ALT-09 Semantic Technologies for Education

This is a slightly expanded version of the abstract which was constrained by the word limits of ALT

ALT workshop proposal
Semantic Technologies in Education – exploring the practitioners’ perspective
Abstract
This workshop will collect and share insights into current understandings and future applications of semantic technologies in education.University education is embracing Web2.0 including social networks and the read/write-web. We are aware of predictions that the Semantic Web (Web 3.0) is imminent. Researchers are developing understandings of semantic technologies, and experimenters are utilising novel Semantic Web applications.
This workshop will :

• augment the findings of a recent JISC survey on semantic technologies in education;
• calibrate the findings against the experience and understandings of members of the ALT community;
• use feedback to further develop the survey’s technology roadmap.

JISC commissioned an investigation into semantic technologies in learning and teaching (SemTech) due for completion early in 2009. The SemTech Project Website summarises information about semantic technologies in education and contains an analysis of the technologies and applications thus far identified.
Following a brief overview of our investigation of semantic technologies in education the workshop will consist of structured group discussions from selected perspectives (educational, technical and organisational).

We expect participants to come from a wide range of backgrounds with varying levels of prior knowledge and expertise, and will work carefully to make the activity as productive as possible for all participants irrespective of their different needs and expectations. The workshop structure will be fine-tuned to match the particular interests of participants, who will work in groups of eight using flip charts to produce a poster for a two-minute poster pitch. A second peer review group activity will comment on each poster. A plenary session will identify next steps

Each participant in the workshop will receive a copy of the SemTech report, plus detailed activity guidance notes which they can also take away and use in their own institution. Participants will use the workshop to:

1. establish a base level of awareness of current developments in semantic technologies and the way in which they can be used in education
2. establish a basic understanding of current range and use of semantic technologies in education, as identified by the SemTech study
3. identify and share knowledge of semantic technologies in UK education.
4. comment on and add to findings in the JISC report on Semantic Technologies in Education
5. identify colleagues at other institutions who share their interest in semantic technologies in education
6. discuss, plan and agree future collaborations to further their interest in semantic technologies in education

A summary record of the discussion will be available to participants after the event, and will be subsequently published electronically, via the SemTech wiki and a workshop blog-post

Basic Structure – total 90 minutes
1. Welcome and Overview of method (workshop team)Individual introduction plus explanation helping participants understand the role of their contribution. 10 minutes
2. Introductions - Tables amongst themselves Tables will each have been labelled with clear flag to encourage workable set formation (see activity 5 below) 5 minutes
3. Scoping of the proposed activities and tasks (Su White)
familiarising participants with the proposed structure of the workshop). 5 minutes
4. Findings thus far/Context Hugh Davis, Sheila MacNeill, Thanassis Tiropanis. 10 minutes
5. Small group activities (table groups of ~eight participants)
Overall Question: What is our understanding of the actual and potential role of semantic technologies in education? 15 minutes
Note: Guest discussants will be allocated to help lead table discussions. These additional contributors, beyond the workshop team, are not yet formally identified they will be identified/invited through a call for participation
Groups will each be tasked with producing a flipchart poster summarising their discussion/finding. After the discussion there will be a two minute poster pitch from each group
These contributions will reflect the expertise and interests of the participants and are likely to range across the spectrum of educationally led to technically led. Groups will be encouraged/directed to form around like interest areas exact size and number of groups will depend on number of participants and the range of interests, but groups will be table sets of ~eight. Max nine groups. Groups can choose to select one of the following focus areas from three predominant perspectives of educational, technical or organisational:
• Exploratory: Identifying potential benefits accrued from the introduction of semantic technologies in their teaching/institution;
• Application oriented: Identifying additional technologies and applications for the survey;
• Technically Led: Discussing ways of augmenting or enhancing existing applications;
• Socio-Technical: Identifying and discussing use cases (e.g. semantic technologies for distance education; the international student; the work place learner;
• Organisation Challenges: Identifying and discussing barriers and drivers to greater use of semantic technologies in educational activities.
Groups produce flip-chart poster summarising
• Their perspective /discussion
• Any proposed next steps/action plan

6. Small Group Feedback via Poster Pitch
Two minutes per group - Groups to display FlipCharts on wall ready for peer review. 20 minutes
7. Comment/Feedback Round – Peer Review using post it notes for annotations (each group will be allocated another group’s poster to read/discuss and review). 10 minutes
8. Plenary feedback/discussion Next Steps and Action Plan (Su White) 15 minutes

Facilitating the workshop and ensuring success
An experienced educational developer who has run many events of this type on previous occasions is leading the session facilitation.

