in January and an end of project report in February. However, we've had so many ideas for post-project actions that we know our involvement in RLOs and BRUM won't end when we hand in the project report.

We also look forward to continued inspiration from colleagues in the university and further afield. See you in 2007!

UCEL - Universities’ Collaboration in eLearning

2006-12-13T16:20:00.000Z

The UCeL website now includes links to a range of subject-specific RLOs, all of which are interactive and include quality audio-visual materials. These are well worth looking at, and we would be really interested in hearing from anybody who has had a chance to use them (or re-use them!)

New and exciting

2006-12-05T11:30:00.000Z

I subscribe to Ben Toth's Libraries in the NHS blog and there was a link on it yesterday to the blog of Tim Berners-Lee. I had a look at it and now subscribe to that too. Keeping up with the inventor of the world wide web is very interesting and you find out all sorts of things about new web languages, the semantic web and how the usage of the web is changing.

There is also a blog entry by Tim on net neutrality; how we must keep the web/net country neutral and not let one single body have authority over it. Through listening to one of the History of Information audio lectures from UC Berkeley this morning I went on the moveon.org site and noticed that they've got a Save the Internet campaign going on the same issue of net neutrality - please visit the site and register your support any way you can. It's crucial that we preserve the incredible freedoms we enjoy on the web and are able to continue to explore new ways of sharing information (including RLOs) and collaborating on projects.

All of my recent reading on RLOs/repositories and my work with our institutional VLE is leading me to think about how web users (especially students) will shape our own online world. Imagine if everyone used a piece of personal web space to link to or interact with every aspect of their online world. So, you'd have all of your links (bank, e-commerce etc.), communications (blogs, MySpace, email etc.), work (institutional VLEs, RLOs etc.) and recreation (music, films, books etc.) hosted in the same space and every new link that you found could be added to it. Visually it could look like a mind map. It would make a lot of sense to someone like me and maybe it's already happening with the semantic web. Tim Berners-Lee (and others) is creating a new type of web broswer, the Tabulator. If anyone can help me to understand if this is moving in the right direction let me know.

Repositories

2006-12-05T10:39:00.000Z

I went to a demonstration of the Intrallect repository software yesterday. Several HEIs already use their IntraLibrary product to host electronic learning objects, so too do the BBC with their Jam initiative. The JISC JORUM project use IntraLibrary too and I've been looking closely at JORUM to see if we'd consider contributing learning objects to it.

During the demo we discussed the idea of an institutional repository but apart from generic skills (IT, studying, referencing etc.) we were unsure about why, for example, a medical academic would want to upload subject specific material for a history academic to use. How re-usable are subject learning objects within an institution? I can see the value in contributing and re-using learning objects from other institutions that are maybe useful to you but not within your own university. However, we need to find out what academics think about this, maybe a SWOT analysis of all possible contributors.

After the demo I got to thinking about the responses to our email and how there are several other HEIs hosting their own IL RLOs and that maybe a national/regional site to host objects is much more logical - just like the North West Information Skills Group Moodle site. I can't remember if we've mentioned the Library Instruction Wiki (?) but it's another example of a pool of materials, ideas and ways of doing things. I've never written material on website evaluation because I've already found at least two excellent worksheets/flowcharts which do the job brilliantly, one from the Quality on the Web site and one from the Cardiff site mentioned in the link on the right, proof that we don't all feel the need to 're-invent the wheel'.

Maybe once we've put out some feelers we'll get a better idea of how a repository would be used and by whom. I'll also be contacting other users of IntraLibrary to find out how they have found it.

The ipod generation

2006-12-01T16:08:00.000Z

Did you know – 59% of students have an MP3 player, 79% have their own laptop or PC and 99.8% a mobile phone. (more detail) How times have changed from when I was a student and all we had was pen and paper, and relied on books for information.
What strikes me is that we have to keep up with the ipod generation, and work with them using their channels and their technology if we want to engage with them. Pen and paper and books alone just aren’t enough any more.

This is why its no surprise that podcasts are so popular. Sheffield have had over 1700 downloads of their excellent audio tours; Curtin are using weekly library podcasts to promote library services – with casts covering everything from resources and referencing to information about wireless access, borrowing and stories on historic Freemantle. They have had 5000 downloads since September.

The information isn’t new, but the way that we reach our students and engage with them is (or needs to be) and I think if we don’t start using “their” technology we are in danger of being by-passed.

