OCWtool and dScribes – Pedagogy, Social Practices, and Tools What a long, strange trip it’s being

OCW and Sakai Simple Assumptions – How would we do that? OCW is a good idea – see Hal’s talk and JSB slides below Sakai installations can/should become generators of OCW content on a very large scale – mutually beneficial to the academy and the OCW community How would we do that?

Putting an OCW Pipeline in the LMS - OCW Publishing from Sakai UM OCW Web Site or other Institutional Repository Publication Pipeline Digital Course Materials: (1) IP Management (2) Tagging OCW Categories (3) Exporting from CTools (4) QA and Review eduCommons tools Raw Course Content Vetted Teaching Research Focus on IP, OCW navigation categories, ease of movement to eduCommons workflow… then we’ll get more complicated Initial MIT OCW process has difficulty scaling. How can we support this process?

Sakai Resources Area – unorganized vis a vis OCW

Overall Goals (Vancouver) Make Sakai an Open Educational Resources engine; a generator of OERs as OpenCourseWare sites Make the process of OCW site generation economically feasible Make it simple for faculty to tag and export their class materials to an OCW site Couple Sakai and eduCommons (OCW site creation tool) to automate the process

Current Problems Too expensive to create OCW sites Little or no automation No connection to CLE (eg, Sakai) Only large institutional commitment can get an OCW site off the ground Roadblock to growing the OCW community

Sakai in Production Open Educational Resource Engines Text These are the sites that are running 24x7 with real user bases that are teaching significant number of classes. UM 9/04, IU 1/05, Yale 1/05, Foothill 4/2005, Rutgers 9/2005. Merced is starting with Sakai and nothing else. 2000 classes a semester are taught at U Michigan alone. That’s 4000 this 2005-2006 year alone. How much OER could this generate after a few years? 4000 courses each year at U Michigan alone; more at UNISA (U South Africa)

Overview of Process Based on Hybrid Publishing Model Integrated with MIT Teaching Process Plan Build Teach/Manage Publish Upstream foundational prep Recruit faculty Plan TEACHING version of course Plan OCW version of course Review existing content Identify & resolve IP (except permissions) Track IP by object in system Content development Collect/capture existing content Build content into LMS sections/templates Enter metadata Create commissioned works Process permission requests & make IP edits Live teaching and course administration Update/supplement materials Post announcements Assign, track, grade student work Interact (faculty-student and student-student) Open publication Perform course QA Obtain faculty approval Export to OCW site Support Renewal, archiving, and preservation Update course content Archive course content Color legend BLACK Normal teaching process BLUE Required for open publishing ORANGE Former OCW steps eliminated HYBRID INTEGRATED PROCESS ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW Spec course/map content Reformat/clean up/ restructure/contextualize Enter content into CMS Perform authoring QA Perform final edit Perform production QA Respond to user feedback Review/refine metadata (MIT Library) Edit course for errors ELIMINATED STEPS External OCW Audiences MIT Faculty & Teaching Assistants Individual Teaching Web Sites MIT-Supported LMS OCW External Web Site Dspace Archive MIT-supported option Assume 80% participation - OR - Individual/local supported option Assume 20% participation Robust authoring Easy capture Easy update Document managemt Restricted teaching matls Open teaching matls Import/export Offline authoring Self-publishing Multiple views Course admin Teach MIT Students Publishing tools Embedded tracking code Embedded license terms IP tracking Metadata tagging Hi-design display templates Preview capability Downloadable ZIP files Discussion group suppt Archiving Workflow Archive Harvest for archi ving or publishing MIT’s slide - Start here, the process we are looking at, is it wrong to always return to MIT?

