OER Synthesis and Evaluation / Institutional Strand Technical and Hosting Issues
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Institutional Strand Technical and Hosting Issues

Page history last edited by Lou McGill 13 years, 6 months ago

JISC CETIS PROD Monitoring software, technology and standards pages provide a technical view of the projects

 

Institutional Strand Projects encountered a range of technical challenges relating to development of OERs, hosting, discoverability and tracking. These are discussed in appropriate sections below.

 

Are there any messages around tools and standards that come from the programme?

BERLiN (University of Nottingham)

  • Technological barriers can be a very real issue to open publishing and additional resources dedicated to content conversion may be required. Nevertheless, the cost benefits of re-use and re-purpose of OER remain, especially where mechanisms to support re-purpose exist. Nottingham‘s open source e-learning development tool Xerte Online Toolkits is already empowering non-technical teaching staff worldwide to create highly interactive and accessible multimedia learning materials
  • much of the material offered to us would be electronic versions of paper documents – typically Word, PowerPoint and PDF files. The obvious way to release these as OER, with minimal additional work was to write small linking HTML files. We named the structure that would result from this a module framework.
  • Staff to make their own module frameworks using eXe xhtml editor
  • To support discoverability, U-Now builds on the three most important factors in search engine discoverability: web content; web links; and the HTML code itself. To enhance discoverability by increasing the number of returns yielded by searches, the project team have increased the use of keywords, alt titles in HTML tags, biographical data on web pages and included pedagogic types and JACS. To enhance link density, we have added links to U-Now from OER referral/information sites (e.g. oerwiki16) as well as maintaining a project Twitter feed. The project however never realised the full benefits of using Twitter as this proved to be a time consuming task, requiring regular commitment of time not readily available during the lifespan of the project. The exploitation of web 2.0 social connectivity tools however remains an objective for the BERLiN project team. The team have decided not to create a Wikipedia page about the project as we felt this would fall under self-advertising, which may result in an adverse response from the Wikipedia user community. A potential future development could also be the reciprocal referral of OER sites within the UKOER programme to enhance discoverability for all involved.
  • The benefits and challenges in using RSS for OER submission and aggregation at Nottingham have been documented under the XPERT project23. However, for U-Now the main benefits have been: easy creation; easy distribution; automatic updates (although not currently possible for JorumOpen); and the potential to filter and target resources.

Openspires (University of Oxford)

  • The content is available through multiple delivery channels: podcasts.ox.ac.uk, JorumOpen, iTunes U, Mobile Oxford (m.ox.ac.uk, Oxford’s new mobile services site for any web-capable mobile phone), WebLearn (the University’s virtual learning environment, see Figure 3), and Departmental websites. These delivery channels increase the impact and accessibility of the content and are made possible by consistent metadata and a lightweight syndication protocol (RSS).
  • Adopting a standardised workflow for content production has been fundamental to the success of this project. As outlined in Section 6.2 Content Acquisition the workflow was established for the iTunesU project with the addition of the steps necessary for open content licensing. The workflow will continue to be used after the pilot project has finished, thereby ensuring a sustainable process for OER release at Oxford. The contribution form used to obtain licences and warranties from contributors presents an option to approve Creative Commons release.
  • OSS Watch and OpenSpires - Presentation to OER10 Conference March 2010

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • The publication of OERs in multiple formats enables a substantial amount of flexibility for users; however, the time-consuming nature of the production process is likely to be a barrier to maintaining this practice beyond the lifespan of OTTER.
  • Simplicity and open access, which means preferably no website registration. Low bandwidth versions of OERs
  • iTunes U will also enable users to access the audio and video OERs on handheld devices.
  • All print materials have been produced in both printable (e.g. MS Word, PDF) and html formats, as well as rtf for easy repurposing.

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

 

What kinds of metadata are essential, what desirable, and what are the issues in creating and managing metadata?

Which metadata standards should be applied to balance flexibility and accessibility?

Who creates the metadata?

BERLiN (University of Nottingham)

  • The copyright clearance and initial metadata tagging were carried out by a part time specialist and the remaining metadata completed through overtime from the University metadata and cataloguing team.
  • OER Africa evaluation – inclusion of intended level of use
  • UK LOM metadata standard (& JACS subject classification)
  • essential to take guidance from expert cataloguers (informed structure of U-Now repository

OCEP (University of Coventry)

  • resource description framework has been designed with reference to LOM and IMS Learning Design standards.
  • Our internal data suggests that the majority of Curve users (over 90%) automatically use full-text search rather than one based on tags. We may need to include some advice on searching the resource in the wrapper.

