EdReNe – Current state of educational repositories – national overview

The Educational content chain is an initiative (2004-2006) of educational institutions, teaching organisations, (sector-based) publishers, software and service providers and the Kennisnet Foundation.

The purpose of the content chain is to make the use of web-based learning material (educational content) a success. To achieve this goal projects are launched to encourage content development and ensure that the parties involved reach clear agreements on the development, delivery and exchange of educational content.

Educational content makes learning possible any time, anywhere. Web-based learning material also ties in well with the needs, experiences and learning styles of many pupils and students. Agreements, specifications and standards are essential parameters for flexible education. In the Educational content chain these agreements are currently being drawn up.

In many cases, standardisation is self-explanatory. Take for example the standard paper size A4. Two simple agreements (210 x 297 mm) form the basis for a poem, a letter, an essay or the minutes of a meeting. These written products can relate to absolutely any subject. The agreement, therefore, says nothing about content or layout, but does guarantee that the format fits in every printer, binder and standard envelope, and is available everywhere.

In education, too, there is a need for standardisation. Teaching staff, students, developers and content providers are all best served if educational content is easily traceable, exchangeable and reusable in a range of electronic learning environments.

Once the agreements have been 'elaborated', the educational content chain can start to 'run'. The route taken by educational content from development through to use in the classroom consists of five stages: development, making available, find, arrange and use. The Educational content chain offers all parties involved the support they need at each stage in the chain.

An example of an agreement is the content search profile (metadata) that makes educational content more easily traceable. An agreement has also been reached on the use of a specification for content exchange, so content can be used in a range of learning environments.

Although there are many initiatives and approaches in The Netherlands, this overview is started with two important services, which appear to shape the future of digital learning materials the coming years: EDUREP and ENTRÉE. Both are developed by Kennisnet in close cooperation with all important Dutch organisations involved.

Key aspects of both services are:

• 'man-in-the-middel' functionality which can not and will not be taken by any commercial participant.
• Very clear separation of responsibilities. This is key in the model. The owner of a repository is fully responsible for his own metadata and the quality of its content (EDUREP), as is the owner of all the user profiles for ENTRÉE A&A.
• Open models: every participant in the value chain can be part of it in its own way and its own speed. Commercial or non-profit.
• Based on standards which are collectively developed

What we see is a rapidly growing community around these services which stimulates the adaption of digital learning.

The illustration below shows the architecture (almost a value chain).

EDUREP is the metadata exchange platform: it is the intermediate between supply (of metadated content) and demand (for qualitative learning materials). Characteristics:

Every repository that complies with 2 aspects can connect:

• OAI PMH interface
• Metadata based on the Dutch application profile of IEEE-LOM: CZP (Content Zoek Profiel). Standards are published under the responsibility of the Association EDUSTANDAARD.

We see repositories from all kinds connecting to EDUREP: (hesitating) commercial ones, non-profit like museums or other Dutch cultural heritage institutions; repositories from VLE’s and schools with teacher-developed content. A marketplace for repository services has grown with high-functionality services.

Any portal can get access to the metadata via the standardised SRU-SRW interface. Moreover, metadata is offered by OAI PMH, to facilitate portals to use there own indexing functionality on the raw metadata. We see portals from any kind connect to EDUREP, like almost all important VLE’s in the Dutch market, Davindi (Kennisnet search engine), contentcorner (online arranging learning material) and samenzoeken.nl (APS-IT search engine).

System components have been developed together with SURF and SURFNET (higher education) and are based on open source components: www.meresco.org and www.meresco.com. To support collection owners in adapting already existing metadated material towards the Dutch metadata standard, specific functionality has been developed.

• Schools are responsible for up-to-date, correct and complete user identities. In accordance with repositories and portals, they keep administration of user profiles and access rights. VLE’s like N@tschool may actually carry out the operational functionality.
• Based on open source a-select technology and open standards as SAML and WS/Federations. A Dutch application profile is under development, but this will take some time (all important participants involved). ENTRÉE is already piloting this technology.

Teleblik has won already several prices (amongst others the prestigious Prix dÍtalia) and because of the quality content, it has large attraction to schools and VLE’s.

