What’s in a Name? February 26, 2010
Posted by AngelaTrikic in : Terminology , add a commentFollowing on from Vicki’s report about the excellent Buzz lunch she organised, I would like to comment on a couple of points. First, of all I was especially pleased that so many members of the Academic Liaison Team were able to participate in the event as these colleagues work in each academic school across the University and have an opportunity of not only highlighting opportunities for staff to access open educational repositories available, but also encourage deposits to the LOR.
On this point you will have noted Yvonne Monteterroso’s announcement of the availability of JorumOpen. This means that once we have completed the testing, staff will have easy access to their:
- School LOR,
- the NTU LOR and
- JorumOpen
Being able to harvest from these three repositories will improve access to resources considerably and we’re planning to add to this list with MERLOT (multi-media resources) shortly. Clearly the more resources on offer, the more staff are going to be motivated and see the benefits of using the repository.
At the Buzz lunch, Hugh Hamilton questioned the use of the term LOR. He claimed that staff do not know what it means. It’s a term staff haven’t come across. I recall a discussion about terminology early on and we took the view that we should use the language of our user community so Hugh’s observation is prompting a review. We have an opportunity to replace the term LOR with Repository within the VLE environment and we’re consulting on this proposal at present.
Whilst on the topic of names, we haven’t at present got a name for our repository. The Open University have got their OpenLearn, Southampton their EdShare and MIT, MITOpenCourseware so I think its time we came up with something snappy and meaningful. I think we did a good job in naming our project SHARE, so maybe this offers a good starting point. Any ideas out their???
Buzz Lunch February 25, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWe had our buzz lunch yesterday and it was very well attended, by colleagues from our libraries and learning resources, educational development unit, centre for academic standards and quality, Schools of Social Sciences, Art and Design, Law and Business. We had three presentations on the use of the learning object repository:
- Jon Fletcher – academic librarian libraries and learning resources – Jon is using the repository to share information literacy content within the School of Science and Technology. He is dynamically linking to generic content in the LOR within his courses, which means that if he makes any changes in to the original content within the LOR this is rolled out through all the courses which are using the content and he does not have to go into each course to make the changes.
- Hugh Miller – Lecturer School of Social Sciences – Hugh has created student guidance on accessing e-resources which he shared with colleagues within his School so that it could be repurposed and contextualised.
- Trevor Pull – Learning Resources Manager School of Arts and Humanities – Trevor has been putting a range of content in the LOR including student handbook materials; audio and web templates.
A number of interesting approaches with respect to staff engagement were illustrated, which included:
- Notifying colleagues when you put content in the LOR if you think it will be of particular use
- Providing guidance for colleagues on the best way to retrieve the content e.g. if it is content that may be updated regularly use a dynamic link rather than a fixed link
- Actively encourage staff to repurpose your content, for example if it is a generic resource they may want download the resource and add some contextual information (they may even decide to publish the recontextualised version)
Out of the discussions at the Buzz Lunch the following suggestions were made re: integrating the LOR in learning and teaching and also relating to staff engagement too:
- Drop the words learning object and just keep repository – we discussed this at our wider development and implementation meeting today and have agreed to do this. Given the phrase learning object is defined in so many different ways and for us it means any content that can be used in learning and teaching, the phrase in a way is unnecessary. This means another review of our terminology which we expect anyway.
- Notify staff when objects have been added to the repository – ideally it would be good if we could get rss set-up in the repository but this is not possible, instead we could run a monthly report which I could circulate.
- Provide more guidance on the stats that staff can access in the system – so that they can get an overview of usage of their content
- One person said it would be useful if crowd sourcing could be implemented if individuals could work collaboratively on content and change the details e.g. metadata – it may not be possible in the way that people expect it but there may be a work around.
So some good stuff here, some of which we can implement now. We also video captured the whole event, which we hope to chop up into manageable pieces and make available at some point.
JorumOpen is available! February 19, 2010
Posted by YvonneMonterroso in : Comms , 1 comment so farJorumOpen is now available. For details, you may be interested in checking out the following: http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui . We are also happy to say that we have confirmed the harvesting service working with JorumOpen within Desire2Learn Learning Repository.
This service is ready to be incorporated into the Nottingham Trent University’s repository and should provide great added value to the system through the many resources provided. I am very excited to see this working and helping build adoption through the availability of open resources. I believe this will only build on the foundation this project has set forth to share resources across the university.
The target OAI-PMH URL for JorumOpen is:
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/oai/request
Autopopulating metadata February 18, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentMy project colleague, Yvonne Monterroso, at D2L, will be pleased to know that I have started to investigate autopopulating metadata this week. I am only in the very early stages. I have mentioned in a previous post that our discussions have related to using templates to manage copyright LOs e.g a template for “Nottingham Trent University All Rights Reserved” and a template for ”Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike” etc… Also I thought about other fields that can be autopopulated such as the learning room title in to the description. Full details can be found at http://wiki.ntushare.org/tiki-index.php?page=Metadata+changes (at the bottom of the page). As Yvonne has stated before there is great potential in using templates to support the challenging task of completing metadata, especially in a situation like ours where staff deposit their own learning content and I think it is worth investigating School specific templates, as well.
Google Sites Assists With Managing Evaluation Plan February 18, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWe currently use a Wiki (Tiki) to manage our project outputs and Blog (wordpress) to provide a running commentary, now we have a late entry Google sites. Helen Adey our workpackage lead for Evaluation has produced an extensive detailed Evaluation Plan. The challenge has been drawing our attention to what activities need to be done at what time. The initial plan was in a word table. I transferred some of the activities into our Wiki but there was not enough detail. It is helpful if you can see what needs to be done in each month across the whole of the project. Again we could do a series of pages in the Wiki and navigate between them using links. However, I have found that Wikis can be a bit idiosyncratic, they are good for managing access to particular pages and for quickly adding information such as action points but the charm of Google sites is that you can control the navigation and easily move pages up and down the hierarchy. If you want to deliver content that has a lot of detail like the evaluation plan Google’s site management facilitates clearer delivery. Also the styles, headings etc raise the content.
