1. One Standard to rule them all?:
Descriptive Choices for Open Education
OCWC2010
Hanoi, May 5-7 2010
R. John Robertson1, Lorna Campbell1, Phil Barker2, Li
Yuan3, and Sheila MacNeill1
1Centre for Academic Practice and Learning
Enhancement, University of Strathclyde, 2Institute for
Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University
3Institute for Cybernetic Education, University of Bolton

2. UKOER Programme
 The Open Educational Resources Programme
is a collaboration between the JISC and the
Higher Education Academy in the UK.
 The Higher Education Funding Council for
England (HEFCE) has provided an initial £5.7
million of funding, (April 2009 to March 2010)
which will explore how to expand the open
availability and use of free, high quality online
educational resources.

3. UKOER Programme
 The UK OER programme consists of 29 pilot
projects divided into three categories:
 individual (i.e. personal) projects (8);
 institutional projects (7)
 multi-institutional subject-based consortium
projects (14).
 Support for the programme is being provided by
a number of existing JISC services and the
Open University (UK) Score project.

4. JISC CETIS
 JISC CETIS is one of three JISC
Innovation Support Centres (ISC),
supporting the sector through:
 participating in standards bodies,
 providing community forums for
sharing experiences in using
particular technologies and
standards
 providing specific support for
JISC funded development
programmes such as the
UKOER programme.

5. Stereotype: the ‘Learning Object’
 The „classic‟ model
 the reusable learning object (RLO).
 to strive to create context independent learning materials
 IMS Content Packaging or ADL SCORM , IEEE LOM.
 Description of pedagogy in metadata
 VLE‟s and refined search tools
 Examples: Ariadne network ,
 But
 real use of detailed educational fields, can be limited
 seen as complex, requiring support from learning
technologists
 often closed networks ~learning object economies

6. Stereotype: the ‘light touch’
 Blogs, web 2.0 tools, websites
 Minimal metadata
 often author, title, license
 often applied at site level
 Frequent use of CC licenses (often integrated with tools)
 RSS
 Enthusiastic individuals
 Examples:
 But
 Can be „closed‟/ unknown groups of people
 Discoverability of specific items / unknown items can be
tricky

7. The UKOER approach

8. Guidelines
 “any system capable of delivering content on the
open web”
 Strongly encouraged to use platforms that can
create RSS for collections
 Utilise existing technologies - not develop
 Some descriptive information required

9. Required descriptive set
 Tag: UKOER
 Title
 Author
 Date
 URL
 File format (auto)
 File size (auto)

10. Recommended descriptive set
 Language
 Subject classifications
 Keywords
 Tags
 Comments
 Description

11. Descriptive set (2)

12. Hoped for outcomes
 Institutional change
 Release of OERs
 Freedom of choice allows opportunity to assess:
 Selection
 Suitability
 Impact
 Sustainability

13. Factors: CETIS
 Seminar and presentations
 Encouragement to consider local resource
description requirements
 Presented context of wider OER initiatives
 Did not promote any particular system, standard, or
other approach
 Influence of CETIS‟ experience with standards

14. Factors: System Choice
 Single biggest factor: native standards supported/
implemented in the system.
 Pattern somewhat visible in project bids/plans
emerged clearly in technical conversations
 True for both LO repositories and for web2.0 tools
 Partially result of explicit prohibition of development
 Some exceptions:
 Support for multiple standards
 Creation of mappings

15. Factors: project team background
 Parallel to influence of system choice, teams will
use what they know
 but lesser influence:
 No budget for new systems
 Though unlikely, staff turnover more likely than
system turnover

16. Factors: role of network/ community
 Some communities have entry requirements
 But relatively few projects engaged – most had
existing connections, or had deliberate aim to
engage.
 Some examples:
 OpenSpires – Matterhorn, iTunesU, and more
 Berlin – OCWC RSS [predating programme but
revised]

17. Factors: aggregator services
 Discovery tools
 Often-based on OAI-PMH and RSS
 But not as much of an influence as expected
 Note: aggregation does not need to dictate local
standards; mapping is often possible, but system
dependent
 One major exception...

18. Factors: iTunesU
 Participation in iTunesU is
 by agreement with Apple,
 specific and somewhat idiosyncratic metadata
 set granularity of materials
 associated cover images
 Issues around openness (license, software, reuse)
 Massive draw for faculty contributions
 Aside: institutional channels and individual channels

19. Factors: JorumOpen
 National repository for learning materials
 Launch of JorumOpen
 Slightly different descriptive requirements to
programme
 Influence of deposit tools
 Version 1
 Version 2
 Bulk options
 Influence of perceptions on both platform and
standard
 Influence on international participation

20. Patterns of use: one standard?
 Is there [with apologies to Tolkien]:
‘One [standard] to rule them all,
One [standard] to find them,
One [standard] to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them’?
20

21. Patterns of use: preliminary notes
 Data gathered from technical review calls as part of programme
support
 All 29 projects recorded.
 Projects may occur more than once in any given graph if they use
more than one of the technologies listed.
 The graphs refer to the number of platforms that support a given
standard; they do not refer to or imply active use of the standard.
 CMS refers to Content Management System and not to Course
Management System.
 The data itself is available from the tool CETIS project monitoring
tool, PROD. http://prod.cetis.ac.uk tag ukoer

22. Patterns: system type

23. Patterns specific choices

24. Patterns: descriptive standards

25. Patterns: dissemination standards

26. Patterns: packaging formats

27. Patterns: resource types
 PDF  JPEG
 DOC  PNG
 PPT  SVG
 SWF  WMV
 QTI  OGG
 MP3  WAV
 MP4  AVI
 FLV  WMF
 AAC
 ?

28. Impact of choices
1. Existing technologies used
2. Diverse technical responses to the challenge of
managing and sharing OERs. A mixture of
elearning platforms, repositories, and innovative
approaches to sharing have been used.
3. The standards being used are often embedded in
systems and their selection of a standard is often
derivative
4. The pilot programme points to ways forward to
using both web2.0 applications and digital
repositories for sharing and managing OERs.

29. Impact of choices (2)
5. Projects have chosen multiple platforms to support different
functions such as: preservation, streaming, marketing,
advocacy.
6. Choices made mostly reflect an emphasis on resource
management and sharing; few projects are using technology
that supports course delivery. Tendancy to focus on other
academics, rather than students, as the consumers of the
materials produced.
7. Although many projects can produce RSS feeds, the ability to
use these feeds to support any form of bulk import into
JorumOpen has been problematic as the content and format
of these feeds varies dramatically.

30. Impact of choices: aggregation (in JorumOpen)
1. Author names have been recorded differently.
2. The JorumOpen deposit tool will provide some form of
standardization by requiring a minimal set of descriptive fields.
3. The infrastructure of JorumOpen will be able to generate some of
the required information, e.g. file format, size, etc; across the set
of resources it holds.
4. The redevelopment of the deposit tool has resulted in some
issues regarding the inclusion of contributing institution details.
As a result the author field of some resources will also include
institutional information.
5. Project led creation of a short cataloguing guide to address
issues they noted. (UK Centre for Bioscience, 2010).

31. Next steps
 Investigate details of deposit options
 Informing next programme and future work
 Xcri use/ course codes
 Work with JorumOpen

32. Further Information
 http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Educational_Content_OER
 http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk//topic/oer
 Contact details
 robert.robertson@strath.ac.uk
 s.macneill@strath.ac.uk
 lmc@strath.ac.uk
 L.Yuan@bolton.ac.uk
 philb@icbl.hw.ac.uk