Camtasia

2006-11-29T15:14:00.000Z

Picture: The University Lake in Autumn

Just received an additional copy of the Camtasia software (and sister product: SnagIt) that we’ve used for the Digital Recordings and Podcasts. This is really sophisticated software for combining audio and multi-media presentations and screen-capture and we will certainly be exploring this further, to allow us to develop really high quality and durable RLOs. I’m particularly keen to investigate adding further interactivity to engage students more (we can use ‘interactive flash hot spots’) and there are some nice features such as having background music and ‘zoom and pan’ (zooming into specific areas of a video to highlight them).

Responses so far...

2006-11-28T11:41:00.000Z

We've already had several positive responses to our posting on LIS-INFOLITERACY. Thank you to all those who have contacted us. Most respondees sent details of similar projects with links, so I'll put these up on the right hand side. It's good to note that those who contacted us are interested in collaboration and that they're producing RLOs for local respositories, either institution-wide or in the region.

So, there are several other efforts being made across the UK to create RLOs and organise them in some way. I wonder if eventually we will have fewer number of larger repositories across the UK hosting these RLOs? Or do librarians/academics prefer to have local learning objects, subject-specific and relevant only to their institution? I may well dig around LISA to find articles on any projects/repositories further afield (Australia/US/Europe).

From RLO to GLO (and back again!)

2006-11-24T14:40:00.000Z

Thank you to Heather McBryde-Wilding from the University of Northampton, who sent me some interesting information about a GLO in Ethical Decision Making they are involved in, through the UCEL (Universities’ Collaboration in eLearning)

GLOs (Generative Learning Objects) are “any learning object that can be customised, adapted, edited or recombined for specific teaching and learning purposes.” An underlying principle seems to be the separation of content and structure, so that materials can be more easily adapted. There is further detail, articles and examples at: http://www.ucel.ac.uk/glos/default.htm

I hadn’t heard of GLOs until now, but I really like this idea and am sure we will hear a lot more about them in the future: one of our current issues is how re-usable are RLOs, and are people really re-using / re-purposing them? And why are so many people creating their own RLOs! The GLO use of templates and architecture provide a framework for RLO development and re-purposing and I’m sure we will hear a lot more about it in the future. Practically, however, we are still a long way off practitioners and academics using / understanding RLOs, and there remains a lot of discussion and advocacy work to be done.

Librarian’s Top 3 RLOs

2006-11-21T12:59:00.000Z

Picture: University of Birmingham - Main Library, the hub of RLO creation and evaluation!

Following on from Nancy’s post about the excellent feedback we had from our librarian colleagues, we have now received further useful evaluations, which will inform the future development of the RLOs and their use at the University. I thought it would also be interesting to poll colleagues for their ‘top 3’ RLOs. Although based on a small sample (currently of 4), the current combined view is:

1) Digital Recording - Library Tour
2) Turning Point (personal response system) - Referencing
3) Podcast – elibrary

Overall there was a very wide range of interest in the different RLOs, and comments indicated that people imagined using them in very different ways.
What are your Top 3? (RLOs available from the BRUM RLOs for download link)
And how do you use them?

Project promotion and JORUM

2006-11-21T12:42:00.000Z

We finally got around to sending out an email to the LIS-INFOLITERACY mailing list, calling out for news of any similar projects in the UK. It would be great to get some feedback on the RLOs from other librarians too.

We are now busy helping academics post the RLOs on their WebCT sections and encouraging students to fill in the diagnostic questionnaire. We will post updates as and when we get them.

On a related note, I attended a JORUM training session in Leicester a couple of weeks ago and it was really useful in highlighting how we could best organise and use any RLOs created at the University. Eventually we could have a system in which a co-ordinator gathers together all RLOs, quality checks them and contributes them to JORUM.

But I think the most interesting part would happen after someone else downloads, re-purposes and re-uses a learning object. To be able to track any changes that took place with an RLO that you created would be really useful to see how they evolve and at which point they are most useful etc. I spoke to the techy person from JORUM who thought this was a good idea, but said that any updated or edited RLOs wouldn't be able to go back into JORUM due to copyright restrictions. Maybe something for the future...

Do you use Learning Object Repositories?

2006-11-14T15:38:00.000Z

The JISC CDLOR (Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories) has just produced an interesting report on if and how people involved in teaching and learning currently find, create, store and share their educational resources.

