Repository strategies - 3^rd expert workshop (WS 3.3)

The workshop took place in Sestri Levante, Italy, on the 17th – 18th September 2009.

In the opening session Lilla Voss, former expert adviser to the Danish Ministry of Education on ICT in education, gave an overview of strategic national initiatives in relation to educational repositories, and shared her visions for the schools and repository tools of the future.

A number of publishers and universities presented their strategies, content and tools. There is a clear trend towards the use of commercially available repository platforms. And nearly all repositories also contain the digital learning resources. A number of universities follow the same approach. However, in most cases the repositories need to be tailored/modified /improved further to be integrated into the universities‟ other systems, e.g. the repository part and the VLE part are integrated into one system for the staff and students. All higher education institutions manage their academic work in some sort of digital repository. Some stress the importance – for them and for colleagues – that the content (e.g. tools and courses) is open to the academic society.

Eugenijus Kurilovas, ITC, resumed the discussion of quality assurance by reporting about his research on evaluation criteria in the evaluation of Learning Object Repositories (LOR) and Learning Management Systems/Virtual Learning Systems (LMS/VLE).

Becta presented their vision and first concrete steps of implementation on a new Resource Discovery System that is to pool a number of previous projects and components, and provide coordinated answers to many questions which previously have been dealt with in a more fragmented approach.

Standards strategies are important. A closer link between standards developers from universities and standardisation bodies, and publishers‟ everyday needs must be given more attention. Becta has commissioned a project to work with content suppliers and VLE providers to define a specification for content packaging. They want to ensure that content developers use a consistent technical specification so that the content they produce can work in all VLEs.

In a group session members were asked to think of which standard has had the greatest impact on educational repository use so far, and describe why. They should also describe what they considered the most important barrier to remove within this area (and an approach for doing it!). The outcomes of these discussions have been included in the EdReNe synthesis report on standards and interoperability. See
http://edrene.org/results/deliverables/EdReNeD4.3TSR_Standards_and_interoperability.pdf.

This workshop concludes the series relating to Repository strategies. The proceeding from the three workshops will serve as the primary source of input for the forthcoming thematic synthesis report on this issue. 

Carin Martell, International Sales Manager at Giunti Labs, co-host of the workshop, welcomed the participants to Sestri Levante, where Giunti Labs has its premises.

Giunti Labs is a member of the Giunti Group, one of Europe’s oldest Educational and Cultural Heritage Publishers and a leading European K12 & Cultural Publisher.

The hot issues for Giunti Labs are Continuous education and lifelong learning, Development of new competencies and skills, Crossover between formal and informal knowledge, Co-existence of free and published contents, and Personalization of educational content offering.

In 2008 Giunti acquired the digital repository, HarvestRoad Hive, which is a federated digital learning object repository. It stores and manages all types of learning, knowledge and business objects, and it handles content across different web domains. The system features a strong integration with Open Source LMS, and act as a content bridge.

Carin Martell’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/702.pptx

Lilla Voss, former Danish Ministry of Education

Lilla Voss has many years of experience as an expert adviser to the Danish Ministry of Education on ICT in education. She gave an overview of strategic national initiatives in relation to educational repositories, and shared her visions for the schools and repository tools of the future.

The pupils experience that the School contrasts the real World. However, ICT keywords for schools must now be networking, collaboration, knowledge sharing and knowledge management, and the ability to transform information into knowledge by offering children critical methods and means to combat the information overload brought about by the Internet.

Many studies show how children use ICT at school and in their spare time. They use mainly digital media in their spare time, and they learn to use digital media from other children or from experimenting themselves. They live in both physical and virtual environments, and smaller groups of children have very high ICT skills.

The diagram above illustrates the various stages of the process towards e-ready schools. Many countries have now entered the phase of “use to learn”, where ICT becomes a personal tool for the student, and teachers find new ways to organise education and learning.

VLE- LMS-LCMS systems are key factors for an e-ready school. They are used for knowledge sharing and knowledge management. They give on-line access to school resources. Communication and collaboration is interactive.

Teachers put links, examples, and demonstrations in subject folders, and they comment assignments on-line – both when they are finished and on the way. Pupils communicate and collaborate with other pupils (however, most of the time they use other chat-tools for that).
Results are stored in each child’s portfolio, and teachers use learning objects from on-line repositories when they prepare lessons. They re-use pedagogical data in school administration – and vice-versa.