I am only part way through migrating the content from the evaluation plan but the site is publicly available at http://sites.google.com/site/shareevaluationplan/. It, also, still needs some proof reading but when the site has been fully populated with the plan and the evidence I think it will be a useful resources for the project.
Lost and found in translation February 11, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentI have been doing quite a bit of house keeping this week reviewing our actions from our various sub-groups and making sure the outputs have been fully documented. However, I have also begun to write the briefing paper which I have referred to in previous weeks that provides an overview of what the LOR is together with how staff can publish and retrieve content. The reason I have called this post lost and found in translation is because I suppose it relates to last week’s post where I discuss the issue of language. With this paper I am having to decide what language I think the NTU community should engage with regarding the sharing of learning objects and what languages can be change in order to aid understanding.
Likewise I am having to carry out the same exercise with documenting some of the issues we have encountered with the LOR. We have a register of issues which I would like to share with those involved with project here at the University, to ensure some transparency. Initially I thought it might be best to share this list, however, there is some detail that is only required for those doing the main development and implementation work. So I have decided to translate these issues into a summary, which contains details of the issue, the progress and the status. It has been helpful for me to revisit the issues just to make sure they are clear to me – if they are not clear to me how can I make them clear to anyone else. It has also helped me to identify what we need to do in relation to flagging up the issue in training and support activities. So what at first seemed quite a laboriously activity has been quite helpful. I find this happens quite a lot with project management.
Mobile NTU SHARE February 10, 2010
Posted by sarahhorrigan in : Comms , add a comment
iPod view of NTUSHARE website
If you’re using an iPod Touch / iPhone then you might have noticed that the NTU SHARE website has changed slightly. We’ve installed a plug-in – the WPtouch iPhone theme – which allows a mobile view of the site which means it’s easier to read, easier to find entries and easier to comment / interact with the site.
If you don’t want to view the site in that way, then just scroll to the bottom of the screen on your mobile device and just turn the ‘Mobile Theme’ off.
Terminology February 4, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWe have just finished the first iteration of looking at the terminology within the LOR, and have a list of suggested changes required. Although this can be seen as quite a laborious task the results can greatly help with training and support. Some language is important for users to engage with e.g. metadata and to a certain extent learning object (because we have it in the title of our repository and that is what it is for), althought there have been vast discussions and research into what is a learning object. I quite like what wikipedia says, I know it’s wikipedia but it is straightforward and understandable:
However, metadata is a tricky one as many definitions include data about data which is not particularly helpful for the teaching world. Where as something along the lines of that it is a way of tagging a resource with meaningful information, that will describe it and it will also help it to be found more easily in a search, e.g. a library catalogue, Flickr, YouTube, Google advanced search etc. - is along the lines of what it is and what it does and therefore justifies its importance.
With terminology a judgment needs to be made re: the language required to engage with a certain subject, so in the world of repositories the epistemological aspects e.g. open content will need a certain amount of engagement and where as other language which relates to usability of the repository may be changed e.g. files instead of assets, even if the alternative definition is not totally synonymous.
Colleagues within this project have considerable experience of supporting academics in their use of e-tools and often have to make these judgments when carrying out training and undertaking support. The flexibility of our system is that we can go through and change the usability language e.g. the name of a button, this, however, will be in the context of facilitating colleagues’ engagement with the epistemological aspects of content sharing, e.g. metadata, so we will carry on using this term for the time being.
Learning Repository – How are you using it? February 3, 2010
Posted by YvonneMonterroso in : Comms , 1 comment so farAs Nottingham Trent University begins the task of encouraging and increasing adoption of Learning Repository, I thought a post looking at some outlier use cases from other clients might be of interest. These may or may not apply but hopefully will spark some thought and maybe discussion that could help you and your users get even more from the technology.
Students Searching
Traditionally an instructor or instructional designer would search and use learning objects or assets within a course and students would see or even interact with the content but the students were not the ones actively searching repositories. Consider the following cases: Students looking to dig deeper into particular subject matter perhaps in an effort to refine or change focus of study or career options; students seeking further clarification tailored to a different learning style than presented in the course; students requiring additional practice exercises for a particular section. Can the institution, by opening up search-able content to students provide the means to enable these students to take ownership of their learning? For several clients, the answer is yes, whether it is the students or even students assisted by instructors, particularly where there is plentiful content available through the search. Students already use search interfaces, they Google, search YouTube, etc. Learning Repository enables your organization to help them with a more targeted search. Consider your use cases, does this make sense at some point?
Teaching Teachers
Professional development for instructors is an ongoing process as they face different challenges and opportunities throughout day to day activities and not
Assuming the goal of professional development is to improve classroom instruction and student achievement, how can materials be distributed to provide best practices, provide information about standards, encourage professional growth, provide guidance on demand by subject and address instructor needs for better meeting the learning needs of the classroom. Are there electronic materials such as PowerPoint presentations, recordings, materials for online development or links to additional resources that can be shared with all instructors using a repository? The ability to organize and distribute these materials to teachers empowers them with their professional development outside of scheduled opportunities or even online course offerings. Several clients have demonstrated this to be helpful when trying to increase contribution and usage. As instructors become accustomed to searching a specific knowledge base and they find value there, it becomes easier to extend their usage to the content used in their courses.
Are there other scenarios or other types of content you could provide via the repository to encourage first time users?
