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

Collaborative Authoring of Open Courseware with SlideWiki: A Case Study in Open Education

Producing or finding and reusing high-quality educational content online can be a laborious and costly process. With the open-source and open-access SlideWiki platform, the effort of producing and reusing highly-structured remixable educational content can be crowdsourced and therefore widely shared. SlideWiki employs crowdsourcing methods in order to support the open education community in authoring, sharing, reusing and remixing open courseware. This paper presents a case study of this platform carried out in the context of open education and informal learning and reports on the feedback received thus far from members of the open education community

The OER FLOW and social media

This presentation introduces some strategies for producing, sharing and reusing OER through the OER Flow and social media. The aim of this investigation is to identify how colearners can apply the OER Flow and social media to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in the community to contribute. This work analyses, therefore, the interactions of “COLEARN” – an open community of research in collaborative learning technologies – who created and remixed diverse open media components for producing an open book about OER using the OER flow and Social Media. The outcomes show that educators and colearners can move from a passive position to a more active and informed network role when they are able to co-authoring OER

Co-authorship in the age of cyberculture: Open Educational Resources at the Open University of the United Kingdom

Locating Open Educational Resources (OER) as a phenomenon of cyberculture, this paper presents a reflection on the possibilities of co-authorship that are entailed in OER initiatives of different natures and settings within a large organisation. A selection of OER-related projects and activities carried out at the Open University of United Kingdom (UKOU) are examined from the perspective of a comparative framework proposed by Okada (2010). The framework identifies key features and differences between ‘Closed’ and ‘Open’ Education, that is, respectively, formal education, which takes place within the constraints of institutional Virtual Learning Environments, and informal education, which is gradually taking place more widely in cyberspace. The paper is introduced with a succinct discussion of the connection between cyberculture and the emergence of OER, followed by a presentation of the comparative framework adopted. The UKOU´s structure and methods are then presented, and various projects are discussed. The article concludes by proposing a brief commentary on the creative potential that is being unleashed at the very boundaries between formal and informal educational spaces that cyberculture is challenging

NET WORKING: Work Patterns and Workforce Policies for the New Media Industry

This report, based on a study of a group of highly accomplished professionals in New York City, is one of the first to take up labor market issues in the new media industry. It describes the challenges faced by professionals and employers alike in this important and dynamic sector, and identifies strategies for success in a project oriented environment with highly complex skill demands and rapidly changing technology. Our findings suggest three central issues

Aiming for ultra-scalable ePortfolio distribution using peer-to-peer networks

In this paper the authors discuss how peer-to-peer technology offers a practical solution to building highly scalable Europe-wide and worldwide ePortfolio networks over existing network infrastructures.This solution also offers the effect of empowering individuals through moving the management and storage responsibilities onto the portfolio owners, decoupling users from any single institutional ePortfolio service provider The authors do not present this solution as the single way forward, but as an alternative to what is seen as a mainly client-server and Web-based approach to ePortfolio development, and to encourage developers to explore the possibilities for ePortfolio integration with emerging and relatively immature technologies. A prototype implementation is reported and future developments described

Designing for change: mash-up personal learning environments

Institutions for formal education and most work places are equipped today with at least some kind of tools that bring together people and content artefacts in learning activities to support them in constructing and processing information and knowledge. For almost half a century, science and practice have been discussing models on how to bring personalisation through digital means to these environments. Learning environments and their construction as well as maintenance makes up the most crucial part of the learning process and the desired learning outcomes and theories should take this into account. Instruction itself as the predominant paradigm has to step down. The learning environment is an (if not 'the�) important outcome of a learning process, not just a stage to perform a 'learning play'. For these good reasons, we therefore consider instructional design theories to be flawed. In this article we first clarify key concepts and assumptions for personalised learning environments. Afterwards, we summarise our critique on the contemporary models for personalised adaptive learning. Subsequently, we propose our alternative, i.e. the concept of a mash-up personal learning environment that provides adaptation mechanisms for learning environment construction and maintenance. The web application mash-up solution allows learners to reuse existing (web-based) tools plus services. Our alternative, LISL is a design language model for creating, managing, maintaining, and learning about learning environment design; it is complemented by a proof of concept, the MUPPLE platform. We demonstrate this approach with a prototypical implementation and a – we think – comprehensible example. Finally, we round up the article with a discussion on possible extensions of this new model and open problems

PeerWise - The Marmite of Veterinary Student Learning

PeerWise is a free online student-centred collaborative learning tool with which students anonymously author, answer, and evaluate multiple choice questions (MCQs). Features such as commenting on questions, rating questions and comments, and appearing on leaderboards, can encourage healthy competition, engage students in reflection and debate, and enhance their communication skills. PeerWise has been used in diverse subject areas but never previously in Veterinary Medicine. The Veterinary undergraduates at the University of Glasgow are a distinct cohort; academically gifted and often highly strategic in their learning due to time pressures and volume of course material. In 2010-11 we introduced PeerWise into 1st year Veterinary Biomolecular Sciences in the Glasgow Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery programme. To scaffold PeerWise use, a short interactive session introduced students to the tool and to the basic principles of good MCQ authorship. Students were asked to author four and answer forty MCQs throughout the academic year. Participation was encouraged by an allocation of up to 5% of the final year mark and inclusion of studentauthored questions in the first summative examination. Our analysis focuses on engagement of the class with the\ud tool and their perceptions of its use. All 141 students in the class engaged with PeerWise and the majority contributed beyond that which was stipulated. Student engagement with PeerWise prior to a summative exam was positively correlated to exam score, yielding a relationship that was highly significant (p<0.001). Student perceptions of PeerWise were predominantly positive with explicit recognition of its value as a learning and revision tool, and more than two thirds of the class in agreement that question authoring and answering reinforced their learning. There was clear polarisation of views, however, and those students who did not like PeerWise were vociferous in their dislike, the biggest criticism being lack of moderation by staff

An authoring tool for structuring and annotating on-line educational courses : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University

This thesis studies the design and prototype implementation of a new web-based course authoring system for the Technology Integrated Learning Environment (TILE) project. The TILE authoring system edits the course structure and allows the author to annotate the course structure with meta-data. It makes extensive use of XML technology to communicate structured data across the Internet, as well as for both local and web-side databases. The Authoring tool is designed to support development by multiple authors and has check-in and check - out, as well as version control facilities. It also provides an interface for adopting other multimedia tools such as AudioGraph. The tool has an easy-to-use graphical user interface. The technical problems that have been solved in this project include issues such as cross-platform support, drag and drop functionality using JDK l.l.8, etc. System environments, such as relational database set up, XML database set up, Java swing set up in Mac also have been discussed. The authoring system interface analysis, database analysis and function analysis have been completed for the complete the system as specified. An intermediate system, designed to a reduced specification, has been implemented as a prototype and details of this system, which can work independently of the TILE delivery system, are included. The Full TILE authoring system including InstantDB database access also has been partially implemented. The prototype application has also has been tested on the PC platform