This is the environment that repositories have to cope with in the future. These are the users that should find repositories useful and worth while spending time on. Because teachers – sooner or later - need to adapt their teaching methods to the target groups and the new virtual environment of the school.

Which repository – which user groups
Teachers will use a national repository (national goals). Pupils may use a national repository (training modules), international repositories and other sources (search machine Google) for highly specialised interests, and national editors/subject specialists will consult international repositories to help national teachers to find good content elsewhere. So far no-one really knows what parents, who have an increasing role in the choice of learning resources, will use.

This puts the educational repositories in perspective. The whole textbook will still exist. But smaller – much smaller - modules will be in demand (e.g. Lego bricks - MIT). Repositories must target a broader group of users and provide content targeted for each of these groups. It must facilitate a pick and mix system with possibilities for the user to change and supplement with own produced content, together with a micro payment system for content not free of charge.

Lilla Voss concluded by predicting how schools look like in 2016?

• The traditional brick and mortar school will still be there
• Aged divided class concept will still be standard – but combined with cross age/cross curricular elements
• Majority of lessons will still be 1 teacher/1 class /1 subject area– but combined with group based/cross-curricular/project – oriented work and a group of teachers in collaboration
• Use of LCMS still primarily for organisational purposes – but pedagogical use increasing (class and pupil portfolios), use of LO’s could be better
• Special needs education will be dramatically changed.

Lilla Voss’ presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/698.ppt

Mark Stiles, Staffordshire University

The university’s initial drivers were to store and manage the University and SURF collection of learning resources and other associated scholarly outputs. They wanted to provide flexible delivery of e-learning content and resources, and facilitate re-use and re-purposing of learning content. They would improve archiving, auditing and version control processes, facilitate avoidance of lock-in by freeing content from vendor systems, and provide workflow for quality assurance processes, metadata, rights management, etc.

But is the VLE a straightjacket? and what are we doing with VLEs? VLE use “can” be innovative but are they creating a new orthodoxy? Do they encourage the “mundane”? Are they tying us down for the future? And are they now a barrier?

From 2005 JISC MLE “Landscape Study” of UK HE and FE consultation the document said “…the results also show two thirds of modules of study being web supplemented which would seem to indicate that the ‘stuff your notes into your VLE’ model is prevalent and increasing”

On the “new” Web users share and collaborate. Activities are learner initiated in informal learning settings, often in diverse communities outside institutional control. It appears as an unstoppable process. In the future tutors and learners will build their own toolsets from what is provided by the institution, what they have on their own (personal) computer, and what is available on the Web. Learners will “opt out” of systems institutions and tutors might prefer them to use for formal learning activities. They might initiate “sharing” and “community” activities outside of formal learning using tools they have chosen, and engage with wider and more diverse communities.

The goals of the University Executive Business Plan 2007-2012 stimulated a University Technology Supported Learning (TSL) Plan, which includes implementing effective management of learning resources and course related information.

For a repository to manage their learning resources a consultant recommended the university to choose a commercial ‘off the shelf’ solution and use internal resources to integrate the repository with existing systems. They should ensure that the solution can support QA etc. procedures and not impact negatively on them. They ended up selecting Hive for a number of reasons e.g. it has prime focus on being a learning repository, and it integrates excellently with VLEs, e.g. with built in for Blackboard and Moodle. They are now preparing for the big move from Blackboard to Hive.

The repository is used in the projects WBL (Work Based Learning), WBL-Way (http://www.staffs.ac.uk/COSE/WBLWAY/), DIVAS and ENABLE. They have organised media trials with Faculties. Migration of Blackboard content is tested, and the Blackboard integration is ready but waiting for BB and Hive upgrades. Roll-out as full service by IS being organized.

is a major university change initiative supported by JISC funding. It is focused on the complete curriculum design/development process. It is designed to connect our many initiatives and join them up without holes, and to find a way to sustain and manage innovation and change for the organization. http://jiscenable.blogspot.com/

In the OpenStaffs pilot project the university is committed to making a wide range of learning and teaching resources freely available and easily discovered, with the facility and rights for the content to be re-used by both educators and learners.
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/about_us/projects/openstaffs/index.jsp

Mark Stiles’ presentation
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/697.ppt

Willem van Valkenburg, Delft University of Technology

TU Delft’s advantages of its repository are many. It Improves access to academic work and raises the profile of academic work. The repository guarantees the durability of data files and it reinforces the university’s image as a centre of knowledge. Furthermore, it works as a counterweight against publishers. Output is visible (full text in e.g. Google) and it is accessible worldwide. The repository is a sustainable e-archive, and the number of citations/downloads increases.