The workshop will be advertised to the wider learning and teaching community before the ALT-C2009 conference via a range of media including direct email, the ALT-C CrowdVine, Twitter, Blogs, the SemTech Blog and personal blogs of the workshop leaders. This advertising will also be used to identify any players who have emerged as active contributors since the publication of the SemTech report, or any players who are particularly keen to participate in this area.

It is proposed that the participants will work in small groups during the discussion phase using Flipcharts and pens to capture their contributions. During the annotation phase, they will use post-it notes to add comments and observations of the findings of the other groups. We will initially capture high quality photographic images of the flip charts (before and after annotation). It may be that this information is also reprocessed into alternative digital formats if that is considered to be particularly helpful/constructive.

Throughout the workshop a pair of colleagues will act as rapporteurs for the whole process, capturing the discussions and outputs for publication on the SemTech wiki (http://wiki.semtech.ecs.soton.ac.uk) and via an ALT-C09 blog posting.

Information will be captured as images of the outputs as well as notes of the discussions with extensive linking to referred information/resources.

ALT-C 2009: "In dreams begins responsibility" - choice, evidence, and change.
8-10 September 2009, Manchester, UK.

Research Teaching Linkages

Thinking about the relationship between research and teaching

The linkages between research and teahcing a something which I have been working on for some time. I have had a few publications in the area already, have been conducting some surveys, and I am presenting a paper on the topic at this summers ACM ITiCSE to be held in Paris in July 2009. In addition I am part of the CPHC Learning Development Group, and its a special interest for them too. We are planning a workshop for later in the year (September/October).

This blog is prompted by a Workshop at Dundee University which was looking at Research Teaching Linkages.

As a part of the research the initiative has produced a report which includes a list of graduate attributes, a set of case studies, recommendations for changes in the curriculum which can cultivate stronger links between research and teaching.

Method
reporting on the work which has been done researching the relationionship between teaching and research in Scottish Universities. This work has been supported by the Scottish QAA
Activities included:

• literature survey
• desk survey
• workshop
• staff questionnaire
• student questionnaire
• interview

web site
has case studies, learning through research, learning about research, and both. The case studies cover maths and computing.

The workshop included presentations of some of the case studies, which gave further insight into the motivations and context of the ways in which colleagues integrate research and teaching. The examples were drawn from Computing and Maths.

Later year options in Computer Science investigated the activity of research projects

Mathematics - using mathematical modelling in cancer research, and fungal growth. Modelling is fundamental to mathematical research in Mathematical biology. The presented then spoke about the mathematical biology BSc, a range of modules were highlighted which build the research teaching links - in the early years the students learn the processes of research (predominantly) in the later units they learn and use the processes of research and learn to apply them. As they expressed it, both the context and content of research.
There are the following suggested students gains from linking research and teaching

• enthusiasm and insight
• knowing the state of the art
• knowing the main players
• being the main players
• seminars, visitors conferences
• phds and postdocs
• interactions with industry

Observations from some of the the academics presented included beliefs that linking research and teaching,

• enriches the curriculum through an up to date curriculum,
• provides a meaningful link to pg studies,
• and a meaningful link to employment.

CareerStep - more fabulous women in Electronics and Computer Science

Following on from my Ada Lovelace Day blog, I thought it would be timely to write about some of the things we are doing in ECS to help colleagues progress through their careers, and hopefully sustain and help grow the diversity of our researchers in the School.

The initiative has provided a discussion space for colleagues to identify and discuss the issues they face in furthering their individual careers, and is providing support through activities such as co-coaching to enable them to each actively progress their individual personal career objectives.

There are sound reasons for seeking greater diversity across our academic community, with a lot of evidence showing that balanced teams are significantly more effective than non balanced teams. I picked this info up from one of the guest speakers at a Girl Geek Dinner event in London last year.

Elisabeth Kelan , a researcher from Kings College London and the London Business School was reporting on studies into the effect of gender balance on the performance of teams (Innovative Potential: men and women in teams). A set of individual factors associated with successful innovation were considered in a study of over 100 teams drawn from a wide range of different organisations worldwide. A gender balanced team appeared to optimise perfomance against each factor, and although individual effects were small, it is suggested that together these impacts are significant. A further study looked at gender stereotypes, and considered the ways in which they are limiting, both to those who apply them, and those to whom they are applied.

