Learning Resources a (personal) educational view from UK HE Scott Wilson

Who am I? Assistant Director, CETIS Very Occasional Lecturer, Bangor University

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

Learning Objects

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

Learning Objects? “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning” Or, nothing can’t be a learning object from a resource management viewpoint

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

Re-assembly

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…

It doesn’t work

Well, lets qualify that The current technology model embodied by specifications such as IMS and SCORM doesn’t seem to fit very well with some models of education, such as university education Why not?

Problem 1: Content What 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.

How much of this content can typically be turned into LO’s? Textbooks Primary sources (journals, books, etc) Original research Lectures Conversations Lab instructions, assignments Supporting slides, notes, study guides etc.

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

Are LO assumptions at odds with university pedagogy? 1. A one-on-one instructional model is preferable above others, 2. human interaction in large scale learning environments is economically impossible, and (therefore), 3. automation via intelligent instructional systems is the only viable solution to providing anywhere anytime learning. David Wiley, “Learning Objects: Difficulties and Opportunities”

SCORM From: Slosser, S. (2001) "ADL and the Sharable Content Object Reference Model." MERLOT 2001

Problem 2: Lecturers Lecturers don’t 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

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

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”

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

But… LO’s of the SCORM and IMS variety are too fiddly to pick apart and put together again without specialist tools and knowledge (e.g. RELOAD)

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

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

if we don’t 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 (

“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, producer-culture.html producer-culture.html

Alternative technologies for creating and sharing learning objects? This one ;-) Web pages Text (RTF, Word, PDF) Open-source textbooks Blogs and RSS/Atom

What’s in OCW? Lots of PDF files of assignments, projects, labs, lecture notes Reading lists Online textbooks Syllabi Are these “learning objects?”

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”)

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

Other kinds of resources E-Prints Media (image, audio, video) Simulations and visualizations Maps

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 So how are we to share [1]?

Repositories

Using Resources - the “repository” view Specialized Online Collections Precision searching Classification-based browsing Licensing & DRM Authentication/Registration

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

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

The Web 2.0 Checklist Structured Microcontent Data outside Licenses Feeds galore Web APIs Desktop integration Single identity Microweb Wild microcontent

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

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

Google Maps

Flickr

Tag Cloud

Apple desktop widgets using web service APIs

Content Enrichment via Services Availability of repository services supports content enrichment htmlhttp:// 070.html

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

Repository ecology The personal desktop repository (file system, feed aggregators, 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)

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

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. Don’t just tolerate deep linking - encourage it So how are we to share [2]?

Thanks!