Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories

1
Community Dimensions of Learning Object
Repositories

• Peter Douglas
• p.douglas_at_intrallect.com

2
CD-LOR project

• Funded by the JISC (June 2005-2007)
• Lead by the Glasgow Caledonian University (Prof.
  Allison Littlejohn, Dr. Anoush Margaryan)
• Collaborators
• University of Strathclyde (Dr. David Nicol, Dr.
  Colin Milligan)
• Intrallect Ltd. (Dr. Peter Douglas)
• 8 Associate partners
• 18 national international collaborative
  partners
• http//www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/

3
Project Activities

• CD-LOR was interested in enablers and barriers to
  successful uptake of LORs
• Desk Study
• Survey of Repository Users (and PRMS Survey)
• Community Consultation
• Elicit barriers
• Develop Use Cases
• Trial and Implement
• Outputs
• Guidelines for Curators and Managers setting up
  new repositories
• SRU client (Open Source)
• Recommendations (for policy and further work)

4
Barriers

• Norms of sharing collaboration
• Size and scope of community
• Roles and hierarchies

Socio-cultural Pedagogic Organisational
info management Technological

• Diversity in approaches to learning
• Discipline-specific resources
• Curriculum standardisation
• ICT skills and information literacy

• Incentives and rewards
• IPR, DRM, metadata
• Quality assurance of resources

• User friendly interface
• Effective search, storage, preview
• Interoperability standards

5
Community Dimensions

• Purpose - shared goal/interest of the community
• Dialogue - modes of communication, e.g. online,
  face-to-face, or mixed
• Roles and responsibilities
• Coherence - whether the community is close-knit
  or loosely confederated/transient
• Context - the broader ecology within which the
  community exists, e.g. professional bodies,
  governments
• Rules e.g. ground rules of conduct, rewards and
  incentives mechanisms, control of access and use
  of resources
• Pedagogy of the community - for example,
  problem-based learning, collaborative learning.

6
Repository Dimensions

• Purpose e.g. for sharing audio-files, or for
  preservation of institutional educational
  resources
• Subject area e.g. social work, medicine
• Scope - departmental, institutional, national, or
  international
• Educational sector - school, higher education,
  further education, lifelong learning
• Contributors - teachers, students, publishers,
  support staff, JISC-funded projects
• Business model - business, trading and management
  framework underpinning repository

7
Structured Guidelines

• A how to guide to implement a repository which
  meets the needs of your users and their
  communities (or evaluate existing repository)
• Ask the right questions
• Consider the likely answers
• Understand how Community Dimensions
  inter-relate.
• Know how to interpret the answers you get
• Take an iterative approach

8
Recommendations

• Better alignment between repositories and
  communities
• LORs should only be introduced if they are a
  solution to a problem meaningful to users
• Appropriate user support strategies should exist
• Product innovation should involve process
  innovation
• Curators should try to build multidisciplinary
  teams

9
Recommendations

• LO Repositories would benefit from
• Stronger integration with institutional systems
  in particular VLEs
• the easiest place to put my stuff
• Integration into personal workflows
• Web 2.0 type capabilities, which would
  facilitate
• Personal management/tagging
• Recommendation and usage

10
Relevant links

• Structured Guidelines for Setting up Learning
  Object Repositorieshttp//academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-l
  or/documents/CD-LOR_Structured_Guidelines_v1p0.pdf
  
• Recommendations for future research and
  development in the area of Learning Object
  Repositorieshttp//academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/docu
  ments/CD-LOR_FinalRecommendations.pdf
• Peter Douglas p.douglas_at_intrallect.com
• Anoush Margaryan, Allison LittlejohnColin
  Milligan