Findings suggest that there is significant sharing of work, but that this is predominantly within departments and via email and the majority of respondents re-purpose materials (rather than using them without modification). Issues include the searchability of repositories, the trustworthiness of resources, and the integration of repositories with institutional VLEs.

RLO evaluation

2006-11-14T12:37:00.000Z

I've just read the evaluation of our RLOs by two of our librarian colleagues. They're really valuable and both come up with some excellent suggestions. I suppose it's a bit like having our very own editoral board looking at what we've created and quality assuring the content. Having an outsider look at your work and criticise it is really very useful.

It's brought up issues that we were already aware of, such as the technical aspects that we need to improve upon to make the RLOs more user friendly. What we'll need to do is put some time aside to make improvements to the RLOs and release new versions of them. These learning objects can't stand still, they must constantly evolve and be allowed to change as appropriate.

We've also decided that we need to make several versions of RLOs available at the same time. Our colleagues have had problems downloading the eLibrary podcasts and we're thinking about putting up three or four different software types to choose from.

Colleagues also made the point that these RLOs can be embedded not only in course material but also within appropriate library web pages so that our referencing RLOs are linked to from our referencing website and so on.

Another interesting point made by a colleague is that we should have a clearer framework for each RLO, focusing on who our intended users are and maybe even putting together learning outcomes for each learning object. I think this would make a crucial part of a workflow document each time an RLO is produced, especially if we then contribute it to JORUM.

More soon....

Students like RLO !

2006-11-10T14:37:00.000Z

We used the Captivate ‘Doing a Literature Search’ RLO in a lecture room, with 2nd year Business students this week. Despite being eerily quiet (as there isn’t any sound with this RLO), the RLO was really well received., students’ confidence improved and students appeared to be receptive to the idea of an RLO.

Student comments were particularly enlightening: most (33 out of 58) found out how to ‘find and use information' through trial and error. Second was ‘friends’ and joint third ‘lecturers’ and ‘self-guided materials’. Only 5 replies mentioned ‘a course’ and 1 a ‘library tour’, and nobody mentioned their friendly librarian! This suggests to me that we still have a lot to do in reaching out to students and supporting them in ways and at a time that are meaningful to them. Hopefully providing quality RLOs will help in this area, alongside providing more embedded information skills sessions, in context and at the point of need.

Eduserv Projects

2006-11-03T10:20:00.000Z

As you're probably aware The Eduserv Foundation are the kind funders for our BRUM project. Interesting to see the 3 other projects they are funding - the 'national information literacy framework' project being run by Glasgow Caledonian sounds particularly useful.

Eduserv Foundation Information Literacy Projects

First RLO feedback

2006-11-02T14:24:00.000Z

We finally had our first use of an RLO in a face to face training session. I supported a colleague during an induction talk and used the Search Strategy Quiz on Turning Point software. We'd spent time setting up the software on a laptop and had booked support from our hardware team. Unfortunately our 'techy' wasn't able to get the quiz handsets to work so I had to make do with the old fashioned show-of-hands.

However, despite the technical problems the students filled in our questionnaire to measure impact of the quiz and the feedback was positive.

We are currently tackling the technical issues and hope to use the Turning Point soft/hardware again next week with another set of students. We'll report back on the outcome.

RLO Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

2006-10-26T15:00:00.000Z

The RLO CETL (run by London Met, Cambridge and Nottingham) has just issued its first newsletter http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/news/docs/RLO_CETL_News_Sum06.pdf
This highlights some of the RLOs now available on its website.

For example, there are really good quality RLOs on quantitative and qualitative research, reflective writing and statistics, as well as some more subject specific resources.
Have a look and let us know what you think!

Tackling plagiarism

2006-10-18T09:33:00.000Z

An article in the Education Guardian yesterday reported on the plan by Universities UK (UUK) to hold a conference on plagiarism caught my eye. The plan is to produce national guidelines so that universities won't have to come up with their own rules and regs and every student will be judged equally. Read it here: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1924352,00.html

I was interested as some of our RLOs are on referencing and cover the WHY of referencing. A simple, short digital recording or Turning Point quiz could be very useful in explaining why it's important to reference other's work in a fun, interactive way. It's already being done in lots of universities and websites like Intute's Internet Detective (http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/) are also playing a useful role.

The more interactive and relevant we can make it for students the more the message should sink in.

The new and improved BRUM project webpage!

2006-10-18T09:09:00.000Z

Please take a look at our new RLO repository webpage at http://www.is.bham.ac.uk/blasst/brum.htm. All 15 RLOs are now on here complete with files and download instructions - it couldn't be easier to use them!

