Defining a metadata schema for serious games as learning objects

Games are increasingly recognized for their educational potential. However, when used as a learning resource, games can differ substantially from other educational media. They often combine high-fidelity audio and video content with experiential, social, or exploratory pedagogy. As educators increasingly turn to technology to support the delivery and management of content, the capability to describe and package serious games effectively as reusable learning objects (LOs) is increasingly vital. Doing so requires developing the capability to express games not in terms of technical boundaries, but as coherent and discrete LOs, which can be reused and combined. Enabling this requires metadata be attached to games, whilst making the metadata schema explicit to allow the use of the metadata beyond its original scope. Furthermore, standardisation of metadata schema means that systems are able to work together and use data interchangeably. However, current standards for describing educational content cannot directly be utilized to describe these serious games as educational resources. This makes it difficult to include serious games in repositories of learning objects and to describe them in a coherent way in the various online repositories. This paper introduces a metadata schema for describing serious games as educational resources, based on existing standards, so that serious games content can be described within online repositories

Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

Taking stock of open access : progress and issues

Purpose - Aims at providing a broad overview of some of the issues emerging from the growth in open access publishing, with specific reference to the use of repositories and open access journals. Design/methodology/approach - A paper largely based on specific experience with institutional repositories and the internationally run E-library and information science (LIS) archive. Findings - The open access initiative is dramatically transforming the process of scholarly communication bringing great benefits to the academic world with an, as yet, uncertain outcome for commercial publishers. Practical implications - Outlines the benefits of the open access movement with reference to repositories and open access journals to authors and readers alike and gives some food for thought on potential barriers to the complete permeation of the open access model, such as copyright restrictions and version control issues. Some illustrative examples of country-specific initiatives and the international E-LIS venture are given. Originality/value - An attempt to introduce general theories and practical implications of the open access movement to those largely unfamiliar with the movement

Academic digital libraries of the future : an environment scan

Libraries are attempting to face a future in which almost every fixed point has disappeared. Users are changing; content is changing; research is taking new forms. Indeed the very need for libraries is being questioned in some quarters. This paper explores the nature of the changes and challenges facing higher education libraries and suggests key areas of strength and core activities which should be exploited to secure their future

Development of a Database of Educational Games Applicable to Production Engineering

Discussion over the years regarding the quality of newly graduated engineers in Brazil has concluded that there are gaps between learning and market expectations. Analyzing the current scenario, the Ministry of Education (MEC) has approved new national curriculum guidelines that emphasize skills development and the adoption of active methodologies. The aim is to develop students as protagonists of their own learning. One of these methodologies is game-based learning (GBL), which utilizes games for educational purposes to integrate theory and practice. GBL simulates reality and presents concepts in a playful way, resulting in greater student engagement and interest. However, research shows that a lack of knowledge and difficulty accessing such games are barriers to implementing this methodology. Previous research has focused on the development of serious game metadata (SGM), the establishment of controlled vocabularies, and the identification of educational games targeting production engineering (PE). The authors of the present paper developed a database focused on the disciplines and content covered in production engineering courses. The paper describes the database and its aims to: (a) increase the use of games in the teaching-learning process; (b) make the process more effective; and (c) prepare better professionals

Report of the discussion on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for OER

Appendix: FOSS tools for OER development, management and dissemination

A novel approach towards skill-based search and services of Open Educational Resources

Ha, K.-H., Niemann, K., Schwertel, U., Holtkamp, P., Pirkkalainen, H., Börner, D. et al (2011). A novel approach towards skill-based search and services of Open Educational Resources. In E. Garcia-Barriocanal, A. Öztürk, & M. C. Okur (Eds.), Metadata and Semantics Research: 5th International Conference MTSR 2011 (pp. 312-323), Izmir, Turkey, October 12-14, 2011. Springer.Open educational resources (OER) have a high potential to address the growing need for training materials in management education and training. Today, a high number of OER in management are already available in a large number of repositories. However, users face barriers as they have to search repository by repository with different interfaces to retrieve the appropriate learning content. In addition, the use of search criteria related to skills, such as learning objectives and skill-levels is not generally supported. The European co-funded project OpenScout addresses these barriers by intelligently connecting leading European OER repositories and providing federated, skillbased search and retrieval web services. On top of this content federation the project supports users with easy-to-apply tools that will accelerate the (re-) use of open content

ICOPER Project - Deliverable 4.3 ISURE: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, embodied in the ICOPER CD&R

The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas and recommendations, within and beyond the ICOPER community, concerning the reuse of learning content, including appropriate methodologies as well as established strategies for remixing and repurposing reusable resources. The overall remit of this work focuses on describing the key issues that are related to extending effective reuse embodied in such materials. The objective of this investigation, is to support the reuse of learning content whilst considering how it could be originally created and then adapted with that ‘reuse’ in mind. In these circumstances a survey on effective reuse best practices can often provide an insight into the main challenges and benefits involved in the process of creating, remixing and repurposing what we are now designating as Reusable Learning Content (RLC). Several key issues are analysed in this report: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, building upon those described in the previous related deliverables 4.1 Content Development Methodologies and 4.2 Quality Control and Web 2.0 technologies. The findings of this current survey, however, provide further recommendations and strategies for using and developing this reusable learning content. In the spirit of ‘reuse’, this work also aims to serve as a foundation for the many different stakeholders and users within, and beyond, the ICOPER community who are interested in reusing learning resources. This report analyses a variety of information. Evidence has been gathered from a qualitative survey that has focused on the technical and pedagogical recommendations suggested by a Special Interest Group (SIG) on the most innovative practices with respect to new media content authors (for content authoring or modification) and course designers (for unit creation). This extended community includes a wider collection of OER specialists. This collected evidence, in the form of video and audio interviews, has also been represented as multimedia assets potentially helpful for learning and useful as learning content in the New Media Space (See section 4 for further details). Section 2 of this report introduces the concept of reusable learning content and reusability. Section 3 discusses an application created by the ICOPER community to enhance the opportunities for developing reusable content. Section 4 of this report provides an overview of the methodology used for the qualitative survey. Section 5 presents a summary of thematic findings. Section 6 highlights a list of recommendations for effective reuse of educational content, which were derived from thematic analysis described in Appendix A. Finally, section 7 summarises the key outcomes of this work