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)

  • combination of expert free text input from the originator of the resource followed by input from an administrator using an authority controlled subject classification scheme
  • Discussions during Programme support Elluminate sessions and dialogue between projects was recognised as being of significant beneficial to several projects
  • IMS (LOM) metadata standard
  • images in design studies collection catalogued to MODES standard (used by museums)
  • Metadata and Repositories event

Openspires (University of Oxford)

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

 

What mechanisms are in use to allow end users to contribute and how do we deal with the validity/quality of responses?

BERLiN (University of Nottingham)

  • We currently do not employ a rating system for items submitted on U-Now as this raises a number of issues:
    • Who is rating the resource and are they best placed to make a judgement over quality?
    • What impact on uptake will there be if negative ratings are promoted?
    • How independent would U-Now be regarded by an external audience? Should alternative neutral sites such as JorumOpen or MERLOT employ rating systems instead?
  • The inclusion of comments on U-Now requires further consideration. There is an email address for feedback to the team, but no option to comment directly on individual items. This may prove to be an attractive feature for contributors, but potentially opens up U-Now to spamming if appropriate restrictions are not employed and any display of comments would need to be monitored. Further exploration of web 2.0 social mechanisms will form part of ongoing developments of U-Now.''

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

 

How do existing repositories support the release, management, discovery preservation and access to OERs e.g. OpenJorum in the UK, institutional repositories within an institution, web sources globally, etc.

Choices re deposit in general – how many places – repository vs web 2.0 mechanisms?

Choices around deposit were related to existing institutional technical infrastructures. Projects with institutional repositories benefited from having existing repository teams and processes, which needed adapting to incorporate open release of materials. One project implemented a repository in parallel to the project. Four projects opted to use a content management system. All projects also utilised web services to either store or publicise materials. Most projects saw a value in depositing once and then surfacing through many alternative mechanisms.

BERLiN (Univesity of Nottingham)

  • already had an open educational repository since 2007

OCEP (University of Coventry)

  • model was VLE to closed repository to open within repository and other mechanisms - many resources were sophisticated collections of interlinked smaller resources - using description wrappers in open collection to apply context
  • pedagogic description wrappers constituted actual content deposited in JorumOpen pointing to actual content within institutional repository
  • staff show marked preference for depositing into CURVE repository and then linking to master copy
  • considering integration of repository and web 2.0 mechanisms re archiving and preservation

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

  • We were required to set up our own repository and also make our material available via JorumOpen. Unlike some other projects, we had to create our repository from scratch, though we had some expertise because we already had two related repositories
  • From the beginning we decided to embed our new OER repository, called Open Exeter into this wider infrastructure. The University is now developing another repository for research data. All four repositories are based upon DSpace and so sustainability is factored into them collectively.
  • the requirement to address two repositories, namely our own and JorumOpen contributed to some ambiguity and confusion regarding whether we had to deposit the same material in Open Exeter and JorumOpen. Self evidently, this would be very poor database practice.
  • We also wished to build a ‘pedagogical wrapper’ around our material and this would only be available with Open Exeter. Commonsense finally prevailed and we are now linking from JorumOpen to Open Exeter.
  • Ideally, we want JorumOpen to be able to harvest our metadata but this option is still under development by Jorum.

Openspires (University of Oxford)

  • materials can be discovered through all University distribution channels including the web, iTunesU, the Oxford VLE and the mobile portal m.ox.ac.uk.
  • All material is syndicated through RSS to be freely surfaced in subject centre portals and is available through the national repository, JorumOpen.

OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)

  • due to delays in institution al solutions JorumOPEN was used for all resources.
  • Support for content packages is not mature or widespread enough.
  • Support is poor both in terms of exporting content from VLEs and viewing packaged content in repositories.
  • Though deposit of content packages is possible, repositories do not render content packages in a form that would help a user to identify and reuse the content. This will act as a barrier to reuse of OERs and, hence, managing and diversifying the delivery of learning content, until it is addressed.