Eventually we hope to have a webpage with a more relevant URL but for now it's great to have everything just one mouse click away, not hidden within WebCT. We're hoping this will make them more attractive and easier to use.

Who wants to be a Millionaire?

2006-10-17T15:49:00.000Z

Well don’t we all! While we work out how to (maybe RLOs are the next big You Tube !), just a quick post about the technology used in the Ask the Audience bit of the show. We have bought a site licence for a very similar system, a Personal Response Systems (or Clickers for short), using Turning Point software. Everyone on campus can download the software from www.turningtechnologies.com then from the top bar select Downloads – TurningPoint Software, TurningPoint 2006 Installation and then accept all defaults. The software will be downloaded and cancel any messages about registering via phone / email. The software looks exactly like powerpoint, but with an extra toolbar.

Its that easy to create interactive quizzes for your lectures and seminars! Please get in touch if you’d like further details or a demonstration. We’ve created 3 RLOs using this software – one on referencing, another on the range of resources available to students and the third on search strategy. Hope you enjoy using these!

MERLOT

2006-10-10T14:50:00.000Z

MERLOT - Multi-media Educational Resources for teaching and learning
http://www.merlot.org

MERLOT is an excellent repository of re-usable learning objects. (RLOs). All of the RLOs are peer-reviewed and created specifically for HE. Although US-biased in content, all of the resources are really well designed, interactive and visually appealing.

It is well worth registering and browsing your subject area, or searching for specific topics, and you can save interesting objects to your own personal collection.

In relation to Information Skills there are some excellent materials on search strategies and using the internet – and ultimately these are the benchmark to which we aspire! (Dream on!)

Feedback on UC Berkeley webcasts

2006-10-05T22:03:00.000Z

So I've now watched a couple of the video lectures that I mentioned in my last post. The most interesting video was not the Sergey Brin lecture (he's not such a great speaker) but the Geoffrey Nunberg talk. Dr Nunberg focused on how society has placed 'real world' print models on information on the web. I may not explain it as well as he (he is a good speaker) but it got me thinking about how we, as librarians, try to re-create our inductions and skills sessions as web tutorials almost exactly as we'd do them face to face.

There is a problem with transferring material from face to face lectures to virtual learning environments. Some lecturers/librarians will simply stick up their lecture notes/PPT slides etc. in the same old Times New Roman font and think that this is 'e-learning'. I don't think it is. Students don't want to sit and read a text heavy lecture because that's not what people like to use the net for. They might print off that lecture, so what was the point of putting it online? Is this really utilising the web to it's fullest e-learning potential?

The accessibility of the web has changed the way we use the material published on it and the values that we give it. I happily pay 70p for a print newspaper but wouldn't dream of paying, at point of access, for an online version. I even expect more from the online version - value added, if you like - and the same goes for our online tutorials.

I've just had a quick trawl of a few UK universities' library websites to check out any online inductions/tours/tutorials. I know that there are plenty of techy, interactive tutorials out there but the ones that I looked at were text heavy with no images or any interaction. I did find an audio tour at Southampton and one at Sheffield. Web technology can allow us to really make library inductions user friendly at point of need not at our convenience. Liaise with your academics, respond to their needs and embed training at point of need.

Get Casting !

2006-10-04T10:33:00.000Z

“Podcasts are adding the ‘human touch’ to previously dry corporate information”
Information World Review, Oct 2006 issue 228 p18-20.
This is a really interesting article highlighting the value of podcasts in allowing time-poor people to ‘time-shift’ – using previously ‘dead time’ and the value of podcasts over text-based information: “audio conveys personality, passions, interests.”

At the technological end of podcasting, its possible to include music, multiple speakers and scripted programming – all things we need to explore further. Lincolnshire County Council have led the way in using Readspeaker Podcaster to automatically convert text-based news feeds. Clever stuff! As the article notes podcast search engines such as podzinger and podscope are going to increase in importance, and need to develop to allow better resource discovery – searching beyond the podcast metadata to the audio files themselves. On a day to day basis there’s so much scope for using podcasts to improve working life: by recording key meetings / briefings, capturing expert knowledge for wider dissemination, and for encapsulating information that can be assimilated on the move (what better way to be briefed than via your ipod on your 10 min walk to a meeting?)

