Think Digital: Best Practices for creation of Digital elearning Resources

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Think Digital Best Practices for creation of
Digital e-learning Resources Marieke
Guy Interoperability Focus
UKOLN is supported by
www.bath.ac.uk
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What is Good Practice?

• Starting point I want to create a quality
  resource that is usable and successful
• Be aware of standards, guidelines and regulations
• Use check lists and toolkits
• Use quality resources
• Learn from others experience
• Plan, plan, plan
• Test, test, test
• Sustainability

The simple answer is it depends on what you are
trying to achieve.?
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Which Way?
The easy way?
Saddik http//www.flickr.com/photos/sadik/4839418
2/
The hard way?
Kenworker http//www.flickr.com/photos/kenworke
r/53367117/
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Standards

• Standards are essential when creating electronic
  resources because
• they allow data interchange and interoperability
• they allow the management of information
• they result in greater use
• they increase the longevity of electronic
  resources
• They give our funders value for money
• Open versus proprietary standards?
• Which standard should we use?
• Keeping to the standards once chosen

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Open Standards

• Open Standards are required for several reasons
• Application Independence To ensure that access
  to resources is not dependent on a single
  application.
• Platform Independence To ensure that access to
  resources is not restricted to particular
  hardware platforms.
• Long-term Access To ensure that quality
  scholarly resources can be preserved and accessed
  over a long time frame.
• Accessibility To ensure that resources can be
  accessed by people regardless of disabilities.
• Architectural Integrity To ensure that the
  architectural framework for the Information
  Environment is robust and can be developed in the
  future

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Proprietary Standards
e.g. MS Office formats, Adobe's PDF, Flash, gif
and Java.

• Proprietary refers to formats which are owned by
  an organisation, group, etc.
• Widely used proprietary standards are often
  referred to as industry standards. E.g. Microsoft
  Excel (spreadsheets)
• Sometimes companies which own proprietary formats
  may choose to make the specification freely
  available
• Alternatively third parties may reverse engineer
  the specification and publish the specification
• In addition tools which can view or create
  proprietary formats may be available on multiple
  platforms or as open source
• But proprietary formats have not been approved by
  a neutral standards body
• The organisation owning the format may change the
  format or the usage conditions at any time

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Standards Example CSS

• The presentation language of Cascading Style
  Sheets was invented in 1996 by W3C
• It was an attempt to increase the presentational
  sophistication and accessibility of the Web by
  eliminating browser-specific mark-up
• Began to be properly used in 2001 by standards
  compliant browsers
• The most current standard is CSS Level 3
• The benefits of CSS are that it
• separates style from content - reuse
• lightens the bandwidth of your pages
• increases the odds that people and devices will
  be able to access the sites you create

http//www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
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Standards Example CSS

• alink color blue
• avisited color 000080
• aactive color 000080
• body
• background-image url(/web-focus/resources/css/w
  eb-focus.gif)
• background-repeat no-repeat
• background-attachment fixed
• margin-left 10
• font-family verdana, arial, helvetica,
  sans-serif
• hr.top-banner-divide
• color blue border-width 0px height 10px
  background0000cc

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Not using Standards

• Although use of recommended standards and best
  practices is encouraged, there may be occasions
  when this is not possible
• Building on existing systems
• Standards immature
• Functionality of the standard
• Limited support for standards
• Limited expertise
• But beware.
• Work on a migration strategy

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Which Standards?

• Again, it depends.
• What standards are available?
• "The great thing about standards is that there
  are so many to choose from."
• Standards bodies
• What are others using?
• What are we already using?
• What can we stick to?

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Standards Example DC

• Dublin Core is a metadata standard used to
  describe digital objects originally created in
  Dublin, Ohio, by the Dublin Core Metadata
  Initiative (DCMI)
• The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set consists of
  15 optional metadata elements
• 1. Title 5. Publisher 9. Format 13. Relation
• 2. Creator 6. Contributor 10. Identifier 14.
  Coverage
• 3. Subject 7. Date 11. Source 15. Rights
• 4. Description 8. Type 12. Language
• The elements can be refined or qualified
• The benefits of DC are its simplicity,
  extensibility, semantic interoperability,
  international consensus, and modularity
• Work on DC has led to the development of the
  Resource Description Framework (RDF)

http//dublincore.org/
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Standards Example DC

• ltmeta name"DC.title" content"UKOLN" /gt
• ltmeta name"DC.subject" content"national centre
  digital information management cultural
  heritage library awareness research
  information services public library networking
  bibliographic management distributed systems
  metadata resource discovery conferences
  lectures workshops" /gt
• ltmeta name"DC.description" content"UKOLN is a
  national focus of expertise in digital
  information management. It provides policy,
  research and awareness services to the UK
  library, information and cultural heritage
  communities. UKOLN is based at the University of
  Bath." /gt
• ltmeta name"DC.creator" content"Web-support
  Team, web-support_at_ukoln.ac.uk" /gt
• ltmeta name"Keywords" content"national centre,
  digital information management, cultural
  heritage, library,

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Guidelines and Regulations

• Guidelines are an indication or outline of policy
  or conduct
• Regulations are rules dealing with details or
  procedure
• External e.g. accessibility
• Internal e.g. Our digitisation project handbook
• Guidelines can be a good thing if they provide
  genuine guidance without excessive coercion
• There is a danger of them being too precise or
  too restrictive
• Must be possible to apply them locally
• Regulations can be useful but again be careful be
  careful of forcing people into corners

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Use Quality Resources

• Resources need to be credible and from a worthy
  source
• Remember The Internet creates the pretense
  that we are getting all the information we want.
  That misconception prevents people from even
  looking for the truth. Mark Crispin Miller
• Note and cite all resources used
• More quality resources later.