Initiatives like CareerStep are not new, but as with many instances of organisational and cultural change, devising an approach which is effective in the particular climate and culture of an organisation works best with approaches which are given clear leadership but which also grow from the ground up.

Interesting work has been done in the US following an NSF initiative begun in 2005. The ACES project was hosted at Case Western Reserve University, as well as collecting substantial quantities of data on female academic careers, their project findings included some suggested models of transformation which are relevant to CareerStep.

Links, References and Further Reading
GirlGeekDinners - a women's networking community which combines face to face social networking with a programme of guest speakers on topical technology subjects. London Girl Geek dinners are the nearest regular venue, but meetings take place across the UK.

Women and IT Scorecard: joint publication from the BCS, BERR, eSkills and Intellect report providing an overview of participation, challenging some assumptions, and pointing to some ways forward.

Local

ECSWomen
In ECS our students (under grads and post grads) have a community with regular coffee and cakes, meetings, and guest speakers which provides a focus for women across the school.

Theano
Our school is based in the faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics. Pearl John from Physics leads this activity convening regular meetings, guest talks and activities which reach across the faculty. This provides many opportunities for our students to meet and make new friends and gain an insight into the activities of other schools in the context

WiSET
Working with more senior women in the University in Science, Engineering and Technology. There is a regular programme of meetings and events, including the annual Campbell Lecture. WISET has run action learning sets to develop women with the specific objective of enhancing their promotion prospect. Currently it is supporting mentoring schemes across the University.

Reena Pau: post grad in ECS whose study is looking at the relationship between Career Choices and experience of IT among school age young adults.

Ada Lovelace Day

Was an effort led by Suw Charman Anderson to get people to pledge to blog about influential women in technology on March 24 2009. You can read about the event via some observations from Guardian correspondent Sue Schofield, or take a look at the map and list of posts.

Short Bibliography

Settles, Isis H.; Cortina, Lilia M.; Stewart, Abigail J.; Malley, Janet Voice matters: Buffering the impact of a negative climate for women in science, Psychology of Women Quarterly. 31(3):270-281, September 2007.

Gratton, L., Kelan, E., Voigt, A., Walker, L. and Wolfram, H.-J., “Innovative potential: men and women in teams”, report by the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, London Business School, London, 2007

Diana Bilimoria, Breaking Barriers and Creating Inclusiveness: Lessons of Organizational Transformation to Advance Women Faculty in Academic Science and Engineering, ACES project (Power Point) 2007

Mary Frank Fox, Institutional Transformation and the Advancement of Women Faculty: The Case of Academic Science and Engineering, , in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol. 23. Edited by J. C. Smart. Springer Publishers, 2008.

Dorota Bourne and Mustafa F. Ozbilgin, Strategies for combating gendered perceptions of careers ,International Journal of Career Management, 13,4 , p320-332

Mary Frank Fox, Carol Colatrella, David McDowell, and Mary Lynn Realff, Equity in Tenure and Promotion: An Integrated Institutional Approach, in Transforming Science and Engineering: Advancing Academic Women, edited by A. Stewart, J. Malley, and D. LaVaque-Manty. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2007

Mary Frank Fox, Women, Science and Academic, Graduate Education and Careers, Gender and Society (15) 5, p654-666, 2001

Ada Lovelace Day, Blogging for women

Commit to blog to inspirational women in technology they said. So this is my pledge for Ada Lovelace Day (#ALD09) Where do I begin? With the observation that it must be partly due to their scarcity factor that women in technology are inspirational?

At the University of Southampton I am in Electronics and Computer Science. We are lucky to have Wendy Hall, our previous head of school, first out of US head of the ACM, previous president of the BCS and professor and dame of the British empire. Wendy is a first class role model, fabulous and inspirational, which is a good job because there are only three female academics in ECS, among the 100 so total number of academics, so she had better be inspirational!

I'm trying to do my bit - I have got some cash from our diversity committee and have set up a self support scheme (called CareerStep) to empower female colleagues to progress up the career ladder. Other female colleagues contribute too. We work through ECSWomen for female undergrads and post grads in ECS, Theano supporting female undergrads and postgrads across the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics and WISET working with women academics in our Faculty.

