Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories

1. Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories Peter Douglas p.douglas@intrallect.com

2. CD-LOR project • Funded by the JISC (June 2005-2007) • Lead by the Glasgow Caledonian University (Prof. Allison Littlejohn, Dr. Anoush Margaryan) • Collaborators: • University of Strathclyde (Dr. David Nicol, Dr. Colin Milligan) • Intrallect Ltd. (Dr. Peter Douglas) • 8 Associate partners • 18 national & international collaborative partners • http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/

3. Project Activities • CD-LOR was interested in enablers and barriers to successful uptake of LORs: • Desk Study • Survey of Repository Users (and PRMS Survey) • Community Consultation: • Elicit barriers • Develop Use Cases • Trial and Implement • Outputs • Guidelines for Curators and Managers setting up new repositories • SRU client (Open Source) • Recommendations (for policy and further work)

4. Barriers • Norms of sharing & collaboration • Size and scope of community • Roles and hierarchies Socio-cultural Pedagogic Organisational & info management Technological • Diversity in approaches to learning • Discipline-specific resources • Curriculum standardisation • ICT skills and information literacy • Incentives and rewards • IPR, DRM, metadata • Quality assurance of resources • User friendly interface • Effective search, storage, preview • Interoperability standards

5. Community Dimensions Purpose - shared goal/interest of the community Dialogue - modes of communication, e.g. online, face-to-face, or mixed Roles and responsibilities Coherence - whether the community is close-knit or loosely confederated/transient Context - the broader ecology within which the community exists, e.g. professional bodies, governments Rules – e.g. ground rules of conduct, rewards and incentives mechanisms, control of access and use of resources Pedagogy of the community - for example, problem-based learning, collaborative learning.

6. Repository Dimensions Purpose – e.g. for sharing audio-files, or for preservation of institutional educational resources Subject area – e.g. social work, medicine Scope - departmental, institutional, national, or international Educational sector - school, higher education, further education, lifelong learning Contributors - teachers, students, publishers, support staff, JISC-funded projects Business model - business, trading and management framework underpinning repository

7. Structured Guidelines • A “how to” guide to implement a repository which meets the needs of your users and their communities (or evaluate existing repository) • Ask the right questions • Consider the likely answers • Understand how ‘Community Dimensions’ inter-relate. • Know how to interpret the answers you get • Take an iterative approach

8. Recommendations • Better alignment between repositories and communities • LORs should only be introduced if they are a solution to a problem meaningful to users • Appropriate user support strategies should exist • Product innovation should involve process innovation • Curators should try to build multidisciplinary teams

9. Recommendations LO Repositories would benefit from: • Stronger integration with institutional systems in particular VLEs • ‘the easiest place to put my stuff’ • Integration into personal workflows • Web 2.0 type capabilities, which would facilitate: • Personal management/tagging • Recommendation and usage

10. Relevant links • Structured Guidelines for Setting up Learning Object Repositorieshttp://academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/documents/CD-LOR_Structured_Guidelines_v1p0.pdf • Recommendations for future research and development in the area of Learning Object Repositorieshttp://academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/documents/CD-LOR_FinalRecommendations.pdf • Peter Douglas: p.douglas@intrallect.com • Anoush Margaryan, Allison LittlejohnColin Milligan

11. Community Building Approaches • How do you define/identify your communities? • Existing communities vs. Building new communities • Single community vs. Multiple communities • Communities changing repositories/repositories changing communities • Introducing new communities • Open vs. closed repositories • External tools vs. internal functionality • What can Intrallect do? • More services/Tools integration/Additional functionality?

12. The questions! • Question 1. Why are you setting up a learning object repository? [R-Purpose] • Question 2. How many communities do you serve? [C-Composition] • Question 3. What is the purpose of the community that the repository will serve? [C-Purpose] • Question 4. Who are the key actors in the community and who, of these, will contribute to the repository? [C-Roles and R-Contributors] • Question 5. What is the pedagogic approach of the community? [C-Pedagogy] • Question 6. How coherent is the community? [C-Coherence] • Question 7. What are the modes of participation and communication within the community? [C-Dialogue] • Question 8. What is the ecology of the community? [C-Context] • Question 9. What is the business model of the repository? [R-Business model] • Question 10. How do you envision the evolution of your LOR?