Learning Resources a personal educational view from UK HE

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Learning Resourcesa (personal) educational view
from UK HE

• Scott Wilson
• 03-10-2005

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Who am I?

• Assistant Director, CETIS
• Very Occasional Lecturer, Bangor University
• http//www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott

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What this talk is about

• How to make resources useful in higher education
• A lot of rambling on about learning objects
• Some thoughts about repository services and
  ecology

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Learning Objects
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From library to learning
Learning object creation, re-use
Learning Teaching workflows
Repositories institutional,
e-prints, subject, data, learning objects
Institutional presentation services portals,
Learning Management Systems
Deposit / self-archiving
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Learning Objects?

• any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be
  used, re-used or referenced during technology
  supported learning
• Or, nothing cant be a learning object from a
  resource management viewpoint

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Reusability

• The primary intent of Learning Object technology
  is reusability
• A course or module content is broken up into
  small, discrete pieces, each without a dependency
  on the whole

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Re-assembly
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Learning Objects

• So, we can create libraries of learning objects,
  and assemble them in all kinds of combinations to
  suit any need, all a teacher need do is select
  the correct combinations for their context
• But there is one small problem

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It doesnt work
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Well, lets qualify that

• The current technology model embodied by
  specifications such as IMS and SCORM doesnt seem
  to fit very well with some models of education,
  such as university education
• Why not?

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Problem 1 ContentWhat is the content of a
university education?

• Textbooks
• Primary sources (journals, books, etc)
• Original research
• Lectures
• Conversations
• Lab instructions, assignments
• Supporting slides, notes, study guides etc.

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How much of this content can typically be turned
into LOs?

• Textbooks
• Primary sources (journals, books, etc)
• Original research
• Lectures
• Conversations
• Lab instructions, assignments
• Supporting slides, notes, study guides etc.

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Or, in other words

• Learning Object technology is best positioned to
  deal with the lowest-value content in existing
  course structures
• To deliver value, the Learning Object approach
  therefore requires a change of teaching strategy
  and course organization

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Are LO assumptions at odds with university
pedagogy?

• A one-on-one instructional model is preferable
  above others,
• human interaction in large scale learning
  environments is economically impossible, and
  (therefore),
• automation via intelligent instructional systems
  is the only viable solution to providing anywhere
  anytime learning.

David Wiley, Learning Objects Difficulties and
Opportunities http//wiley.ed.usu.edu/docs/lo_do.
pdf
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SCORM
From Slosser, S. (2001) "ADL and the Sharable
Content Object Reference Model." MERLOT 2001
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Problem 2 Lecturers

• Lecturers dont see themselves as a delivery
  device for content
• They have opinions about the content
• They have opinions about how they teach
• They view their original materials as added value
  - they are also content creators - and one of the
  more interesting parts of their profession

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Problem 3 Sharing

• Lecturers like reusing materials
• Provided the materials are good
• Provided the materials appear to be free of
  charge
• Provided they can change the materials to fit
  their context
• Provided they are in a usable format

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But

• Learning objects are often designed as black
  boxes of web content licensed from producers
• Most learning objects of the SCORM/IMS variety
  are not open source

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But

• Most LOs are licensed to be used as-is, not
  modified then reissued with all sorts of changes
  (share-alike with derivative work in CC parlance)

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But

• LOs of the SCORM and IMS variety are too fiddly
  to pick apart and put together again without
  specialist tools and knowledge (e.g. RELOAD)

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So if we really wanted to make learning objects
useful for lecturers

• They would be open source
• They would be liberally licensed
• They would be easy to edit and repurpose without
  special tools
• You could easily make and publish your own objects

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Problem 4 students

• Students like having resources for their studies
• Especially if they are free
• Quality or authenticity?
• Especially if they can use them directly in their
  own work and projects - that is, if they are
  easily edited and liberally licensed
• In the future, they may want to include or link
  to resources from an e-portfolio long after the
  end of their course

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• if we dont conceptualize learning objects as
  edit-able primitives designed for learners to use
  in the construction of new artifacts, what are we
  doing? Steve repeats the popular notion that he
  learns more by teaching than by learning. Guess
  why? Because teaching is a construction process
  in which a person adapts parts of many existing
  components to create a new artifact (whether they
  create a tangible expression of the artifact or
  not). Learning is generally, as Steve says,
  consuming. So guess why we always learn more when
  we teach? And guess how we should think about
  learning objects?
• David Wiley, comment on weblog (http//opencontent
  .org/blog/archives/185)

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Even the idea of learners as consumers of
learning objects may be misguided. Learners
may well be most usefully thought of as producers
of learning resources as well. In other words,
learning objects may ultimately be a consumer
culture approach misapplied to a producer culture
environment. Stephen Carson, http//openfiction.
blogspot.com/2005/08/rise-of-producer-culture.html

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Alternative technologies for creating and sharing
learning objects?

