Learning Object Repositories: a learner centered perspective

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Learning Object Repositories a learner centered
perspective

• Julià Minguillón
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

EdReNe 4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th -
March 26th 2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Table of contents

• Learning Objects and Repositories
• LOR for Statistical resources
• Virtual Learning Environments
• Idealizing a LOR
• Our reality DSpace
• Improving learners experience
• Open issues

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Pedagogy
Learning Objects
Information Science
Repositories
Computer Science
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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METADATA
CONTENT
Learning Objects (digital)
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Learning Objects

• Main goals
• Help learners to acquire and develop a
  competence, skill, ability,
• Help teachers (and learners) to create new LOs
• Desired characteristics
• Small to medium granularity
• Described according to educational purposes
• High level of connections between LOs

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Learning Objects

• LOs are diverse
• Courses SCORM, LD, HTML,
• Exercises PDF, QTI,
• Examples PDF, PPT, ODP,
• Multimedia elements JPEG, MP3, MOV,
• Simulations Applets, Flash
• Source code C, Java,
• Data XLS, SPSS,
• Equations LaTeX, MathML,
• Other CML, XML,

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Learning Object Metadata

• Proposed metadata scheme IEEE LOM
• 9 categories including Technical, Educational,
  Relation and Classification
• No required fields but plenty of them (gt 70)
• Can be reduced to unqualified Dublin Core
• But, what the ? ? ? ? is 5.4 Semantic density?
• Who will fill out over 70 fields?
• What is the title of an exercise?

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Describing LOs

• Only fill out fields that
• can be automatically filled
• are needed for preservation purposes
• will be used for retrieving (i.e. author?)
• Establish two or three levels of metadata
• Minimum, mandatory fields
• Desirable
• Complete

Progressive
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Repositories

• Two main goals
• Ensure preservation (keep the mummy)
• Promote reutilization (show the mummy)
• These goals are somehow contradictory!
• (even if the mummy is digital)
• Institutional top-down position prevails

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Traditional perspective

• Library centered
• Books, journals, works, (mostly textual)
• Everything has a unique title
• Everything has one or more authors
• Everything has a creation date
• Everything has a source
• Almost everything is a PDF file
• Main goal easily finding a resource by using a
  minimum set of common descriptors

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Repositories

• Several possibilities
• General purpose Thematic
• Top-down Bottom-up
• Institution driven Community driven
• Content Links to content
• No discussion open access

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Case of study LOR on Statistics

• Why Statistics?
• Basic competences for the Information Society
• Compulsory course for several degrees
• Thousands of students each semester ( 4000)
• Large collection of heterogeneous resources
• Known problems
• There are too many resources
• I dont know how to start
• I cant link concepts and tools

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Our proposal

• From a teaching perspective
• Build a thematic open LOR on Statistics
• Bottom-up approach (teachers)
• Integrate the LOR into the learning process
• Engage learners into using the LOR
• From a research perspective
• Learning by doing
• Create better user interfaces for LORs
• Analyze user behavior

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Key factors for LOR success

• Three dimensions (McNaught, 2006)
• Resources what?
• Actions how?
• Users who?
• Why? (Margaryan and Littlejohn, 2008)
• User Centered Design methodology

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Key factors for LOR success

• Genuine need of a community
• Enthusiastic promoters
• Clear direction and focus
• Feedback from the community
• Good management processes
• Open access
• Easy addition of new resources
• Critical mass
• Suitable granularity

? ? ? ? ? ? ?
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Adopting E-Learning

• Three dimensions (Bates, 2005)
• Methodological
• Technological
• Organizational
• Not completely orthogonal interconnected
• LORs are basic infrastructure of VLEs

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Virtual Learning Environments

• E-Learning is de facto web-based learning
• VLEs enable learner centered models

Learning Process
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Data Mining
VLE
Learning Object Repository
LO
User Interaction
LO
LO
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Learning Process
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Critical issues in LOR design

• Methodological (Wiley, 2007)
• Learning is more than just content
• Technological (back-end user interface)
• Learning is more than just browsing and searching
  LOs
• Organizational
• Workflow, licenses, metadata, policies,

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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What users want from a LOR

