TLRP Phase III: Towards an Integrated ICT Strategy Patrick Carmichael “Learning how to Learn”

The Learning how to Learn Project Key features: Project Team of in 4 separate institutions Over 40 schools in 6 LEAs Hundreds of teachers, thousands of students 17 separate data collection instruments Reflective diaries/logs maintained by key respondents Classroom data including observation schedule data, audio, video, interviews, paper resources Outputs aimed at different audiences Commitment to sustainability and ‘leaving things behind’.

The Project Website Not a traditional website – more a set of web ‘services’ Has to address a number of roles: –provides information about the nature and scope of the project, together with profiles of team members and contact information –provision of materials for use by LEA and school coordinators as they support project development within their schools –data collection via web forms particularly reflective diaries for school coordinators, ‘critical friends’ and other key respondents –monitoring of non-electronic development and data collection –project management and data analysis tools –provision of exemplification of best practice in classroom assessment More on these roles in my paper on the website.my paper

Tiers before Bedtime Central to our strategy was the development of an “n- Tiered data architecture” involving the separation of: Data Metadata Logic Presentation

Data Issues What combination of resources need to be available electronically? Does this differ for different users? Do these make any demands of users? Who is responsible for the collection, maintenance and monitoring of these resources? Here are some of the answers I got within Learning how to Learn:

Some of the Learning how to Learn Data Workshop materials –Accessible to wide audience –Need to be platform-independent –Ready to print –Need to capable of adaptation and editing by users –Decision: use RTF files with minimum formatting, presented on the Web as downloads and Zip files Headteacher Interviews –Access carefully controlled –Need to be printable to return to respondents and for quick review –To be analysed with Atlas/ti by multiple users within the team –Decision: Transcribed as RTF for quick review, then converted (automatically) to formatted text for Atlas/ti, both available as web downloads and so on … (SPSS files, Excel Spreadsheets, log data, etc etc)

Data: Review What forms of data will necessarily be collected or exchanged in the course of your project? –Within the project team? –Between the project team and subjects/respondents? –Between the project team and other groups and audiences? What additional forms of data might be generated in the course of the project? Are choices of format and other approaches predetermined: –By the subjects of your research or their field? –By your project members current or prior work? –By other factors or influences?

Metadata Issues Transaction Objects –Borrowed from dynamic domains in which knowledge exchange is a critical element Financial Services News Services –Different from the documents and other assets we have just talked about: characteristically small ‘packets’ or ‘components’ although descriptive language may be verbose! domain-specific and frequently ‘knowledge-laden’ may contain or be contained by other transaction objects can be aggregated into other formats

Some Examples Financial Services: –stock quotes –exchange rates News Services: –headlines and summaries of news events –weather forecasts –sports results My daughter: –txt msgs whch cm 2 b impntrbl 2 ne1 llll Teachers: –Lesson plans? Weekly plans? ‘Bright Ideas’? ‘War Stories’?

What are our Transaction Objects? We needed TO’s to help monitor and manage the project: –bibliographical records –log entries –dates and times of events –contact details for schools … and so on We also needed ways to describe, store, disseminate and facilitate the exchange of examples of classroom practice. –audio clips and video clips –excepts from transcripts –‘strategies’, ‘anecdotes’ and other teacher knowledge

Review: Transaction Objects Does the domain of your project have identifiable ‘transaction objects’: or is this itself an area for debate? What transaction objects might you have to describe in order to enable knowledge exchange: –Within the project team? –Between the project team and subjects/respondents? –Between the project team and other groups and audiences? Try to think about ‘components’ rather than ‘documents’ or ‘webpages’. It’s always easier to aggregate than disaggregate!

Descriptive Frameworks Some descriptive metadata frameworks already exist: dcDublin Corebibliographical infomation lomLearning Object Modellearning sequences and resources vcard contact information vcalvcalendartimes, dates, events and repetitions foafFriend of a Friendpersonal relationships cerifCommon European Research Information Format research activity

Descriptive Vocabularies As do some ‘constrained vocabularies’: –Dublin Core formats –Ortelius (European research areas) –National Curriculum Metadata Set –vCal interval and repetition grammar So we have to identify both: –Framework –Vocabulary The latter is – in some ways – more difficult!

More Tiers before Bedtime A proposal for discussion -Tiered metadata: Tier 1: –Bibliographical Data: Dublin Core –Project Descriptions (part): CERIF –Personal Descriptions: FOAF Extended by: Tier 2: –Project Descriptions (part): TLRP Metadata Set Extended by: Tier 3: –Project-specific and domain specific vocabularies All ‘wrapped’ in a common interchange format (RDF)