OCW Tool – Support for the Hybrid Process Support for Tagging in Sakai – Helping faculty, students create tags (metadata) for: IP status – Creative Commons+ OCW Navigation – MIT Categories Export – Choose what to put on OCW site Will use Creative Commons, plus some other options, such as choices desired by particular school, if they have any such choices… OCW Tool

We Like MIT’s Hybrid Model a Lot (Atlanta) Plan Build Teach/Manage Publish Open publication Content development Upstream foundational prep Perform course Quality Assurance Obtain faculty approval Export to OCW site Live teaching and course administration Recruit faculty Plan TEACHING version of course Plan OCW version of course Review existing content Identify & resolve IP (except permissions) Track IP by object in system Collect existing content Build content into LMS sections or templates Enter metadata Create commissioned works Process permission requests & make IP edits Update and supplement materials Post to email, wikis, blogs, announcements, discussions, forums, IM Assign, track, grade student work Interact (faculty-student and student-student) through all channels above Removed the orange, those things currently done by MIT OCW team that they plan on NOT doing in hybrid model. Agree that they will go away, or be special cases. Add variety of content – wiki, blog, etc – that are generated in courses now; these show up again under “Interact” lower down. BLACK Normal teaching process BLUE Required for open publishing

All done within LMS faculty are already familiar with Planning Phase Includes “Training” for Faculty and Support Staff in Colleges and Departments Planning & Training Build Teach/Manage Publish Upstream foundational preparation All done within LMS faculty are already familiar with IP Object tracking comes along with the use of the system Training has additional benefits in educating faculty on IP Support staff distributed throughout university Recruit faculty Plan TEACHING version of course Plan OCW version of course Review existing content Identify & resolve IP (except permissions) Track IP by object in system How we view the hybrid model…

Teaching and Managing Course Materials Build Teach/Manage Publish All done within LMS faculty are already familiar with IP Object tracking can proceed throughout course Materials/Objects can be tagged with OCW categories (Syllabus, Lecture Notes, Assignments, etc.) wherever they come from, wiki, blog… Increasingly, objects tagged by system, eg, Assignments Collect existing content Build content into LMS sections or templates Enter metadata Create commissioned works Process permission requests & make IP edits Update and supplement materials Post to email, wikis, blogs, announcements, discussions, forums, IM Assign, track, grade student work Interact (faculty-student and student-student) through all channels above As we bring in more and more “tools” like the authoring and assignment or exam tool, more and more objects get auto-tagged.

Tagging Course Resources RDF tagging in the future

Add or remove tags within specific site User can modify tags to fit their needs – But start with MIT tag set to encourage standard approach to navigation of resulting OCW site

Content Development and Teaching Proceed Throughout Course Period Build Teach/Manage This is a dynamic, emergent, iterative process Take advantage of that – OCW Tool is available to add tags anytime in development or teaching Capture IP and OCW category metadata as class proceeds, as new material is developed Perhaps have a student ‘scribe’ who has permissions set to add metadata – when new document appears, they tag it – perhaps make this a class activity, develop student incentives (e.g., better future access) Have system flag incomplete data on objects – direct faculty or students to places of needed metadata

How Do We Get This Done? This currently costs MIT ~$10-20,000 per course We can get some faculty to do it But we need to get adoption supported by the administration, at first or eventually – top-down and/or bottom-up And we need to support the faculty How do we do all this?

3 Incentive Structures Students Administration Faculty

3 Incentive Structures for Adoption Administration – why Chuck Vest adopted OCW, modified for non-first-movers, with local context added… why department heads… Faculty – why your faculty would adopt, for exposure, then student demand… Students – all the reasons on the following slide All 3 have initial, then self- and mutually-reinforcing aspects as the system becomes embedded, woven into fabric of university - similar to adoption of Sakai/CLE in the first place Can we build any of these, or other, incentives into the software?

