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EdShare Workshop Traditional Educational Repositories vs. Web 2.0 Resource Sharing November 5, 2009

Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a comment

I would just like to thank the University of Southampton’s EdShare Project for organising a very informative workshop yesterday.  All the presentations provided lots of thought provoking observations so I thought I would give you a brief overview of some of the highlights.

Dave Millard’s presentation “Moving Traditional Learning and Teaching Repositories to Web 2.0″ , provided a useful overview of the outputs and issues relating the EdShare project. He suggested that those involved in repository implementation should first ask the question “what is our repository about?” and then be able to articulate this to teaching staff. In fact the project has stopped using the word repository and instead are using share.  Also we should consider what we want repositories to do, what we want to focus on e.g. is indexing, archiving or storage. With regards web 2.o applications the most important aspects for users appears to b , community, organisation (ordering),  hosting, storage, with sharing being secondary.  It was implied that there should be consideration of  how we develop these aspects within a repository as well as giving a purpose for Sharing. EdShare, has addressed some of these aspects by having open and closed repositories, by providing content in various formats e.g. zip, multi files, collection and tags.  Addressing the community aspect staff can create a profile. Users can also preview content within the environment before downloading, with their in line preview. Millard suggested the best approach with regards metadata was the minimum amount should be manually inputted with the maximum amount automated.  He also commented that staff also wanted the repositories and the content to integrate with the VLE. He concluded that a suggested approach with regards developing a system is cognitive ergonomics, where a system aligns with what people are doing. To get first hand experience of some of these features go to the EdShare web site http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk/ 

Sarah Currier’s presentation ”Top Hats and Trainers: Formal Repositories and Informal Web 2.0″ gave an overview of a project she is working on  with SHEEN  the “Scottish Employability Co-ordinators Network”  where they are using Diigo http://www.diigo.com/ and  and Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com/  and  to share content. She talked about the technical learning curve for those involved in the project and that part of ownership was the ability for members to create their own repositories using these resources. One question she got the network to consider was “How confident are you in finding your resources in a year’s time?” . She also emphasised how important it was for repositories to have a feed feature. For more details on Sarah and project go to the following links

The morning was concluded with a discussion on metadata chaired by Su White. She asked us to consider affordances of metadata, Trojan approaches e.g. getting individuals to discuss other learning and teaching issues as result of discussing metadata and the community aspects of metadata.  The type of issues that were raised were intelligent algorithms and semantic characteristics of metadata, such as pulling metadata from the file and making connections with the metadata e.g. programme codes that link to programme related content, as well as identifying opportunities for auto-populating and the issue of resourcing repository usage and development.

The afternoon began with presentation by Brian Kelly from UKOLN on the “The future of educational resource repositories in Web 2.0 World”. He discussed the tension between corporate systems and Web 2.0 tools and the risks associated with both systems and the implication that strategies should be able to address these, suggesting a mixed economy approach.  He warned against trying to replicate Google and the fact that discussions about issues of ownership are an attempt to keep the status quo. Brian also argued that the more a Web 2.o tool is used the better it becomes.  One tool he was particularly complimentary of was Slideshare where his presentation can be found http://www.slideshare.net/lisbk/the-future-for-educational-resource-repositories-in-a-web-20-world.

Ali Dickens and Yvonne Howard concluded the afternoon with discussions on Copyright and people’s favourite Web 2.0 tool features. Ali asked us to consider the risks associated with making content publicly available, identified risks included, legal aspects such as institutional and individual liability and using third part content, as well as issues to do with ownership and identifying ownership. The feature that came out of Yvonne’s session, included, widgets, RSS and mobile apps, Twitter appeared to be  an extremely popular tool .

The day was concluded with a discussion about whether it would be useful to set-up a community that could facilitate continued discussion of some of the issues identified within the event – which I think requires serious consideration.