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • Used the university's institutional content management system (Plone) as the main repository for the materials, as well as populating JorumOpen and other repositories with the OERs
  • Created RSS feeds for appropriate multimedia OERs and find a solution to large file size for multimedia OERs, in order to enable publishing on iTunes U
  • Created a permanent site with its own URL (www.le.ac.uk/oer) rather than a (temporary) project site
  • Developed an OER submission tool to handle future requests for making OERs.

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

  • existing institutional repository
  • Our approach was to release “resources” which could be small or large components of a module delivery. This was largely driven by our current repository infrastructure that was focussed on the management of resources rather than courseware content.

 

Choices re deposit into JORUMOpen? Open content ethos = specific hosting solutions don't matter.

How to ensure consistency and sound management between JORUMOpen and institutional repositories

Although project teams were issued with a mandate to deposit in JorumOpen, many actually argued for a single place of deposit to facilitate version control and no project opted for JorumOpen as their first choice for deposit (although one did deposit items solely in JorumOpen due to delays in their own system.

BERLIN (University of Nottingham)

  • because Nottingham‘s OER is now exposed through RSS other OER aggregating sites are able to harvest‘ our RSS feed, further enhancing discoverability with no additional effort from the team at Nottingham (e.g. Discover, OER Commons and OER Recommender). This process is now used for submission to JorumOpen.
  • using RSS for OER submission and aggregation - benefits have been: easy creation; easy distribution; automatic updates (although not currently possible for JorumOpen); and the potential to filter and target resources. A programme of work to exploit RSS feed aggregation of subject/school based feeds into school websites/prospectuses will be initiated summer 2010 with subject and school based RSS feeds made available as part of the project to enable the use of RSS as the method of deposit with JorumOpen.
    • Xerte Online toolkits and U-Now integrated with JorumOpen

OCEP University of Coventry)

  • pedagogic wrapper - which describes the resources in sufficient detail to engage the potential interest of users. The wrapper is a resource in its own right but seamlessly points to the substantive resources. In turn the substantive resources contain the internal links to the individual assets. The wrapper will also be the element which is deposited in external repositories such as JorumOpen.

Openspires (University of Oxford)

OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

  • published process and procedures for all aspects of oer development and deposit

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • testing both links and content uploaded to JORUM Open to support re-use (to be reviewed)
  • Departmental and institutional workflows for managing content and resources
  • working as part of OpenJorum’s test group to pilot uploading of OERs
  • released all its OERs to both UoL’s open repository (Plone) and to JorumOpen.
  • participated in an early trial of JorumOpen at the end of 2009, and provided feedback to help inform the development of the repository.
  • The use of a familiar, existing technology within the institution (Plone) was a critical factor in achieving continuity and sustainability of the OER initiative

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

Tracking

Openspires (University of Oxford)

  • Aggregation to support resource discovery and test for UKOER metadata tags
  • ENSEMBLE offers subject based portal http://galadriel.cetis.ac.uk/ensemble/
  • Evidence of use can be captured in various ways, although none is entirely comprehensive. Materials accessed via iTunesU are logged by Apple and statistics made available to us fortnightly. For downloads from the local podcast portals, web logs are generated by the Apache web server and the Drupal server, in combination with Google Analytics scripts embedded in the linking pages. In some cases, other institutional web servers will serve the actual media content (for example where a department has recorded, edited and hosted the material themselves) and access to these materials can be harder to track.

OCEP

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • Questionnaire at the point of download. Use of Google analytics.
  • Tracking – downloads, use, versions, etc.

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

 

Different degrees of openness available to depositors?

OCEP (University of Coventry)

 

What issues arise when using public/third-party hosting solutions? What are implications of using e.g. university SL islands, youtube, i-tunes?

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • IPR/copyright built into CORRE workflow

 

How best to make hybrid, interactive and multi-media resources available for open access.

OTTER (University of Leicester)

  • Limited storage space for multimedia OERs and associated cost

OCEP University of Coventry)

  • Benchmarking against the Accessibility passport

 

OER Submission

Unicycle Project (Leeds Metropolitan University)

  • Submission systems and processes could be further streamlined for use by academic staff who may find the current process and addition to their current workflow. Areas of specific development could be firstly, the creation of an OER submission “ widget”, whereby an academic is able to drag and drop a resource onto the widget, enter essential meta data and the item gets submitted to the repository. Secondly there are opportunities to explore a single submission process which then deposits the resource in multiple repositories.

 

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