And when I think about it, I have to suggest that alongside Professor Dame Wendy, I have to list each one of our ECS Academic female colleagues; reader; senior lecturer; lecturer ( conveniently one representative at each academic level! I also want to recognise every one of our women senior researchers, researchers, postgrads and undergrads. I want to recognise the mature role models who have made their life choices ( and who help embody our understanding of the work life balance) and to the young women who I see coming of age and emerging as strong independent female computer scientists. I want us to recognise all the strong women (who have families as well as work roles, who have a life outside of their working hours and some of whom have made difficult life choices, challenging their family's assumptions, or throwing off their hijab to provide intelligent, independent statements which step outside of stereotypes) I want to acknowledge all those strong women who by their daily interactions in our male dominated environment show that women are just people who do stuff, and like all the members of our very special research group ( the Learning Societies Lab ) are making change happen.

LSL is special because its one place in the whole of ECS where we have a much larger proportion of females than anywhere else in the School (female academic ratio soar to 1:10.5, overall in LSL its 22:66) Its also a new research group which has grown phenomenally, and attracts a wide range of interests, and does research which is interdisciplinary mixing technical rigour with social areas of study/focus.

As a feminist and socialist, I believe that humanity should be treated with equal respect, women who work in contexts against the odds deserve respect for their doggedness surviving and flourishing in a climate which is sometimes hostile, and often uncomfortable. Our academic school is richer for its diversity, and will be stronger and even richer when it embraces diversity with greater enthusiasm.

LSL Women
EA Draffan, Jessie Hey (we share her with IAM), Yvonne Howard, Debra Morris (we share her with the Library), Susan Walters, Su White, Pei Zhang, Lauren Dampier Noura Abbas, Kikelomo M (Maria) Apampa, Ani Liza Asnawi, Norhidayah Azman, Lisha Chen-Wilson, Roziana Ibrahim, Ilaria Liccardi, Athitaya Nitchot, Dade Nurjanah, Asma Ounas, Clare Owens, Yulita Iskander, Reena Pau, Onjira Sitthasak

Hiding Our/Their information

Just been working on an Open Educational Resources bid which is designed to establish a greater culture of sharing and change across our academic communities. As is often the case I observe some synchronicity in my experiences (actually an artefact, created by the focus of my attention, but here you go... )

Now I am someone who despairs at how off the shelf systems steer us to hiding information away. Let me give you a few examples...

Those who know me will remember that I believe that BlackBoard ( and indeed all such learning environments) is the tool of the devil.
Now I admit that part of this idea could come from blind prejudice, but

• my experience as a tutor setting information up,
• my experience as a user who gets frustrated using the system

so let's identify a few problems...

1) successive levels of indirection act as a barrier to use

• its like sending students an extra long way round the campus to get to their lecture
• its like making the academics spend an extra 15 minutes of admin each time they begin teaching

2) consistent look and feel is a barrier

• its like making all the corridors and all the lecture theatres look identical,
  
• we get confused, we get lost

3) dynamically allocating a different url to each instance of a document is a barrier

• its like never letting anyone save their paperwork in their own folder to take home,
  
• but forcing them to go to a special room whenever they want to take a look
  
• ( oh and then making them go through some bizarre ritual before you hand the document over)

4 ) and did I mention that you can only look at a course if you are registered

• you can't go back to look at a course notes for something you studied last year
• a teacher can't go and take a look at colleagues notes
• a student can't go and sit through a class which they are not actually registered for

its all a bit closed....

and then there is the university portal.. using that portal triggered this post.
I began of the arcane route which I had to take to find some notes for a special interest group.

• login (annoyed already because they force you to change your password every six months)
• got the the groups section (another click)
• select the group (another click) - and the system decides to pop up a new window (when I want a new tab!)
• another click neeeded to select my activity

but.... this is for the group only, and if I want to make my activities/information visible to the rest of the world

• I have to create another copy, in another place, using another system
• so any effort invested in the group site, and in the learning site, will have to be replicated for every different use

is there any sense in that?

• its not findable by general engines
• great for secret societies
• not so good for things which benefit from being in the public domain)

compare the open systems I use, EPrints and EdShare.