Digital Scribes Basic idea – get students to help the faculty in courses they are taking – students become digital scribes – DScribes – and get access rights to OCW tool area, taking part of load off faculty Leveraging the students’ interests, creating student incentives Developing student incentives: (emerging list) Do to get access to course material in the future; Do to get closer access to TA’s and teachers; Become part of the online DScribe community; Do for the greater good; Do to learn better; Get a Tshirt; etc… 1 hour course credit for UG DScribes – learn a bit about IP, media management, how to use tools 3 hour course for Grad DScribes II – leveraging interest among SI students – more complete coverage of IP, multimedia, lecture capture, synopsizing, notes project – general ‘lite editing for web’ Goal of having the DScribes provide much of the ongoing infrastructure for the actual cleaning, tagging and preparing for export – two tiered: DS II’s help DS’s – maybe GSI’s, alumni

But, we hadn’t really looked hard enough at students (especially students), faculty and the teaching-learning process in the web era So, by way of working with students in my SI 514 ‘semantic tech and OCW’ class this past winter/spring… …a few moments with John Seely-Brown, Chris Anderson and some ideas on emerging pedagogies

Think of OCW as Helping to Fill Out the Long Tail With Quality Material, and, dScribe Activities as Introducing People in the Academy to Models of Mentoring That are Fundamentally Participatory, as OS Models Are

Long Tail of Education Why fill it up Where a lot of the action is Personalization of learning examples and objects largely happen in the tail What about the head Future Learning Environment has both – well populated head and tail

Students as Co-Producers Emphasizes Mentor/Apprentice relationships Participants in learning process Not jugs to be filled up with knowledge Povides value to faculty – students know the tech Think of as a ‘Participatory Pedagogy’

Higher Education Institutions and OCW Community - Both Benefit HE Institutions Meeting needs of HE - for innovation and adoption of emerging methods Increases importance of teaching in HE – contributes to re-balancing vs research Creating virtuous cycles in HE institutions, and outside – publish, feedback, improvements, re-publish…thus, Showing the importance of “Open” in/to HE – introduction to web 2.0 dynamics in education Bridging formal and informal ed – classroom and self-learners OCW Communities Mobilizing our established communities of scholars Best place, in ways only place, for generation of enough material to fill the long tail Universities are one place where the mentors are…we are teachers Showing the importance of “Open” in/to HE – introduction of web 2.0 dynamics in education Bridging formal and informal ed – classroom and self-learners

Why Do OCW? 3 Incentive Structures for Adoption Administration – why Chuck Vest adopted OCW, modified for non-”first-movers”, with local context added. Why Provosts, Deans, Department Heads… Faculty – why your faculty would adopt – e.g., for exposure, then student demand, new form of publication, build into evaluations… Students – see following slides… All 3 have initial, then self- and mutually-reinforcing aspects as the system becomes embedded, woven into the fabric of university – sometimes similar to adoption of Sakai/CLE in the first place

Digital Scribes – making this work Basic idea – students help the faculty in courses they are taking – students become digital scribes – dScribes – get access rights to OCW tool area, taking large part of load off faculty Why would students do this? – (see following early research) Leveraging the students’ interests, creating student incentives: Developing student incentives: (emerging list) Do to get access to course material in the future; Do to get closer access to TA’s and teachers; Become part of the online dScribe community; Do for the greater good; Do to learn better; Get a Tshirt; etc… 1 hour course credit for UG dScribes – learn a bit about IP, media management, how to use tools 3 hour course for Grad dScribes II – leveraging interest among SI students – more complete coverage of IP, multimedia, lecture capture, synopsizing, notes project – general ‘lite editing for web’ Goal of having the dScribes provide much of the ongoing infrastructure for the actual cleaning, tagging and preparing for export, using the tools – two tiered: dS II’s help dS’s – maybe GSI’s, alumni in future

