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.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
ReJiG at Birmingham and beyond...
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.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
BRUM and ISCoP in Dublin
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...
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Subject advice
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.
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.
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