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Learn from Others Experience

• Learn from successful outcomes
• Learn from mistakes
• Learn from how people have dealt with problems
• Use case studies and examples
• Ask people for advice
• Use email/phone hotlines run by credible
  organisations

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Standards Example RSS

• RSS is a dialect of XML and was originally
  designed by Netscape but has been significantly
  changed over the years
• It has forked twice
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• Atom?
• It is used primarily for Web syndication and news
  feeds
• The benefits of RSS are that it allows
• Information to be reused Web sites and
  aggregators
• Issues within the Web standards community

http//blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
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Standards Example RSS

• lt?xml version"1.0" encoding"UTF-8"?gt
• ltrdfRDF xmlnsrdf"http//www.w3.org/1999/02/22-r
  df-syntax-ns" xmlns"http//purl.org/rss/1.0/"
  xmlnsdc"http//purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlnssyn"http//purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndica
  tion/" xmlnsadmin"http//webns.net/mvcb/"
  xmlnstaxo"http//purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxono
  my/" xmlnsev"http//purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/eve
  nt/" gt
• ltchannel rdfabout"http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/"gt
• lttitlegtUKOLN Newslt/titlegt
• ltlinkgthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/lt/linkgt
• ltdescriptiongtUKOLN-related news including new
  additions to the UKOLN Web site.lt/descriptiongt
• ltdclanguagegten-GBlt/dclanguagegt
  ltdcdategt2005-10-26lt/dcdategt ltitemsgt

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Checklists and Toolkits

• Part of the project planning
• Very useful!
• Digital Imaging A Practical Handbook by Stuart
  D. Lee
• why digitise checklist
• digitisation ready reckoner for time and costs
• decision matrice
• Many digital toolkits available now
• Create your own

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Plan, plan, plan

• Importance of project planning
• identify specific tasks
• estimate time to complete them and associated
  costs
• identify who will perform the tasks
• highlight areas of risk (contingency plans)
• Project lifecycle
• Importance of project management
• Importance of input from steering groups and
  stakeholders (user requirements)
• Like DIY, the key is all in the preparation!

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Test, test, test

• User testing is key at many points in the project
  lifecycle
• Can be time consuming and expensive
• Jacob Nielson test 5 users
• Test many aspects (from TASI)
• the search and retrieval mechanisms
• Metadata
• Image quality and usability
• Navigation
• Aesthetics
• Accessibility
• Registration systems

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Standards Example PNG

• Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a is an
  extensible file format for the lossless,
  portable, well-compressed storage of raster
  images
• PNG was created by the PNG Development Group to
  both improve upon and replace the GIF format with
  an image file format that does not require a
  patent license to use
• PNG is an international standard (ISO/IEC 15948)
  and a W3C Recommendation - PNG-8, PNG-24
• A PNG file consists of a header and chunks of
  information
• IHDR - header
• PLTE - palette
• IDAT - image
• IEND - end
• Metadata

http//www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/
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Standards Image Formats

• Image formats fall into two camps
• raster formats e.g. bmp, gif, jpg, png, tiff
• Vector and metafile formats e.g. svg, pdf, cgm
• Most formats are proprietary defacto status e.g.
  bmp, gif, tiff, pdf
• Some are proprietary status e.g. sid, stn, wmf,
  pict (avoid these)
• Some are open standard status e.g. jpg, png,
  jpeg2000, svg
• The status of a format is not clear cut and often
  difficult to establish
• Status is constantly changing and needs to be
  checked for each format and each version of the
  format
• Use a File Format Table

http//www.tasi.ac.uk/resources/toolbox.html
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Sustainability

• You have a responsibility to the digital
  resources you are creating to
• maintain usability, durability and intellectual
  integrity of the information
• keep access to resources
• avoid wasting money
• Sustainability exit strategy (should be thought
  of in the plan)
• New sources of funding
• New audiences and markets
• Repurposing content
• Institutional resources - Support from within,
  reuse of hardware, skills and content
• Preservation

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Sustainability

• All digital materials are at risk - physical
  damage to the storage medium, technological
  changes that leave the data unreadable e.g. The
  Doomsday project saved!
• Why preserve?
• To maintain usability, durability and
  intellectual integrity of the information
• Access to resources
• Avoid wasting money
• Need to think about the software/hardware,
  storage, metadata, user needs

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Any Questions?