Users access TU Delft research via DARE.net, the Royal Library (KB), OAISTER (Open Access Repositories) or via Google/ Google Scholar.

In its OpenCourseWare initiative the university shares its courses via OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) and its multimedia via a multimedia portal. They started because of Reputation and joining an open academic community. It is an inevitable trend and it was an opportunity to bundle faculty initiatives. The OCW Consortium now has 100 live sites with about 9,000 courses.

Course example.

Willem van Valkenburg’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/696.ppt

Eugenijus Kurilovas, ITC

Quite a number of evaluation criteria have been applied to the evaluation of Learning Object Repositories (LORs). Existing LORs evaluation models (sets of criteria) include the SWITCH LO Repository Quality Evaluation Grid, the CatalystIT Technical Evaluation of Open Source Repositories, and the OMII Software Repository Evaluation Criteria.

Based on t he research of the existing models, Eugenijus proposed two technological evaluation models, one for Learning Object Repositories (LOR) and one for Learning Management Systems.

Eugenijus Kurilovas’ presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/705.ppt

Will Ellis, Becta

Realising that
“We need better digital resources more widely available and more flexible learning packages that teachers can adapt to their learners’ needs. We must support innovation in the market by improving our knowledge of where elearning works particularly well, and update our standards for pedagogic quality, accessibility and safety.”

Becta launches a strategy to move from a pool of questions and initiatives

to one Resource Discovery Ecosystem

With a vision of a new structure of the setup

Will Ellis’ presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/708.ppt

Andrew Kitchen, Becta

The Learning Resource Ecosystem strategy was published on 28th August, 2009 (http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=41020). Its purpose is to expand upon, contextualise and prioritise ecosystem components. It describes a flexible pathway to enable the realisation of the content ecosystem vision, delivered through a collaboration of partners and providers and shaped by the community.

The strategy takes a four phase approach. The current version focuses on phase 1, with a brief commentary for phases 2,3 and 4.

The ecosystem is analogous to a jigsaw. Without any single piece it would not be complete, and it takes time to put together in the correct way. It can be divided into ten ‘pieces’ or components:

Each of these ten components is being addressed by the strategy. Its vision is clear but it will be complex to implement due to the number of components involved, the coordination of stakeholders, managing expectations, maintaining momentum and many other factors!

Phase 1, the implementation phase, focuses on core components that provide the ecosystem’s foundation. Piloting and refinement are the key activities at this early stage. Stakeholder engagement, relationship facilitation and leadership are crucial. Phase one comprises 12 core aims.

Proposals for non-core activities to promote the ecosystem’s vision are welcomed.

Core issues
    Industry engagement, facilitation and leadership
    User engagement and communities of practice
    Provision of digital learning resources
    Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright for digital learning resources
    Persistent identity and resolution for digital learning resources
    A pilot central index of digital learning resource information
    Central index policy and management
    Federated access management
    An ecosystem standards catalogue

What’s next?
Some activities have already started to deliver some of the core aims. Becta will be working in collaboration with specialists to complete other aims, and they will be launching procurement exercises to commission partners to work with us in delivering the remaining aims.

Andrew Kitchen’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/709.ppt

Will Ellis, Becta

Becta has commissioned a project to work with content suppliers and VLE providers to define a specification for content packaging. They want to ensure that content developers use a consistent technical specification so that the content they produce can work in all VLEs currently used within the UK.

Previously Becta carried out a detailed technical analysis of learning content in the UK to find out how much content conforms to a consistent specification. This showed a significant problem and there are many content providers who have to produce content in a number of different versions to work with different VLEs.

Will encouraged international involvement in this project.

