Event EdSpace Kick-off Hugh Davis University Director of Education (eLearning) ECS, The University of Southampton, UK

Event2 What do people want (1)? place where people can put things concerned with education (resources + admin ++) place where they can go to find stuff to use in their teaching place where they can go to look what others do in their teaching (inc QA) place where things survive and might be curated place where they can share things with chosen subsets of people somewhere that stores the definitive copy all the things people might want (e.g. quality documents, course descriptions, module notes)

Event3 What do people want (2)? place where the outside world can go to see what they want about education at Southampton. Someway that people can add value to resources by describing them (Folksonomy/metadata) to improve search effectiveness AND recommendation Some people (not many!) want version management so they can look at e.g. the different programme specifications that applied to different cohorts.

Event4 Why do we care (1)? we want teachers to be able to find useful resources –(e.g. how someone else organised a course, how someone else taught a particular difficult concept, a picture or video that illustrates a point, a case study they could adapt for their purposes) –NOTE – these are not classical LOs. Maybe we will need to support them too, but there is not yet a shred of evidence that they work in HE) we want to be able to have shared workspaces (wiki – like) The concept of the Monolithic VLE is running out of credibility.

Event5 Why do we care (2)? The implementation of Blackboard that we have is broken in that no-one can see what’s in a course except those on the course (not DHoS, QA, External examiners, students who took the course last year) Also you can’t link within Blackboard (DOI’s change at every re-install!) Having one place where people keep things is good – avoids the problem We are proud of our educational system – we have little to lose by showing it to people (but lots to lose by not doing so)

Event6 Why do we care (3)? We want people to be able to gain esteem for their educational outputs (as with research outputs)

Event7 So What is the problem (1)? technically not all that much (although don’t underestimate this) people don’t want to share –too time consuming (cognitive overhead) –frightened of what people might think –worried about their plagiarism/using of other’s materials –worried about other people re-using their materials out of context incorrectly –worried about protecting their own IPR –Anyway, nothing is ever finished Some people are not that competent with IT, and use all the above as a smokescreen

Event8 So What is the problem (2)? The University is frightened of the IPR issues if people did share The University is not clear about IPR of teaching materials. (Who owns what when someone leaves?) The University is maybe worried about what people might think?

Event9 The Solution – Technical Making this work with Blackboard will be *central* to the technical success An easy to use and clear interface will be essential to uptake There are other repository initiatives using the same code-base. Keeping the developments in sync will add challenge

Event10 The Solution – Social and Political We need to formulate a plan to engage with people in the university to identify their needs and to understand how to deal with: –Lack of staff competency in information management –University IPR policy –Achieving Network Effects –Persuading people of the benefits of sharing internally –Persuading people of the benefits of sharing externally –Persuading QAE folks throughout of the benefit of making things visible –To show the added value of the “semantic web” to QAE people in particular Initially we will ask for schools keen to participate – work with the willing and wait for dinosaurs to die. Targeting Geography, Nursing, ECS, SOES …. (Not allowed to target Languages)

Event11 The (paid) team Debra Morris (80% of 80%) University Engagement and Project Manager Jessie Hey (80%) University Engagement Tim Miles-Board (EPrints Manager) 20% - Technical Manager [Existing member of EPrints implementation team] 100% - shared between ECS and ISS Feng “Barry” Tao – 3 months - semantic annotation issues Sepi Chakaveh (40%) – Usability and interface issues

Event12 The University Team Hugh Davis – ECS – Project Director Mark Brown – Library - Co-ordinating with other repository initiatives Les Carr – ECS – Technical Director Bob Price – ISS – Director for Deployment Su White – ECS – Advisor on Institutional Change Andy Gravell – ECS – Administrative/QA demonstrator Shakeel Khoja - Visiting Academic from Pakistan. Working with Andy. Also –the director of student services (Marion Philips) –the educational representative from the Student Union (recently currently being re-elected, Cath?) –the Chair of the e-Learning Implementation Group (Rosalynd Jowett) –Plus LATEU (Adam Warren and Fiona Grindey) Plus ELIG Plus L&T co- ordinators

Event13 Short – term objectives The Project runs for 18 months We would like to see the platform available for use Some shared resources from the early adopters Selected courses using it from Blackboard A “demonstrator” of the added value that could be achieved by putting regular educational administrative materials in the repository A University IPR policy that is understood and disseminated Good practice guides and success factors (and what went wrong) Increased Esteem for the University Some Network Effects starting to show Links with other repository projects Academic Papers

Event14 Long –term Objectives We will need to demonstrate continued use for 1 year after funding – but would like to see the work fully embedded If we get it right JISC will want us to do lots of dissemination, evaluation etc. We will wish to seek further funding (JISC? Eduserv? HEFCE? University?) for the next phase of the development. We will wish to see EPrints distributing the code to others – and real network effects kicking in We want to see user demand for further innovative uses We want Southampton on the map as the University that demonstrated what it took to solve the repository deadlock.