• OK, depositing information into the system is a bit arcane and could involve a few more steps than listed above
• but don't begin to get me on the rigmarole of putting documents and information into Blackboard

once it is there

• anyone can find it
• it is indexed, findable and public

OK I can hear you thinking, so where is the synchronicity?

first off, I had been following a link on twitter this morning about user experience and found some insightful words on the A List Apart blog titled Look at it another way talking about how we should take the user perspective when designing systems.

and then, as I cycled home from work to catch up on my sleep after having submitted my bid JISC OER bid, what should I hear on the radio but James Boyle from Duke University being interviewed by Laurie Taylor on Thinking Allowed on the topic of copyright, digital commons, and all things open. Boyle is based at the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University, and has just published a new book titled The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind.

There were a lot of fabulous ideas touched upon during this short interview, and you can get a sense of the breadth of what's covered by following up a few search result on for James Boyle book commons copyright duke university on google (like I did)

Inevitably I found myself muttering to Laurie, ' if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, copyright is like homosexuality. Ultimately, mass law breaking will lead to a change in the law'. It would be a miracle if publishers (of all types of media) did not try to defend their hegemony, but it does not mean that they will win.

But Boyle is a man who has made a career out of this study, and my trite comment is not backed up by his insight and understanding of the labrynthine realities of the law. In fact Boyle's title The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind is rather chilling, especially for us in the UK, who see how little of the commons persist, and observe how little of the commons' right have survived.

And his message was chilling too, for he argues that the exercise of ownership is a dead hand on creativity. ( ...and I think... and for post industrial societies, destroying our creativity is surely a route to our ultimate demise? )

And it is this reference to the blight on creativity which chimes most strongly with me when I think about what we do as academcs by locking up our intellectual resources. As an educationalist I think it is irresponsible not to make available to the widest possible community the outputs of my educational activities. Many times those resources may be fragments, better understood when they are situated with their context, the class, the duscourse. But they may have value, and surely I am being wasteful if I do not make them freely available.

Bootstrapping the culture of sharing: refining our understanding of learning objects

or oooer as I like to think about it....

Bootstrapping a Culture of Sharing to Facilitate Open Educational Resources, Davis, H., Carr, L., Hey, J., Howard, Y., Millard, D., Morris, D. and White, S. (2009) Bootstrapping a Culture of Sharing to Facilitate Open Educational Resources. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies . (In Press)

We have been working on a paper for the IEEE Trans on Learning Technologies on some of the cultural change aspects of our experiences of working with repositories. Its about our experience of developing EdShare, but also reflects a rather richer back catalogue of experiences of establishing and using repositories, plus a few insights into the heady world of technology enhanded learning.

We are really proud of the progress we are making with the EdShare repository of educational resources, and its kid sib language learning repository called Faroes.

Thanks to shed loads of hard work on scholarly repositories led by Stevan Harnad and Les Carr from right here in ECS at the University of Southampton, we have built ourselves a real track record in that very important area.



EPrints is an open source repository which has blossomed thanks to the the hard working EPrints team with support from JISC. Our paper is not concerned with the technical aspects of the software, but more importantly about the organisational learning which we have derived from our intense usage of EPrints respoitories - probably most importantly because, compared to other well know repositories, we observe that EPrints users not only install their repository, they actually populate it.

Here at Southampton we have EPrints repositories for academic publications in ECS, and across the whole institution (University of Southampton). We are also using EPrints to drive our eTheses repository, and our EdShare repository of resources used educationally for teaching and the support of learning.

We not only have ground level experience of installing and running the repositories, but we are also getting increasingly sophisticated in our understanding of the most effective organisational drivers which can not only get the repository established but also get it used.

Many different colleagues have identified advantages from using the repositories, each individual will have a personal priority list. Findability figures big on the list. People like to be able to find their own stuff irrespective of moving on to new machines, or new institutions. We also like the fact that items in the repository are findable - classic search engines index the repository, and even if the paper is not world visible, will provide a pointer to its existence, often resulting in individual approaches for further information - thereby enhancing and enriching the scholarly knowledge network.

well that's enough of me blowing our trumpet, take a look at the paper if you want a little more information, oh and why don't you take a look at EPrints....

Potential users can find out more about the system and set in train further contactvia the software site hosted at eprints.org

Thinking about OER

Thinking about OER sends me to a long list of references.

JISC through CETIS have been hardworking in providing an OER Briefing Document - content to be listed way below.

Meanwhile a few web searches have turned up resources from various places, and I am using this space to collate theme here. My objective is to produce one or more concept maps which give a flavour of the objectives which can be addressed by a successful

The Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa (clearly folk who do not listen to Radio 4) have been looking at open education, and suggested these high level documents.