Students as Apprentices and Co-Participants in Teaching/Learning What happens when we encourage, support and integrate student efforts, as we are in the dScribe/OCW project We are encouraging both students and faculty to engage in more participatory pedagogies The faculty (and admin) incentives we know a good bit about The students’ incentives we don’t know much about, but they have, and quickly recognize they have, multiple, significant positive incentives This mobilization of new incentive structures parallels results of the recent research done on open source (see S. Weber), which shows that complex artifacts can be constructed by distributed communities, with unexpected incentive structures, in an open environment Investigating such alternative incentive structures is driving the social part of the development of the S-OCW tool And cracking the last nut of sustainability – cost

dScribes Catalyzing new relationships between faculty and students and among students – institutionalizing collaborative apprenticeships at the earliest possible level Finding places the students can become “peers in the process,” can become contributors, using their ‘digital native’ tech knowledge and experience Introducing faculty gently, in the process of their teaching, to new (digital/social) technologies and their use, with the help of the students New partnership construction in the academy Practical engagement as a part of learning at all levels, building it into the learning process – Dewey would be pleased

Building a dScribe Community - Building into a Curriculum What a student might do if taking the 1-credit OCW dScribe class: --Learn about IP issues related to making course materials available --Learn about useful metadata standards relevant to open courseware (eg, marking up citations to enable use of open URL resolvers; ). --Publish a course they are taking - work with faculty to --get permissions; generate substitutions where necessary   --mark up citations; perhaps find open versions   --tag materials, using MIT's navigation categories, or faculty’s What students might do in a 3-credit SI 501 dScribe class: --Go into more depth on IP, metadata issues above --Learn about effective, easy, low-touch capture, production, editing of A/V, include screencasts, podcasts, videocasts of lectures, discussions --Learn about appropriate techniques for capturing different types of events, from interviews to lectures to conferences, includes setting up wikis or other tools for distributed capture of events and their activities --Mentor students taking the 1-credit OCW dScribing class – to Learn, Teach --Act as dScribe for some of their own classes, and for professional event (e.g., a conference)

“dScribes” at U Toronto Potential example of ‘student volunteerism’ on scale we need The University of Toronto engages hundreds of students each semester to take notes for classes, those notes then are put online and used to support accessibility to the course materials for those who need them (like hearing or sight impaired students).  The students are recruited and trained each semester – largely by each other; some staff, but not much Is this an existence proof for the idea of large dScribe communities at universities? Maybe.

Baseline & Investigation of Benefits vs Incentives UMichigan Survey – April 2007 All instructional faculty, including graduate student instructors, were invited to respond (n=7,244). There was a 20% response rate to the survey (n=1,481). A random sample of 25% of the student body, stratified by college/department, was invited to respond (n=8,790). There was a 26% response rate to the survey (n=2,281).

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Focus Groups – Incentives vs Benefits Often talk about value/benefits to faculty and administration Usually list benefits for students Results of focus groups at UM Students see incentives to help generate OCW, and the highest incentives do not necessarily line up with usually cited benefits – they have more to do with interaction with faculty, and deepening pedagogical relationships – that mentor-apprentice relationship

Tools for dScribes Workflow customized for dScribes and faculty, not ‘professional OCW’ staff Build around ‘participatory pedagogical’ model Faculty engagement gated, can be large or small (faculty can be their own dScribes) Tools integrated with learning environment, so faculty can use knowledge from CLE tools Create portable materials for faculty and students, and Library

dScribes and Tools Going back and thinking about a collaborative material production process Work in progress Development on a dScribe tool underway this summer Hope to use this fall with first-generation dScribe2 students leading the process, and mentoring dScribe1 students This winter plan to have first large dScribe1 class as part of SI grad/undergrad curriculum Go from there

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dScribes and OCW tool Building social foundations of technology applications, integrating the two into socio-technical process Blending Open Source successes with Open Content Initiatives Mobilizing transformative processes of Web 2.0 dynamics in service of transforming the academy, While at the same time using resulting contributions from the academy to feed Learning Web 2.0 dynamics Developing positive feedback loop that rewards participatory pedagogies and drives both transformation in the academy and the growth of Learning Web 2.0 OER/OCW generation at the center of both

Must Reads

and, for pedagogical foundations (and fun summer reading)

Thanks - Quex