Ultimately these developments have the potential to fundamentally change the way we do business at the University, in terms of internal communication, publicity and promotion and scholarly communications. Come on Birmingham – get Casting !

Google search video lectures from UC Berkeley

2006-10-04T10:19:00.000Z

I've just seen this link to 6 videoed lectures on Google etc. on Ben Toth's excellent blog 'Libraries in the NHS'. There's even one with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. I've yet to watch them so any feedback on them would be interesting. I'll let you know what I think once I've looked at them properly. Here's the link: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=owner%3Aucberkeley+is141&page=1&so=2

BRUM in the Guardian

2006-09-28T10:41:00.000Z

Brilliant to see Nancy's quote from this blog cited in the Guardian, in response to a letter about the use and abuse of Google. See http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,1866056,00.html for more details.

MP3s for OPen Days

2006-09-25T16:20:00.000Z

Nice to see the University using Audio recordings for its recent Open Days.
http://www.opendays.bham.ac.uk/undergraduate

Law have an interesting 5 minute MP3 file, based on questions and answers with the school, while Medicine and Psychology have a number of smaller files focusing on specific aspects, such as Entry Requirements, Graduate entry, First Impressions of Birmingham, and Psychology have also included a student perspective. I really like this idea and think these have been very well thought out – look out for Information Services input next time!

IL training - the frog way

2006-09-25T08:15:00.000Z

Ann-Marie found this fantastic video on Google that uses a frog puppet to teach search strategy. It' s very simple but effective. Take a look here: http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=%22information+literacy%22

Demo to academics

2006-09-20T15:29:00.000Z

Yesterday afternoon we welcomed five academics from four Schools to demonstrate our RLOs to them and to discuss the idea of using RLOs for information skills training. It went pretty well, there were no technological problems (thanks Debbie!) and they were all positive about the RLOs.

They were very interested in software that we'd used to create the RLOs and most of them could say which ones they would use specifically for courses they run. I feel that this is a win-win situation, as we're the ones doing all the work, customising RLOs and then we just hand them over to academics to use - how could they resist?

I suppose the important battle is making them see how important the skills training is in the first place. So, it's plugging into the fact that their students need to know how to set up a proxy server from their PC in Belguim or need a brief refresher on referencing. Find out the gaps and fill them with interesting, interactive stuff.

We've sent out a follow up email asking them for slightly more formal feedback with their top 3 choice of RLOs. Then we can set about arranging the logistics of using them with students and assessing their usefulness.

More powerpoint adventures (or not!)

2006-09-13T15:05:00.000Z

Inspired by the old ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ (CYOA) books which we all read in our youth (didn’t we?), the idea behind the CYOA power-points is to empower the user by giving him choices about what he wants to learn, and to do this in an interactive way in order to facilitate engagement.

This is far more difficult than it sounds for information literacy-type areas. Firstly, the subject matter is pretty dry - its difficult enough to generate enthusiasm when you have a face-to-face ‘information literacy’ class and have the best jokes and props to hand, so to try and generate interest on a standalone power-point is a challenge that we still have to conquer. Also, in my experience classroom sessions work best when run within their subject context, drawing on meaningful subject examples and especially when you tackle their forthcoming essay question ! – to tailor a CYOA powerpoint essentially means starting from scratch and is pretty resource-intensive.

Secondly, it is actually far harder to create one of these adventures than it first seems. A 3-choice, 20-30 slide CYOA power-point takes at least a day to create. This is because the whole slide show needs to be meticulously mapped out before-hand: one extra explanatory slide in the presentation can put the whole adventure out and 100+ links will need amending.

Hopefully these problems can be mitigated by adding colour, pictures and possibly even sound to enliven the adventure. Part of our project is about learning what works well as an RLO and what doesn’t, and we will certainly be evaluating this in more detail.

If you have had experience creating CYOA powerpoints, we’d be interested to hear from you!

Podcasting fun

2006-09-06T09:24:00.000Z

We’ve heard a lot about pod-casting over the last year and Nancy and I spent a fun afternoon yesterday recording 2 for this project:

1) An audio induction to the library. This concentrates on the key messages we want to get across and we hope that in time it will reduce the need for doing endless tours and induction talks. A recent survey at Birmingham found that over half of our students now have ipods / MP3 players so it makes sense to start using this technology.

2) An audio guide to our elibrary service. This is our flagship service, providing access to all of our electronic journals and databases. Although use of this is high, there are still many students who use Google as a first port of call, so the idea of this podcast is to make elibrary use as simple and useful as possible to capture these students. We hope that students might listen to this while on their home PC and beginning to explore what’s available.