1. Open Sourcing Education: learning and wisdom from iSummit 2007 [1]
2. Budapest Open Access Initiative declaration [2]
3. Hewlett's A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement [3]
4. OECD's Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources [4]
5. OLCOS Roadmap 2012 [5]

They held a workshop, and there was a concept map and a mindmap from a couple of the groups which whilst not all encompassing, can be a starting point for some of the possible perspectives


JISC Briefing document - was originally produced in Word, the content below is more useful as you can follow the links (of which there are 40!). I will get round to making all the links live later on. For now at least you have them available in your web browser.

Briefing Paper on Open Educational Resources
(prepared to support bidders to the Academy/JISC Open Educational Resources funding circular)

This paper details a range of further reading and resources that may be useful to you in preparing a bid to any part of the Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. It is by no means a complete set of resources, neither is it required that bids reference any or all of them.

We have split this document into sections as follows

Briefing Paper on Open Educational Resources 1
What are Open Educational Resources? 1
What are the aims of this Programme? 2
Overviews and General Guidance 2
Intellectual Property Rights. 3
Technical and Data Management Issues 4

What are Open Educational Resources?

What are learning resources?
Whilst purely informational content has a significant role in learning and teaching, it is helpful to consider learning resources by their levels of granularity and to focus on the degree to which information content is embedded within a learning activity:
• Digital assets – normally a single file (e.g. an image, video or audio clip), sometimes called a ‘raw media asset’;
• Information objects – a structured aggregation of digital assets, designed purely to present information;
• Learning objects – an aggregation of one or more digital assets which represents an educationally meaningful stand along unit;
• Learning activities – tasks involving interactions with information to attain a specific learning outcome;
• Learning design – structured sequences of information and activities to promote learning.

What are open learning resources?
The following definitions and examples are taken from a paper prepared by Li Yuan at JISC CETIS concerning the state of open educational resources internationally. This has been a very well received paper, and can be accessed from the CETIS website (http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/cetisli/2008/09/01/a-briefing-paper-on-open-educational-resources/)

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first introduced at a conference hosted by UNESCO in 2000 and was promoted in the context of providing free access to educational resources on a global scale. There is no authoritatively accredited definition for the term OER at present; the most frequently used definition is, “digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research” (OECD, 2007).

Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives aspire to provide open access to high-quality education resources on a global scale. From large institution-based or institution-supported initiatives to numerous small-scale activities, the number of OER related programmes and projects has been growing quickly within the past few years.

According to OECD (OECD, 2007), there are materials from more than 3000 open access courses (open courseware) currently available from over 300 universities worldwide.

In the United States resources from thousands of courses have been made available by university-based projects, such as MIT OpenCourseWare and Rice University’s Connexions project: (http://ocw.mit.edu/ , http://cnx.rice.edu/ )

In China, materials from 750 courses have been made available by 222 university members of the China Open Resources for Education (CORE) consortium.
(http://www.core.org.cn/cn/jpkc/index_en.html )

In Japan, resources from more than 400 courses have been made available by the19 member universities of the Japanese OCW Consortium. (http://www.jocw.jp/ )

In France, 800 educational resources from around 100 teaching units have been made available by the 11 member universities of the ParisTech OCW project. (http://graduateschool.paristech.org/ )

In Ireland, universities received government funding to build open access institutional repositories and to develop a federated harvesting and discovery service via a national portal. It is intended that this collaboration will be expanded to embrace all Irish research institutions. (http://www.irel-open.ie/ )

And in the UK, the Open University have released a range of their distance learning materials via the OpenLearn project (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ )

What are the aims of this Programme?

The joint JISC/Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources Pilot programme has been designed to support institutions, consortia and individuals to release open educational resources for use and repurposing worldwide, by assisting the development of appropriate processes and polices to make this process an integral part of the learning material creation workflow.

The pilot year will help us understand the most effective ways of supporting this aim, and is intended as the precursor to a longer programme to promote the embedding of these processes across institutions.

Widely available learning content, and informational content, is fundamentally changing the relationship between students and their institutions as sources of expertise. This presents a challenge to existing models of the production of academic knowledge and the role of the institution in supporting student learning. Coupled to this, HE funding models are changing in response economic pressures, many institutions are re-examining their own business models in response to this.