- brief updates from everybody on interesting new developments and projects

(Karin Whooley, NCTE)

Karin showed the recently introduced possibility for teachers to supplement their search results from the Scoilnet resource bank with matches from the LRE (Learning Resource Exchange). No detailed analysis of usage pattern had been done so far, but initial responses showed that this was so far not highly valued and not very much used (initial feedback showed issues relating to languages, user interface)

Screenshot from scoilnet.ie showing the integration of federated search results from the European Learning Resource Exchange as a separate tab for teachers in their search result

(Fiona Iglesias, North West Learning Grid)

Fiona handed out information material related to the launch of the National Digital Resource Bank. The repository built upon the Agrega software is now online – currently with just a little more than 500 learning objects.

See http://www.ndrb.org.uk/

(Finn Togo, UNI•C)

Finn, responsible for the Danish national portal of learning resources (emu.dk) presented a recent government decision about launching a free access homework support portal. The target group is pupils in primary, secondary and vocational education and focus is on the subjects, that notoriously seem to be the most difficult to learn.

It is a 3 year project with limited financing (0.8 million euro pr. year). It might be prolonged if successful. Most of the money is dedicated to buying small digital learning modules and to searching for free modules (also international), that can be put into the portal. The modules will be stored and tagged in the national repository and brought into play through the portal, which technically will be a presentation layer of the repository dedicated to this purpose. The expected launch date is August 2010.

(Kadri Stenseth, TLF)

Kadri demonstrated the extensive set of web 2.0 features included in the new Estonian educational portal (see http://koolitaja.eenet.ee) which to a much higher degree than the previous version is based on user contributions and community building.

Kadri Stenseth’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/706.ppt

(Henk Nijstad, Kennisnet)

Henk described the introduction of two new “layers” to the content value chain. One component should manage the resolution of different descriptions of the same learning resource ensuring that end users get the most valuable and extensive set of metadata for a given resource – today this is often not the case. A second component - not developed but where there seems to be a need - is a tool to flexibly build a curriculum together with relevant resources. The idea should be to share not individual learning resources but rather how (innovative) teachers integrate technology and digital learning resources in the entire curriculum.

Henk Nijstad’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/710.ppt

Adam Bates, Encyclopaedia Britannica Education)

Adam did a brief demonstration of the interface allowing users to interact with existing content and supplement it with their own additions, currently available in the consumer edition of Britannica, with plans to include (possibly a tailored version) in the schools edition. There is however some hesitation as one of the main selling arguments is the validity of the information.

Screenshot from britannica.com showing the recently included possibilities for editing and sharing content

Other examples of online encyclopaedias with a similar approach were mentioned. The following screenshot is from the Danish National Encyclopaedia which has also recently become available online in a free version allowing end users to contribute to the content.

Screenshot from denstoredanske.dk adopting a similar strategy for including user generated content

(Friedhelm Schumacher, FWU)

Friedhelm showed an example of using different presentation formats for different target groups – in this case teachers and students. The repository Mauswiesel (part of Bildungsserver Hessen) targets students, but from any search result there is a link at the top right corner leading to the corresponding page in the repository targeting teachers.

The student descriptions only include title, brief description and ratings; whereas the metadata targeting teachers include a much more elaborate description, as shown in the example below. This example also illustrates the need to often have different titles and descriptions depending on the target audience.

(Rui Falcão, EduWeb)

Rui gave an introduction to some of the aspects of the Portuguese Magellan Initiative – including the 500.000 computers made available to primary school pupils.

See for example:
http://www.iniciativa-magalhaes.com/
Fact sheet (Microsoft Word)

(Tommy Byskov Lund, UNI•C and EdReNe members)

The 3rd strategic seminar in Stockholm began with presentations that put educational repositories in perspective

• Beyond Textbooks
  An OECD report on digital learning resources as systemic innovation (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) – final report December 2009
• Europeana
  access to millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections
• Kunskabshubben
  Video by teachers

Repository strategies of national broadcasters were a special theme for the seminar. Invited experts gave presentations from The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and France.

The members from Slovenia, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands described how EdReNe has contributed to their work.

A number of members presented new national initiatives. Next, in group sessions members debated the current status of educational repositories in the various countries, the EdReNe white paper and the two synthesis reports on strategies and rights issues, respectively.

Eventually, Tommy took up the unfinished discussion, whether EdReNe should introduce new tools for online cooperation.

Tommy Byskov Lund’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/701.pptx
Proceedings from the strategic seminar:
http://edrene.org/results/deliverables/EdReNeD2.3StrategicSeminar.pdf

Peter Claxton presented SMART Technologies with an emphasis on how they envision content sharing and exchange to become increasingly important to their strategy. A brief demonstration of the recently launched SMART Exchange platform was introduced.