Teleblik is embedded in a much broader initiative to make Dutch video, audio, pictures, museum heritage available to the field of education. This large project named Beelden voor de Toekomst (turnover € 160 mil. in the periode 2007 - 2012) has already large impact on digital learning. At the moment a pilot platform has been developed (Onderwijs Media Platform, OMP) which is based on the open services EDUREP and ENTRÉE. And the early innovating schools and VLE’s are connected to both EDUREP and ENTRÉE: VLE’s like Teletop, Studieweb, Codename Future and N@tschool, and large quality repositories like Teleblik and the National Archief.

• slow take up of digital education by Dutch publishers: schools are not satisfied with the quality and the drive of publishers to take full profit from the digitisation
• publishers try to protect their current business by conditional sale in connecting the traditional folio (paper) material with new developed digital content. Schools do not want to be locked in
• since the start of schoolyear 2008-2009 the finance structure for school material in Secondary School has changed: instead of the parents, schools will from then on pay for the educational material. And they will be compensated by the government. This change of finance flows has large effects on cost awareness (and quality perception) of the schools towards which school materials to use, and specifically the traditional folio content: schools realise that they can produce their own material much more cost effective

Examples are: de onderwijs vernieuwings cooperatie; DigilessenVO.nl; Digischool

These cooperations are now working on a joint userinterface on the internet, called the pilotopenleermateriaal.nl

• the FENC content with about 40.000 hours of digital learning material;
• the rich-functionality repository infrastructure that can be used by schools.

Already several schools are participating in this initiative. The initiator Albert the Vos agrees with the mission of the FENC-community: TAKE – SHAPE – SHARE.

Together with the Wimba company the Dutch applicationformat for metadata is incorporated in their authoringtool Wimba Create.

Digischool is a community website for Primary and Secondary schools. It has its own repository of about 8.000 objects. The communities of all kinds of classes provide a lively information exchange.

A portal, based on a Fedora repository-implementation for authoring, sharing and finding learning materials. It is connected to EDUREP and developed by APS IT-diensten.

SamenZoeken (search together) is an open search-engine on internet for finding learning materials in all repositories connected to Edurep. It has advanced search capabilities for teachers, based on their profiles. It enables peer review and ranking of results, based on these reviews.

SamenDelen (share together) is a collection of repositories, based on Fedora. Several organisations have their own 'clone' of this repository-implementation for hosting their materials in a standardized way. It has partly automated metadating to make the process of uploading easier for teachers. It has a module for creating different workflows per institution.

SamenMaken (build together) is an environment for (re)arranging materials that is still under construction.

In 1993 the Ministry of Agriculture founded the organisation Ontwikkelcentrum with the mission to ensure educational materials for schools of agriculture. There was a great lack of suitable learning materials (which at that time were mostly books) for the schools. These schools do not have a large numbers of students, so they do not represent an interesting market for commercial publishers.

In 1997 a database was established with relevant educational content. In this initial database all content was encoded in SGML. The content was primarily produced by Ontwikkelcentrum. Schools could order a book with the content they needed for the specific situation (chapter by chapter). The result was a publication ‘on paper’ (books) or a Pdf file on a CD.

In 2005-6 the content was converted to XML. The current repository is called the Educational Content Catalogue (ECC). All content in the ECC contains IEEE-LOM metadata (Dutch version which is used widely in The Netherlands). Users must have a log-in. The log-in gives access to all content directly from the database (50.000 objects). The schools pay for access (35 Euro per person a year).

Changes in schools demand new learning materials; students follow individual learning-routes, they spend time outside the walls of the school building. In the new solution users can e.g. make their own courses/arrangements using content from ECC, EduRep etc.

Ontwikkelcentrum has also shifted its objective. They do no longer focus on creating new learning materials themselves. In stead they locate suitable learning materials which are already available, for instance from companies, other publishers, schools etc. These learning materials are then made available through the ECC. They remain in the database of the producer/owner of the material, but are harvested etc.

Future steps:
50.000 learning objects are a great deal! Users find it very difficult to find what they really need.

User generated content should also be stimulated more. The schools must be informed about the digital learning material and what they can do with it – the students will be used to “lift” the teachers.