OER Discovery 2009 Notes
Contents
- 1 OER search and discovery meeting
- 2 Round table discussion of OER search and discovery needs, specs, considerations:
- 3 DiscoverEd demo:
- 4 GLOBE demo:
- 5 OER recommender demo:
- 6 Attempt to categorize the different flavors of search tools that are out there:
- 7 Can we set some initial priorities and plans of action?
- 8 Looking ahead:
- 9 List of major production tools for educational resources and possible contacts:
- 10 Other places we should target for the search integration:
- 11 Stages of action:
- 12 Who should be part of this effort?
- 13 We need to develop a statement of support:
- 14 Can we adopt a common set of metrics?
- 15 Additional questions for the group:
OER search and discovery meeting
July 10, 2009
Pictures
Round table discussion of OER search and discovery needs, specs, considerations:
- OER are diverse in form and origin.
- OER are difficult to define universally.
- Are metadata sufficient to improve search, or are there bigger issues at play?
- Are we addressing educational search generally, or are we only addressing OER search?
- What is the user experience that informs any search solution?
- There is a lingo issue - teachers want to use OER but don't realize that's what they want.
- How much should we expect users to understand in order to use the tool effectively?
- How do we get users to contribute to improving the information?
If we build a search engine, what type of engine do we want (what categories of engine are there)?
Can we create a publication protocol for OER-creators to enhance discoverability?
Are there schemas for illustrating permissions associated with resources which are easy to understand and easy to implement (e.g., traffic light)?
DiscoverEd demo:
- Built to illustrate first principles (above).
- Key was to presume nothing about the quality/extent of the data or the specific nature of the OER in question. Open to any self-described curators of educational resources.
- Is it a problem that it also archives non-CC-licensed works?
GLOBE demo:
- LRE: interface for school teachers
- ariadne: facetted search
- MACE: tabletop and other visual interfaces
OER recommender demo:
- Take the tools to the content, rather than waiting for the content-creators to make the content available to the tools.
- Greasemonkey script.
- How do users understand this service? In Cnx, there is a problem with users presuming that the author of the referring resource is the person who created the related resources.
- Next iteration: Folksemantic.com
We also briefly discussed some other tools that are using similar developments, such as Google Rich Snippets, Yahoo BOSS, and others. These various tools should share the same databases.... a quick discussion led to some agreement that this coding was sane and achievable within a year, with some additional resources.
Attempt to categorize the different flavors of search tools that are out there:
Altavista-like
- Look at the content of the resource in isolation.
Google-like
- Look at content in isolation but add link structure.
- Low-cost for data extraction.
Facebook-like
- Leverages identified social interaction (people known to the user).
- Built on trusted relationships.
Youtube-like
- Leverages comments from people unknown to the user.
- Really easy to contribute information.
Google-scholar-like
- Content is published by specific entities (curators).
- Curation occurs prior to contribution.
- Uses structured metadata.
Wikipedia
- Remixing occurs on site. Drives to a single outcome.
- Benefits from distributed collaboration on search queries.
- Curation occurs after contribution.
Can we set some initial priorities and plans of action?
- Minimum publishing style guide
- Registry linking
- Catalog of enhanced features (e.g., new metadata fields)
- Promotion/Adoption
Looking ahead:
What UI is needed to get integration into existing OER sites?
- Toggle between my site versus all OER.
- Plug-in for Moodle, Sakai, LAMS, etc.
- Basically, how do we get the tools of Open Ed into the workspaces people use every day?
List of major production tools for educational resources and possible contacts:
'Note: In most cases, having some initial code in hand will help a lot.'
- Microsoft
- see ALOCOM for ARIADNE plugin
- LAMS
- see screencast of GLOBE plugin
- Moodle
- see ARIADNE plugin
- Sakai
- Blackboard
- see also Vandepitte, P., Van Rentergem, L., Duval, E., Ternier, S. & Neven, F. (2003). Bridging an LCMS and an LMS: a Blackboard Building Block for the ARIADNE Knowledge Pool System. In D. Lassner & C. McNaught (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2003 (pp. 423-424). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/13794
- Open Office
- Google docs
- Wordpress
- Mediawiki
Other places we should target for the search integration:
- School web sites
- Professional society pages
- Government and district sites
- Library websites
Stages of action:
- Would you be interested?
- Can we get some help if we have a detailed technical question in your environment?
- What would it take to integrate?
- Letter (tweet) of support?
- Solicit external funding?
- Deliver.
Who should be part of this effort?
How do we identify those orgs that want us to represent them in this space?
Two levels of commitment:
- the resources are included, or
- the organization involved is committed to development in this space.
We need to develop a statement of support:
Some sort of statement seems necessary. Perhaps a paragraph that captures the goals of OER search/discovery and why orgs would be interested in having such a tool baked into the tools that people actually use. Should then get signatures.
Can enhance OpenEd (opened.creativecommons.org) site to host.
Can we adopt a common set of metrics?
- #s of resources (divided by attribute).
- #s of people using.
- #s of downloads.
- #s of actual implementations.
- Others?
Additional questions for the group:
- What research is out there about the barriers regarding search?
- To what extent do teachers actually search for things on the Web?
- What orgs should be involved in the broader effort?
- OCWC
- Merlot
- Globe
- ccLearn
- ??