Screenshot from exchange.smarttech.com

In a plenum session participants discussed the current version of the white paper, which is available to all members in the Members zone. The discussion took its point of departure in Leo’s introduction to the workshop.

The members decided to revise and update the whitepaper before it is published. Also its format and the possibility of producing a number of shorter white papers aiming at different target groups were discussed. No final conclusion was reached, except that the white paper will not be published in its present form.

Leo Højsholt-Poulsen’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/703.pptx

Leo Højsholt-Poulsen, UNI•C

All submitted deliverables are available in the Members zone, e.g. the Annual reports (public), the Progress reports (confidential, members only) and the Proceedings of all events (also public). The Members zone also includes all project files e.g. agreements, deliverables, addresses, output of expert workshops and an address list with the official and necessary address and contact person of all members (must be updated by all members).

The next financial statement by 1st May 2010 is also the final statement, and this means that next time we mean business. All requested procedures must be followed.

As several founding members have officially declared that they shall not spend the maximum grant allocated to them, EdReNe has money to cover travel and conference costs for those members, who participate in the events. Accordingly, from the Dutch workshop (incl.) and on UNI-C will pay all conference fees for all members, from UNI-C’s budget

Leo Højsholt-Poulsen’s presentation:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO3/704.ppt

This very brief group session served as an internal evaluation of the value of individual country sections to the current state of the art report. Groups were asked to evaluate one (or more) country sections and reflect on how these could/should possibly be rearranged in eventual future versions.

The overall feedback from groups was that even though the differences in approaches taken in different countries will also result in very different country sections a higher degree of harmonization would be useful. One more specific request was to have named contacts for the individual aspects dealt with in order to foster more peer-to-peer collaboration (e.g. on different development strategies, authentication strategies, user interface design, rights issues handling etc. etc.). Inclusion of some of the suggestions in the forthcoming thematic synthesis reports will be considered whenever possible and appropriate.

This group session focused on input for the first two thematic synthesis reports on standards and interoperability and rights issues. Workshop participants were asked to discuss their reflections on the first draft of the report on ”Standards and interoperability”. Comments were reported directly in the document and in addition feedback was specifically collected about:

• Which standard(s) has had the greatest impact on educational repository use so far, and why
• The most important barrier to remove within this area (and approaches for doing it)
• Additional input in form of reports/surveys/projects/organizations/blogs dealing specifically with interoperability that network members have found valuable in their own work/ discussions

Finally the structure of the thematic synthesis report on Rights issues was also discussed in the same groups.

Leo Højsholt-Poulsen and Tommy Byskov Lund, UNI•C, introduced a memo circulated to all EdReNe members.

By May 2010 EdReNe finishes as a project partly funded by the European Commission. UNI•C has always, also in the proposal for EdReNe, aimed at sustainability of the network after the project has finished. Many current members, both founding members and associate members, have also expressed their interest in continuing the fruitful exchange of experiences and collaboration within EdReNe.

Possible future scenarios:

The debate among the members gave no clear indication of a preferred way forward.
A group of EdReNe members are also members of the European Schoolnet, and it was suggested that the members, who were to participate in EUN’s forthcoming meeting in its LRE-group, should investigate EdReNe’s possible merge with an EUN sub-group. Some members advocated for a continuation of a more independent and focused group open to all stakeholders of educational repositories (in contrast to EUN being a network of European Ministries of Education).

It was decided to resume the discussion at the next workshop in November, in Linz.

The concluding plenary session discussed the need for increased online collaboration if the networks should prove sustainable. Twitter was discussed as an informal way of sharing ideas etc. and social bookmarking within the network member (for example using a Diigo group) was also discussed briefly. From the discussion it was evident that physical meeting will be necessary to sustain the network activity ongoing – and the motivation for increased online collaboration (i.e. not only on peer-to-peer basis) was relatively limited.

The evaluation was limited to a ten minutes oral evaluation and Q&A session. Part of this was a question as to how solid recommendations the network would be able to give concerning recommendations for repository strategies – with no evident consensus reached except for providing a list of “issues to consider”, which in every case will have to be matched with the concrete context n which the repository is being developed.