1. Context Map Hands-On Session April 2007 David Millard Learning Societies Lab University of Southampton Kate Dickens, Ann Jeffery, Julie Watson, Kate Borthwick eLanguages University of Southampton

2. Objectives For us to tell you how the CLAReT project hopes to make Learning Object Repositories easier to use and more reflective of community needs For you to get an early look at one of our tools (a concept map navigator) and for us to get some feedback To discuss the concept map themselves – do they reflect your understanding of language teaching? To brainstorm on what other tools could encourage community involvement in repositories (with a little prompting about Web 2.0)

3. CLAReT CLARE Tools JISC Funded 1 year project Based at University of Southampton (LSL and eLanguages) One of a family of projects concerning Repositories for Learning Objects and Assets

4. CLARE Version of EPrints (Open Access Repository) Developed by the L2O (Sharing Language Learning Objects) project MURLLO (Management, Use and Re-purposing of Language Learning Objects) is a project looking at how we can encourage the reuse of Learning Objects (LOs) (IPR, Online Editing, etc)

5. The Problem General practitioner' teachers and lecturers [who] are increasingly clear about their need for meaningful contextual information about the resource to enable them to assess it and reuse it. A particularly popular request is for some kind of review process that allows users of the resource to record their usage and evaluation of it for others to examine (Rehak & Mason, 2003, Casey 2004). These requirements make clear the need for new conceptions of learning object meta- data, and new ways of using repositories—not just for search and retrieval, but as a living, growing body of shared practice. (Casey, Brosnan & Geller, 2005) How do you know what LOs to reuse? –How can you find them? –How can you trust them? –How can you provide feedback? –How do we create a living, growing body of shared practice?

6. CLAReT Aims To create tools foster community involvement and to enable that living body of shared practice In practical terms: –Developing tools to improve CLARE’s usability To make LO discovery easier? To help people share LOs? To expose LO history to help people judge quality? –Looking at Social Computing (Web 2.0) features Harnessing the wisdom of crowds (ala Wikipedia)

7. Today’s focus Getting feedback on our tools to aid the Discovery of Learning Objects (the concept map tool) Brainstorming on community tools that would be useful (Web 2.0)

8. Hands on Activity: Concept Map Tool

9. Hands on Activity: Personas Role play in scenarios –Why are we doing it this way? –We have chosen typical user roles as personas –Each persona has a scenario that is typical of their activities We will ask each of you to take on a a number of personas and ask you to enact their scenario –Using our concept map tool to identify concepts in the teaching languages domain

10. Scenarios Learner Louise is studying German and Italian at a UK university. She’s at the end of her second year and about to spend the summer in Italy. Independent Learner Roland is a Lecturer in archaeology with research interests in Latin American indigenous cultures. He is taking a sabbatical next semester in order to undertake research into Mayan/Central American culture in a Spanish-speaking country in Central/ South America. Teacher (Consumer) Tom is a teacher of French in a secondary school. He has recently taken on the responsibility of head of department. He is very interested in innovative ways of teaching languages and has visited some schools which use blended learning. Teacher (Provider) Chrissie is an experienced teacher of English as a Foreign Language. Her students will come to the UK to study. She has used blended and online learning resources in her own teaching and has expertise in creating resources herself. Online Course Designer Lyn is an Online Course Designer at a UK University. She has a background in education and academia and is an expert in pedagogic theory. As well as her pedagogic skills she has good technological skills in e-learning and blended learning and e-tutoring experience. Secondary School Teaching Assisstent Ruth has a son at the Sixth Form College where she works part-time as a teaching assistant. She helps 17 and 18 year old students develop online research skills

11. Activities, Data Collection and feedback Activities: –Role and scenario to enact and questionnaire to record your experience Data Collection: –Paper – your completed questionnaires –Electronic – the tool is purely to help you explore the map, we are not recording any data Feedback after lunch: –Debriefing We will give a first cut analysis of your questionnaire responses –Discussion Does the concept map look as you would expect? –The evaluation will inform the next iteration of the tool

12. Thank you! We are grateful for your time helping us to evaluate our approach and provide us with feedback to improve LO repositories You can find the tool at: http://tinyurl.com/yu7jmt Start when you’re ready…