Our objectives in investing in this area are to promote the sharing and reuse of learning resources, and to provide a reputational benefit to UK higher education through the promotion of high quality learning resources world wide.

We expect to see benefits to the institutions involved and the UK HE sector as a whole in terms of overseas recruitment and academic reputation as a result of the work started by this programme.

Overviews and General Guidance
A number of high-level studies have already been commissioned in this area, along with many projects and guidance notes. This section provides a general overview of the resources available to institutions, consortia and individuals with an interest in Open Educational Resources and the OER Pilot programme.

The Open CourseWare Consortium (OCW) is an international organisation offering guidance to institutions and organisations across the world investigating the open release of learning content. They have provided an online toolkit to support potential projects in exploring the issues related to this form of release.
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=179

The Open University’s OpenLearn project has opened access to a wide range of distance learning material via their website. In addition to these learning resources, OpenLearn have also provided advice for educators, which describes the nature of open content and the ways in which it can be used.

Get Started: Educators
http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/get-started/get-started-educator/get-started-educator.php?

“Creating Open Educational Resources” module
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/OER_1

Pocket Project
This project is investigating the potential of migrating open content approaches in a range of disciplines across a number of different higher education institutions. The project will run from November 2007 until February 2009 and will be led by the University of Derby. The partner institutions currently working with the University of Derby on the POCKET project are: University of Bolton, Open University and the University of Exeter.
http://www.derby.ac.uk/pocket

Good Intentions Report
The JISC information environment and e-learning teams have jointly commissioned a report entitled “Good Intentions”, examining various business cases for sharing learning materials. We would strongly recommend reading this as a precursor to identifying and describing your own business case.
http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/265/

Sharing eLearning Content
The JISC Sharing eLearning Content report is a synthesis of and commentary on findings across 30-40 JISC projects in a number of different programmes over the past 3-4 years. The conclusions it draws are aimed at JISC rather than individual institutions, but this is a useful overview of existing work in this area http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/46/

LRA Infokit
The Learning Resources and Activities Infokit contains further links to previous and current JISC funded resources in this area. www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/themes/lra

RepRODUCE Programme
The RepRODUCE programme is addressing the repurposing of existing content for use within institutions and for subsequent open release. Helen Beetham has worked with the programme management team to provide resources concerning the evaluation of activity in this area. You may wish to view the slides linked to from:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/reproduce/oct08.aspx
and the evaluation plan and quality assurance plan linked to from:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/reproduce.aspx

Intellectual Property Rights.

JISC have recently published guidance on the various types of open licences suitable for resources released by projects in this call.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/funding/project_management/open_content_licences_jiscguidancenov2008.doc

The CASPER project was established to support the RepRODUCE programme. It provides a range of online resources, including guidance on clearing background IPR, letter templates and licenses. http://jisc-casper.org/

The Web2rights project was developed alongside the Users and Innovation programme. It creative an interactive toolkit to facilitate the consideration of relevant issues when using web 2.0 resources in learning. http://www.web2rights.org.uk/
An animation based on the work of this project has been released.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/12/web2rights.aspx

The JISC Legal service provides guidance to the community on various legal issues, including intellectual property rights. http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ipr/IntellectualProperty.htm

The JISC IPR consultancy has also provided a range of materials in this area, including guidance specific to web 2.0, and useful background material for those unfamiliar with IPR issues:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/ipr.aspx

The TrustDR project have produced a “development pack” dealing with IPR issues in content sharing: http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/outputs.php

Further guidance will be made available shortly after the release of the call concerning institutional IPR policies. This document will be updated to include a link.
Technical and Data Management Issues

The JISC CETIS innovation centre is active in most of the technical areas linked to the release of open learning content. The Educational Content Special Interest Group (EC SIG) is a good starting point for engaging with open educational content initiatives and debates. EC SIG contact details and additional resources are available from: http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/domain/educational-content
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Educational_Content_OER

Jorum is a online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions, helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials. Jorum is in the process of moving into a new phase that will be engaging with the open educational resources agenda. For further details of Jorum’s current and future direction visit:
http://jorum.ac.uk/future_directions.htm

A useful briefing paper on sharing learning materials through repositories, written by Andrew Rothery of Worchester University, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/elearningrepositoriesbpv1.aspx

Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories - Structured Guidelines for setting up LO repositories http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/106/


I will get round to making all the links live later on. For now at least you have them available in your web browser.