We will be recording our third podcast next week:

3) The student experience. Thanks to the Guild Officers who have agreed to participate and have some great tips for making best use of the library. Surveys have found that students are most likely to seek help from their friends / fellow students, so it makes sense to capture this and use it to promote the library / information literacy.
We’re using Camtasia software for this and learning it as we go along – quite a task and many a botched recording on the way! The software is really quite advanced so we hope to explore this further later in the term and enhance some of our recordings with music and better editing etc. We both love exploring new technology, but its important not to under-estimate the time it takes to really master and make best use of this type of software. The final challenge is how to make these downloadable from WebCT, so our next task is to consult with our elearning team to check this out.

There is a need for information literacy!

2006-09-04T13:52:00.000Z

Even though I was in the process of painting my bathroom last Thursday, I still had time (during a tea break) to read a very interesting article in The Guardian Technology section (http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1861112,00.html) about web searching habits. It seems that the first result on any search engine will get 42.1% of click throughs, meaning that web searchers have so much faith in the search engine coming up with the goods that they'll trust that top result. But does it mean, the author asks, that the top result contains factual information?

This is the problem that many of us librarians face when delivering information skills training to students. As I stand in front of 400 new medical students on the 2nd of October my main message will be "Don't click the first result!!". I will be using exercises and problem based learning to teach them how to find good quality information on the web.

And so with our RLOs. These useful little tools will also help to increase awareness about the importance of information literacy. To evaluate the information they find as well as how to reference it correctly are still vital skills for students. A colleague of mine today returned from a meeting of academics who are creating a set of classes on reading, comprehending and evaluating academic papers. We can slot into this training and support our academics with online courses, face to face sessions and electronic RLOs. We can use articles like the one in The Guardian to promote our services to those who know that there is an information skills gap.

2006-08-30T13:35:00.000Z

RLOs on the web

As part of this BRUM (Birmingham Re-Usable Materials) project, we conducted a brief audit into materials already available.

A key player in this area is obviously the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Re-Usable Learning Objects, led by London Metropolitan University, in partnership with the Universities of Nottingham and Cambridge. www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk Although still at an early stage in their development their site already contains some relevant information literacy materials such as an interactive referencing RLO and there are RLOs for reflective writing and qualitative and quantitative research etc.

JORUM www.jorum.ac.uk is also beginning to take off, as a national repository of academic-quality re-usable materials. There are a number of information-literacy type materials in JORUM and we be adding our own RLOs to this.

Personally, I also really like the idea of Cardiff’s Information Literacy Resource Bank https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/ and the way they are encouraging academics to utilise their materials in their VLE.

Less-reusable (as they are institution-specific) but good examples of the use of technology for induction and information literacy, are the Sheffield ipod tour http://www.lbasg.group.shef.ac.uk/downloads/index.html and the Warwick Learning Grid recording http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/grid/users/firsttime/
We are particularly interested in their use of peer-to-peer support and learning and one of our own RLOs will include students’ own perspectives on what is important in the library.

There are certainly many more good examples. If you know of any useful information literacy Re-Usable Learning Objects or innovative use of technology in this area, please do post a comment / get in touch.

Choose your own library adventure

2006-08-14T11:28:00.000Z

Here at the University of Birmingham, Ann-Marie James and myself, of the Academic Liaison and Collection Development department of Information Services, have bid successfully for a research grant from Eduserv to do a project on creation, use and impact of a suite of electronic reusable learning objects (RLOs) to help students with their information skills. For example, we've created a Turning Point interactive quiz on basic referencing.

We've got some academics on board who will pilot the RLOs in their lectures etc. in the autumn term and we're going to put on focus groups and have pre and post RLO questionnaires to find out how useful they are.

We've created quite a few of the fifteen RLOs (3 versions of 5 different type) and it's been a steep learning curve using some of the software.

There are Captivate demos, Turning Point interactive quizzes, choose your own adventure PowerPoints, digital recordings using Camtasia and Captivate and mp3 Podcasts using Camtasia and iTunes.

There is still a long to do list. I've just jotted down some ideas for the publicity material, to go into our divisional newsletter etc. , scripting the next digital recording and meeting with the project officer to check we're doing everything correctly. There will be updates as and when exciting things happen.

Here we are embracing technology! - Nancy on the left, Ann-Marie on the right.