These slides accompany the paper "Capturing Conversations, Context and Curricula: The JLeRN Experiment and the Learning Registry" published by the Cambridge 2012: Innovation and Impact - Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education conference, organised by OCWC and SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education).

1. Presentation by Sarah Currier
JLeRN Project Lead, Mimas
16 April 2012, Cambridge 2012
Capturing conversations, context and curricula:
the JLeRN Experiment and the Learning Registry
– short paper by Sarah Currier, Jackie Carter,
Nick Syrotiuk, Bharti Gupta

2. Introduction (1 of 2)
According to the UNESCO Guidelines for Open Educational Resources
(OERs) in Higher Education:
“The transformative educational potential of OER depends on:
1. Improving the quality of learning materials through peer
review processes;
2. Reaping the benefits of contextualisation, personalisation
and localisation; […]” --
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002136/213605e.pdf
There are seven more points listed, but these first two have been
crucial unfulfilled opportunities for over a decade. They present
challenges in abundance to those creating the technical infrastructure
for global capture, sharing and use of learning resource data.

3. Introduction (2 of 2)
• With these challenges in mind, the US-based Learning
Registry was set up in 2010 to enable capturing and
sharing data about how and where teachers and
learners use resources and what they think of them,
or paradata.
• The project is technical and experimental, with an
active international community working on use cases,
specifications and pilot implementations.
• The Learning Registry is a notional technical
infrastructure using open specifications and software
to support networks for sharing data.

4. JISC said …
“JISC will be participating in the Learning Registry project
by setting up an experimental node in the UK with a
focus on content from the higher education and cultural
sectors. Utilising the expertise and content available to
JISC, the project will explore contributing data and
analysing it. JISC hopes to collaborate with the Learning
Registry in exploring the infrastructure considerations
and to help specify and support useful applications.”
– Learning Registry website:
http://www.learningregistry.org/community/jisc

5. Project overview
• JISC gave Mimas the job of setting up and
running an experimental Learning Registry
node (November 2011)
• I started as Project Lead (0.25FTE) 5/12/11
• Nick Syrotiuk (0.2FTE) and Bharti Gupta
(0.25FTE) started as Project Developers, Dec.
2011 & Jan. 2012.
• Project funded to 31 July 2012.
• Working closely with JISC CETIS, The Learning
Registry and an informal Task Group.

6. Sharing Paradata:
Usage, Activity and Curriculum Data
A key concept within the Learning Registry is
paradata. Originating with the US National
Science Digital Library (NSDL Network, 2012), this
term is now replacing previous terms such as
secondary metadata and usage data to
encompass:
“[…] not just quantitative metrics (e.g., how many times a
piece of content was accessed), but also pedagogic context, as
inferred through the actions of educators and learners.
[…] Learning resource paradata is generated through user
processes of searching for content, identifying interest for
subsequent use, correlating resources to specific learning
goals or standards, and integrating content into educational
practices.”-- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradata

7. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
• What do we mean by “node”?
• What options are there for Learning Registry
nodes?
• Where do they fit in the Learning Registry
model?

8. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
There are three levels of togetherness in the
Learning Registry:
• Nodes
• Networks
• Communities

9. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
We can:
(1) share data and paradata with others via a
single node;
(2) widen our sharing to a network of nodes
with shared policies about access etc.;
(3) widen our sharing even further within
communities of networks.

10. Learning Registry Network Model
From: Learning Registry Resource Distribution Network Model:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1msnZC6RU9N72Omau0F4FNBO5YCU6hZrG1kKRs_z42Mc/edit?hl=en_GB

11. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
Nodes are the building blocks of the Learning Registry. They enable
decentralised networks for sharing data about learning resources
and their use.
• Anyone can set up a node wherever they like by installing the
node code and making it available to whomever they like.
• They can also restrict access to the node if they choose.
• Others can publish their data to the node, or extract anyone's
data from the node.
• A completely open node allows literally anyone to publish or
access data.
There are two kinds of node: common nodes and gateway nodes.
Each kind of node supports distinct activities.

12. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
There are two kinds of node: common nodes and gateway
nodes. Each kind of node supports distinct activities.
• A common node can support all the different specific
services you need to push, pull, distribute and process
resource data with any number of external sources, and
within a given network of nodes.
• A gateway node allows different networks to connect
with each other to share data. It provides a data
distribution connection between one network and
another, because nodes cannot belong to more than one
network, and a clearly defined pipeline is needed, for
security and other policy reasons.

13. Learning Registry Network Model
From: Learning Registry Resource Distribution Network Model:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1msnZC6RU9N72Omau0F4FNBO5YCU6hZrG1kKRs_z42Mc/edit?hl=en_GB

14. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
The JLeRN team have implemented a common
node, without requiring signatures to push and
pull data out of the node.
(In fact we’ve now implemented three common
nodes: see our blog for more:
http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/category
/jlern-project/technical-achievements/).

15. 1. Setting up an experimental node in the UK
What can a common node do? Common nodes can offer five kinds of service:
• Publish Services allow data to be published to the node from external sources. We
can choose which publishing APIs we will support (e.g. SWORD), but we have to
(and we do) support the Basic Publish Service. We’ve also responded to
community use cases by developing OAI-PMH feed publish:
http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/jorum-oai-pmh-data-
published/
• Access Services allow data to be pulled, or accessed from the node or the
distribution network the node is part of. Again, different APIs (e.g. OAI-PMH) can
be, but don't have to be, supported.
• Distribution Services allow data to be replicated and transferred between nodes.
We’re looking at replication between our three nodes.
• Broker Services allow us to "augment, transform or process resource data held at
that node to produce new or updated resource data for access or distribution".
Interesting!
• Administrative Services, which "are used to query a node to obtain its status or to
trigger node administrative actions."

16. Learning Registry Network Model
From: Learning Registry Resource Distribution Network Model:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1msnZC6RU9N72Omau0F4FNBO5YCU6hZrG1kKRs_z42Mc/edit?hl=en_GB

17. 2. Exploring contributing data and analysing it
• Jorum metadata via standard, openly available OAI-
PMH feed of >15K resources.
– Required code development by JLeRN:
http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/jorum
-oai-pmh-data-published/
– Same use case from Open University (and likely from
others).
– Jorum also exploring framework for capturing paradata
about resources:
http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/dunki
ng-your-cake-into-a-tasty-source-of-data/
• Hackday tests (Scott Wilson from CETIS and Andrew
Green from Liverpool University).
– Exposed bug in Learning Registry code, now fixed.
• More please!

18. 3. Exploring the infrastructure considerations and
helping specify and support useful applications
JISC OER Rapid Innovation Projects
• Rapid Innovation Dynamic Learning Maps-Learning Registry (RIDLR) and
SupOERglue:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/ridlr.aspx
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/supoerglue.aspx
• Sharing Paradata Across Widget Stores (SPAWS):
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/sharingparadata.aspx
• Xerte Experience Now Improved: Targeting HTML5 (XENITH):
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/xenith.aspx
• Track OER: Tracking Open Educational Resources:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/trackoer.aspx
• CAMILOE (Collation and Moderation of Intriguing Learning Objects in
Education):
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ukoer3/rapidinnovation/camiloe.aspx

19. Amplifying
• Please use hashtags: #jlern #learningreg
• Short paper abstract here:
http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer12/abstracts/369.html
• Other project details on our blog:
http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com
• Contact me at:
sarah.currier@manchester.ac.uk
• Get involved via Learning Registry lists:
Updates; Collaborate; Developers