• More exercises and examples (55.7)
• More simulations and interactive LOs (36.7)
• Submitting questions about a LO (50.6)
• Ranking LOs (43.0)
• Correcting small mistakes (41.8)
• Adding the LO as favorite (36.7) by using
• delicious (11.4)
• Other (51.9)
• None (26.6)
• Nothing just browsing and searching (16.4)

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Ideal LOR

• Basic premise the act of browsing and/or
  searching for resources should be a learning
  experience in itself
• LOs are not isolated pieces
• Developing requires knowing from and to
• Users should be able to organize LOs
• Connectivism (Siemens, 2005)
• Ideal UI conceptual map social layer

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Ideal LOR

• Basic premise once a LO has been found, learners
  should be able to
• Rate
• Make comments / questions
• Make favorite
• Share
• Subscribe
• The LO becomes part of learners context

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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System architecture
PIM
Services
LO
LOR
Social layer
UI
PIM
PIM
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Enhancing DSpace

• Main idea
• Use DSpace as an invisible back-end
• Access LOs through persistent handles
• Create a new user interface
• Add 2.0 functionalities, maybe 3.0
• Gather and analyze usage data
• Goal allow learners to take control over LOs
  without using DSpace directly

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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DSpace pros and cons

• Why DSpace? ? already in use at UOC

• Pros
• Solid, stable
• Large community
• Persistent handles
• Preservation
• Customizable
• OAI PMH
• API, RSS

• Cons
• Ugly user interface
• 1.0 philosophy
• Dublin Core
• Multilingualism
• Intricate
• Mainly for e-prints

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Improving interaction

• Avoid Google-like searches
• Contextualized browsing
• Refine search results while being built
• Return only a few relevant LOs
• Visualize related LOs
• Allow learners to use web 2.0 services
• Widget-ize available services

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
28
New user interface

• Three complementary elements
• List of competences
• Tag cloud of keywords
• Visual taxonomy
• Additional filters
• Resource type
• Language

Ontology
LO
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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LO
LO
proportion
LO
mean
LO
box-plot
variance
test
Students t test
To compare two means
To choose a test
To compute a coefficient
...
x
?
?
x
?
?
?
x
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
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Open issues

• IEEE LOM vs Dublin Core and OAI PMH
• Filter and then find vs find and then filter
• Use of upper ontologies for describing LOs
• Combining thematic repositories
• Multilingualism UI, content and metadata
• Usability, accessibility and mobility issues
• Ideas, people and funding are welcome!!!

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
31
References and bibliography

• Bates, A.W. (2005). Technology, E-learning and
  Distance Education, Routledge.
• Margaryan, A. and Littlejohn, A. (2008).
  Repositories and communities at cross-purposes
  issues in sharing and reuse of digital learning
  resources. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning,
  24, 333-347.
• McNaught, C. (2006). Are Learning Repositories
  Likely To Become Mainstream In Education? In
  Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference
  on Web Information Systems and Technologies,
  Setubal, Portugal, 11-13 April, IS9-IS17.
• Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism A learning
  theory for the digital age. International Journal
  of Instructional Technology and Distance
  Learning. 2(1), 310.
• Wiley, D. (2007). Content is infrastructure.
  Terra incognita. Available at http//blog.worldcam
  pus.psu.edu/index.php/2007/10/03/content-is-infras
  tructure/
• McGreal, R. (2004). Learning Objects A Practical
  definition. International Journal of
  Instructional Technology and Distance Learning,
  1(9).
• Monge, S. Ovelar, R. Azpeitia, I. (2008).
  Repository 2.0 Social Dynamics to Support
  Community Building in Learning Object
  Repositories. Interdisciplinary Journal of
  E-Learning and Learning Objects (formerly IJKLO),
  4.
• Thomas, A. and Rothery, A. (2005). Online
  repositories for learning materials the user
  perspective. Ariadne, 45. Available at
  http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/thomas-rothery/

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain
32
Thank you!

• Contact information
• Julià Minguillón
• jminguillona_at_uoc.edu
• CC-BY-NC-SA
• http//www.slideshare.net/jminguillona

J. Minguillón EdReNe
4th Strategic Seminar, March 24th - March 26th
2010, Barcelona, Spain