How do I aggregate OERs? Let me count the ways... • Phil Barker 1 , R. John Robertson 2 , and Lorna M. Campbell 2 • Presentation at OCWC 2011, Boston , MA, May 6 th 2011 • 1 Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot- Watt University • 2 Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde • Derivative image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning based on image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Barr ett_Browning.jpg • Licence: Public Domain / PD-ART • Wikimedia Image derived from image from LSUS Library http://www.jamessmithnoelcollection.org/index.html (scholarly use with attribution permitted) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence . Individual Images in this presentation may have different licences. Please note many of the images are screenshots and the websites in question should be consulted for usage rights 1
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How do I aggregate OERs? Let me count the ways...
• Phil Barker1, R. John Robertson2, and Lorna M. Campbell2
• Presentation at OCWC 2011, Boston , MA, May 6th 2011
• 1 Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University• 2 Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement,
University of Strathclyde
• Derivative image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning based on image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning.jpg
• Licence: Public Domain / PD-ART• Wikimedia Image derived from image from LSUS Library
http://www.jamessmithnoelcollection.org/index.html (scholarly use with attribution permitted)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Individual Images in this presentation may have different licences. Please note many of the images are screenshots and the websites in question should be consulted for usage rights
• What are the approaches to aggregating, curating, or gathering OER?
• Reflections on current practice
2Image: Google Maps Screenshot
Context: JISC CETIS• JISC CETIS is a JISC
Innovation Support Centre. We provide advice to the UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors on the development and use of educational technology and standards through: – participating in standards bodies – providing community forums for
sharing experience about educational technologies and interoperability standards
– providing strategic advice to JISC and supporting JISC development programmes
3Image: screenshot of jisc.cetis.ac.uk
Context: UK OER and more
• UKOER programme: Phase 2 of the HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme runs between August 2010 and August 2011 (£5 million funding)
• Other OER work in the UK and globally as well as other related technical developments
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Image: jisc.ac.uk/oer screenshot
What is an OER?
• From this
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Image: screenshot MIT OCW http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-environmental-engineering/1-018j-ecology-i-the-earth-system-fall-2009/
• Curate things manually (collaboratively or individually) but have systems to support automated sharing or discovery through tags – References to resources
can be permanent (~delicious), transitory (twitter), or both.
• Google is the primary search index of online materials though it can be hard to find materials from specifically defined communities (such as OER). Google Custom Search Engines offer search over a discrete definable set of resources/ sites and can be embedded in local sites
• Pros– Familiarity of Google– Embeddable– Little to set up for
developers
• Cons– Only works for OER if
they can be identified through a particular search term or url pattern
– But sometimes it (inexplicably?) doesn’t work even then.
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Using APIs
• Many hosts of high-value content (such as web 2.0 services) support interaction with their data/ services/ content via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
• allows the development of 3rd party interfaces and apps
• Pros– Fairly ubiquitous– ‘mainstream’ technology– Some interesting
examples of use (Xpert, DiscoverEd, UKOER phase 2 Collection Strand)
– Many tools to consume rss feeds easy to use for any user community; many tools come with rss out of box
• Cons– Hard to manage– Can be hard for providers
to customise feed output or build one if not there
– Feed format rarely standard
– Common aggregation tools ignore non-standard elements
– Frequent misuse of feed elements
– Coverage often limited to X most recent
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An aside on sources of stuff
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Make it easy to find points of access for your stuff
An aside on sources of stuff
• As someone building a discovery service it can be difficult to find where relevant stuff is held
• It can be even harder for developers of discovery tools to find information about technical services or endpoints that facilitate aggregation– (e.g. feed location &
coverage, OAI-PMH endpoints, SRU targets)
CETIS advice: • if you build a service that
hosts OERs and you wish to facilitate the inclusion of these in a third-party aggregation and discovery tools,
•please provide clear easy-to-find information about how and where metadata about those resources can be found and interacted with.
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Current practice
• UKOER– Repositories – Wordpress– Plugins (to blogs and
wikis to return dynamic results alongside static ones)
– Data wrangling moving upstream (xpert) centralised providers emerging
• Patterns– Localised manual human
curation for specific communities feeding automated suggestions as part of bigger systems
– Ongoing use of existing systems -> plenty of support for OAI-PMH but few general purpose services.
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Trends
•Technical– Multiple technical
approaches for discovery services (RSS, OAI-PMH, ...)
– Emerging tools for distributed zipped content (SCORM? or IMS CC?)
– Multiple technical approaches for providers (repository + cms layer, blog or wiki + plugins)
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Trends
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• Technical Style– Localised
community based solutions as a niche in the wider web scale