• This one -)
• Web pages
• Text (RTF, Word, PDF)
• Open-source textbooks
• Blogs and RSS/Atom

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Whats in OCW?

• Lots of PDF files of assignments, projects, labs,
  lecture notes
• Reading lists
• Online textbooks
• Syllabi
• Are these learning objects?

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Open Source Textbooks

• California Open-Source textbook project aims to
  save 400m on textbook purchasing in K-12
• Grassroots opposition to escalating cost of texts
  for students (Rip-Off 101)

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RSS/Atom

• XML and RDF metadata publishing
• X/HTML content and media enclosures
  (podcasts/vodcasts)
• Aggregation tools build personal libraries that
  are continually updated

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Other kinds of resources

• E-Prints
• Media (image, audio, video)
• Simulations and visualizations
• Maps

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So how are we to share 1?

• Share the sources not just the objects, so we can
  edit them easily
• Use licenses that actually permit us to use
  resources in learning activities
• Share the data and metadata underlying an item,
  not just its visualization

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Repositories
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Using Resources - the repository view

• Specialized Online Collections
• Precision searching
• Classification-based browsing
• Licensing DRM
• Authentication/Registration

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Using resources - the web view

• Google - Simple keyword searching
• The King Of Search
• Flickr - Creative Commons Search
• find images you can actually use!
• Google Maps
• WikiPedia

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Using resources - the web 2.0 view

• Networked collaborative filtering discovery
  through recommendations and conversations about
  resources in social networks
• Social bookmark services
• Feed aggregation
• Deep linking to stable resource URLs is a
  requirement for these kinds of capability

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The Web 2.0 Checklist

• Structured Microcontent
• Data outside
• Licenses
• Feeds galore
• Web APIs

• Desktop integration
• Single identity
• Microweb
• Wild microcontent

http//www.sivas.com/aleene/microcontent/index.php
?idP2205
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Repository services

• A repository is basically a database of some
  sort, with some added services on top
• Typically services for searching, browsing,
  harvesting, and obtaining resources and their
  metadata
• These can be human or machine-usable in nature

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APIs for creative re-use

• Services can enable creative re-use of
  repositories and their resources
• Examples
• Google Maps API
• Flickr API
• RSS/Atom feeds
• Services can layer on top of individual
  repository services, such as topic maps and tag
  clouds, portals and aggregators

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Google Maps
http//www.scipionus.com/katrina.html
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http//www.chicagocrime.org/types/theft/58/
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Flickr
http//www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph
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http//krazydad.com/colrpickr/
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Tag Cloud
http//www.tagcloud.com
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Apple desktop widgets using web service APIs
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Content Enrichment via Services

• Availability of repository services supports
  content enrichment
• http//www.hackdiary.com/archives/000070.html

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Service users

• Personal spaces of learners and lecturers
• Traditional LMS-type systems in universities
• Third party visualizations, aggregators,
  processors, remix tools

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Repository ecology

• The personal desktop repository (file system,
  feed aggregators, email clients)
• The personal networked repository (.Mac, Gmail)
• Collaborative discovery services (furl,
  bloglines, technorati etc.)
• Specialized online collections (flickr, Google
  Maps, LO reps., library collections)
• The open web (Googleverse)

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Questions

• How do dedicated LO repositories library
  collections fit in the ecology?
• What are the best discovery strategies? For
  teachers? For learners?

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So how are we to share 2?

• Share the sources not just the objects, so we can
  edit them easily
• Use licenses that actually permit us to use
  resources in learning activities
• Enable collaborative filtering via social
  bookmarking and other services
• Provide feeds and other APIs to permit reuse of
  services as well as resources
• Let Google find this stuff, too.
• Dont just tolerate deep linking - encourage it

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Thanks!

• s.wilson_at_bangor.ac.uk
• http//www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott